Surdas was a kind musical saint also known as Sant Surdas or Sur Sagar. Surdas literally means the “Slave of melody”.
Surdas was musically inclined, his guru advised him to sing the ‘Bhagavad Leela’ – devotional lyrical ballads inpraise of Lord Krishna and Radha. The philosophy of Surdas is a reflection of the times. He was very much immersed in the Bhakti Yoga movement that was sweeping North India. This movement represented a grass roots spiritual empowerment of the masses.
Surdas’ poetry was a dialect of Hindi language, Brij Bhasha, until then considered to be a very mediocre language, as the prevalent literary languages were either Persian or Sanskrit. The works of Surdas immediately raised the status of Brij Bhasha from a crude language to that of a literary language of great repute.
Surdas’s philosophy is based upon the spiritual metaphor of the celestial dance between Radha and Lord Krishna. It propagates the path of seeking the Grace of God