Religious Life: Saints, Sects and Folk Deities

Where this sits

RPSC's eighth syllabus line: "Religious life — communities, saints and sects, folk deities and religious practices."

The organising idea for the whole topic is one this site has already used twice. The ancient chapter argued that religion in Rajasthan is additive rather than sequential — Yaksha worship at Noh, Bhagavata Vaishnavism at Ghosundi and Mauryan Buddhism at Bairath coexisting rather than succeeding one another. This chapter is the same argument two thousand years later. Folk deities, reformist sects, Nirguna sant traditions and Saguna Vaishnavism are not stages; they are neighbours, often in the same village.

1. The folk deities, and the question that is always set

What a lok devta is, before the names

Before the five names, the category. Rajasthan's village religion is organised around guardianship of a place, and the word for the guardian is Kshetrapal, the protector of a tract. This is not an abstraction retrofitted by textbooks. The Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Dungarpur records a Kshetrapal shrine at Khadagada in Sagwara tahsil with its own fair on Chaitra Shukla 15, alongside a Bhairavji fair at Meradi on Kartik Vadi 14. The guardian has a shrine, a calendar and a congregation, like any other deity.

Bhairav is the guardian most people actually meet. The Churu gazetteer, listing what Hindus in that district worship besides the great gods, names Bhaironji first, then Hanumanji, Shitla, Pabuji, Ramdeoji, Gogaji, Hinglaj Mata and Mawrian, followed by the worship of tulsi, peepal and khejra. The Nagaur gazetteer records a Bherunji ka mela at Thanwala on Bhadrapada Sudi 14. A lok devta list that begins with Pabuji has already skipped the layer underneath it.

And Bhomiya ji is worth a sentence for a reason that is not religious at all. Bhom is a land word. The Sikar gazetteer's glossary of land tenures defines Bhom as a tenure, Chakoti as a grant of an interest in land made by a Bhomia of the Torawati tract, and Bhoo as a revenue-free grant for the maintenance of a place of worship or a shrine. The Dungarpur volume separately records Bhomia Rajputs as a category of landholder. So the deity of the land and the holder of the land share a root, and the revenue chapter's bhomia and the folk-religion chapter's Bhomiya ji are the same word doing two jobs. That connection is the sort of thing an interview board rewards.

The Panch Peer

The Panch Peer are five folk deities, and the composition is the single most reliably asked fact in this chapter:

Tejaji is not among the Panch Peer.

That negative is the question. It is set as "who is not among the Panch Peer", and Tejaji is the intended trap precisely because he is one of the most widely venerated folk deities in the state. Learn the five with their clans, and learn that Tejaji is the sixth name that does not belong.

The principal deities individually

• Pabuji — born at Kolu village near Phalodi, Jodhpur district, in 1239 CE; of the Rathore family of Marwar; credited with bringing camels to Marwar. His narrative is the Pabuji ki Phad, unrolled by Bhopas — the scroll tradition from the painting chapter.
• Gogaji — also Jahar Veer; revered as a snake god and a protector of cattle; his shrines are often found under Khejri trees.
• Ramdevji — a fourteenth-century Rajput ruler, remembered as a social reformer.
• Devnarayan — among the most prominent; the Devnarayan ki Phad is the largest of the popular phads.
• Tejaji — among the four most prominent folk deities of the state, and, again, not a Panch Peer.

Note what these figures have in common. They are historical or quasi-historical people, of named clans and places, who became deities. Rajasthan's popular religion deifies the local and the recent, and it does so across community lines, which is why the same shrines are attended by people the census would have counted separately.

Gogaji: two shrines, two districts, and a Muslim priesthood

The two-shrine distinction is the whole question, and both places are on official record.

The Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Churu states that Dadrewa, about 16 km from Sardarshahr, "is believed to be the birth-place of Gogaji, a Chauhan Saint", and that a fair is held there on the 9th of Bhadon every year. Its fairs section adds a second Gogaji fair at Lunch, on the same date, and describes him as "the celebrated Chauhan Rajput, who sacrificed his life in defending the country against the incursions of the army of the crescent under Mahmud of Ghazni". The volume's index carries the terse line "Guga, the eldest son of Jevara".

The Devasthan Department of the Government of Rajasthan describes the other end of his life. The Gogaji temple at Gogamedi, in Nohar tehsil of Hanumangarh district, is "950 years old" and was prepared and renovated by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner in 1911. Its own words on the man: "a Chouhan warrior who laid down his life", martyred and then deified, "and it is said that he became a Nath". The department calls him, in plain terms, "one of the five renowned peers".

Learn it as a pair. Dadrewa in Churu is the birthplace; Gogamedi in Hanumangarh is the shrine over the death. An option that offers both is testing exactly this.

Now the detail that is worth more than the pair. The Devasthan record of the Gogamedi shrine states that the priests of Gogaji are Muslims of the Chayal caste, that the building is "a happy combination of Hindu and Muslim style of architecture", and that the month-long fair, from the Purnima of Shravan to the Purnima of Bhadrapada, draws devotees from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. A Chauhan Rajput martyr, worshipped as a Nath, served by Muslim priests, at a shrine built in two architectural idioms. The chapter's opening argument about additive religion does not need to be asserted here. The state's own temple record makes it.

One conflict, stated rather than smoothed. The Churu gazetteer has Gogaji dying against Mahmud of Ghazni's army. The account that circulates in preparation material has him killed by his maternal cousins while defending cattle. The gazetteer is the better-sourced version and is what this page carries; the cousins are not asserted.

Ramdevji: Runicha, the Tanwar clan, and a correction

A correction to this page, made visibly. An earlier version of this chapter called Ramdevji "a fourteenth-century Rajput ruler". That century is not supportable as stated and has been withdrawn. No Government of Rajasthan source consulted assigns him a century at all, and the two lifespans in general circulation, 1405 to 1458 CE and Vikram Samvat 1409 to 1462, place him in the fifteenth century on the first reading and across the fourteenth and fifteenth on the second. Give the place and the practice, which are documented, and leave the century alone.

What the state records do carry. The Churu gazetteer, describing the Ramdevji fairs held at seven places in that district for ten days from Bhadon Sudi 2 to Bhadon Sudi 11, calls him "a Rajput of Tanwar clan", "hailed as an incarnation of Lord Krishna in Marwar", "revered by all Hindu communities in the desert area of Rajasthan and worshipped by the Scheduled Castes, especially the Bhambis, the Meghwals, the Chamars", and adds that "Muslims also pay obeisance to him and address him as Ram Shah Pir". The same volume records that the Meghwals worship Ramdeoji and Gogaji, both Rajput saints, while their own family goddess is Khetia Mata.

The Devasthan Department's record of the shrine at Ramdevra, Runicha, in Jaisalmer district adds the practice. The present cenotaph was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner over an older one raised by Ramdevji's descendants; the tomb lies at the centre of the campus, head to the north and feet to the south; the tombs of his family members stand around it; and entry to the samadhi is allowed "without any consideration of caste and creed and religion". Two fairs are held, a small one in January and February and a large one in August and September.

Then the sentence that ties this chapter together. The department writes that although in Hindu practice the dead are cremated, here, "like the Nath cult, the dead bodies are assigned to dust in a grave and a tomb is built thereon."

Read that against what this chapter already carries from the Nagaur gazetteer, which records that Jasnathis, Bishnois and the worshippers of Jambhaji bury their dead against the general rule of cremation. Burial now runs across three of this chapter's traditions and is explicitly traced by the state to the Naths. It is no longer an isolated Bishnoi curiosity. It is a regional practice with a named source.

Tejaji: Kharnal, the Mers, and the fair that was moved

The Nagaur gazetteer gives the biography in two sentences, and they are the two an examiner wants. "Teja was a Jat of Kharnal (16 km. west of Mundwa by kaccha road) in Nagaur, who after a fight with the cattle-lifting Mers, died from the bite of a snake." And: if a man bitten by a snake "tie a cord round his right foot and repeat the name of Tejaji, he will assuredly recover".

The iconography is in the same passage, and it explains the image on every roadside shrine in the region. Most Jats of the district, the gazetteer says, wear round the neck a silver charm depicting Ramdeoji or Pabuji or Tejaji on horseback with his sword drawn and a snake biting him on the tongue.

Now the fair, which is worth understanding rather than memorising. The Parbatsar cattle fair, commonly called the Tejaji-ka-mela, is held on Bhadrapada Badi 11 and runs fifteen days, drawing forty to fifty thousand people and about a lakh of cattle. But the Nagaur gazetteer says plainly that Parbatsar is not where the worship began. In the reign of Maharaja Bijai Singh of Marwar, the Hakim of Parbatsar found that the Jats of his district were travelling to Sursura, the shrine of Tejaji, in Kishangarh State, and taking their revenue with them. He therefore "concocted a story that Tejaji had visited him in a dream and expressed that in future he should be worshipped at Parbatsar only", installed a statue, and ordered the Jats to attend Parbatsar on pain of punishment.

That is a fiscal decision recorded as a religious one, and it is the best single illustration in this chapter of how a shrine's importance can be manufactured by a state that wants the fair revenue. Bijai Singh ruled Marwar from the early 1750s until 1793, on the gazetteers' own chronology.

The Devasthan Department's temple record for Parbatsar states that the temple was built by Maharaja Abhai Singh of Jodhpur, with the pran pratishtha performed by his minister Vijai Raj, that worship is performed in the Vaishnava tradition while the deity is venerated by "Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims", and that snakebite cases are still brought there for treatment.

The two accounts fit together in sequence, and one date on the page does not. Abhay Singh succeeded Ajit Singh in 1724 and was succeeded by Ram Singh in 1750, so a temple raised by him belongs to the 1720s or 1730s, and the Devasthan page's own line that "the construction is 268 years old" points to about 1734. The same page's "Built in the year: 1704 A.D." cannot be right, because Abhay Singh was not ruling in 1704. Carry the sequence, not the 1704.

Pabuji, and a note on which district these villages are in

Very little of Pabuji's biography is on state record, and this page says so rather than filling the gap. What the gazetteers give is the geography and the reach: the Jodhpur gazetteer lists Pabuji among the district's popular folk tales and records a Pabuji fair at Phalodi, and the Nagaur gazetteer records a Pabuji ka mela at Jasnagar on Chaitra Sudi 10 drawing about five thousand people. The death year, the enemy and the cause are not carried here.

The district question, since three of this chapter's places are caught by it. The Jodhpur gazetteer records that Kolu was transferred from Shergarh tahsil to Phalodi tahsil; Parbatsar and Merta were tahsils of Nagaur; and all three sat in districts that the 2023 and December 2024 reorganisations redrew, leaving the state with 41 districts and 425 tehsils. Resolve these places by tahsil, which is stable, and treat the district label as the thing that has moved. Every book still prints the pre-2023 district, and for most exam purposes that is what the option will say.

2. The folk goddesses

Two details are examinable because they are specific. Karni Mata is placed as a historical figure, a warrior sage of the 14th to 16th centuries, not only as a goddess — the same deification pattern as the Lok Devtas. And Jeen Mata's song being the longest in the folk literature is the kind of superlative that gets set, and it connects the religion topic to the language chapter.

Karni Mata and Jeen Mata, from the state's own records

Karni Mata, from the Devasthan Department's temple record. The temple stands at Deshnok, 35 km from Bikaner, and belongs to the Shakta sampradaya. It was raised by Rao Jaitasi to commemorate his victory over "the Mughal King Kumaran", that is Kamran, Humayun's brother. The idol enshrined is called Dewali, one foot three inches wide and two and a half feet tall, and the small inner shrine is "said to have been made 600 years ago by Karni Mata herself". The priests are the Depawats, her own descendants, of the Charan community, who serve month by month in turn. The rats are recorded, and so is the claim attached to them, that plague never broke out there. The large fair falls in the Ashwin Navratra and a smaller one in the Chaitra Navratra.

One number on that page contradicts another number on the same page. It gives "Built in the year: 1573 AD" in its header and, lower down, "the temple was established in Samvat 1594 (1537 A.D.)". The samvat conversion is correct and 1537 is the year that fits, because Rao Jaitsi's reign ended in the early 1540s and he could not have built anything in 1573. Both figures are printed here because both are on the state's page, and the basis for preferring 1537 is the builder's own dates.

Jeen Mata, where two Government of Rajasthan sources tell two different stories. The Sikar gazetteer places the temple 29 km from Sikar and about 10 km south of Rewasa, with Kochhor the nearest village, records that she is "also known as Jayanti Devi", and dates the temple on the evidence of an inscription found inside it to the tenth century. Fairs are held in Chaitra and Asoj; children are brought for the mundan sanskar; and a custom of Jata, an offering, is recorded. Its account of her origin is domestic: Jeen was a village girl whose brother's wife accused her of bad character; she left for penance, her brother Harsh failed to bring her back and took to penance himself, and both attained godhood, Jeen at this place and Harsh on the hill now called Harshnath.

The Devasthan Department's record of the same temple, in Danta Ramgarh tehsil, tells it differently: King Ghangh of Ghoghu village in Churu married an apsara on a condition he later broke; she fled with their two children, Harsh and Jeen, and abandoned them where the temple now stands. It describes the deity as eight-armed Mahishasura Mardini of the Shakta cult and records fairs in both Navratras, at Sharad Purnima, and the Phalgun Harsh-Bhairav fair.

Neither version is being called the true one. They agree on what matters for an exam: Jeen and Harsh are sister and brother, the shrines are a pair, and the Phalgun fair joins them.

And there is a physical anchor for the honeybee association this chapter previously carried without explanation. The Devasthan record notes a Bhramari Devi temple in the rear part of the Jeen Mata complex. Bhramari is the bee. The bee-goddess is not a stray epithet; there is a shrine. What no Rajasthan government source consulted supports is the further claim that Jeen Mata's folk song is the longest in Rajasthan's folk literature; that claim is flagged below rather than repeated as fact.

The kuldevi map, where it is documented

Four seats can be given with a date and an authority, which is worth more than a list of names.

Two more are documented only as fairs, and the fair is the exam's handle anyway. The Nagaur gazetteer records a Kevaya Mataji ka mela at Kinsariya in Chaitra, and lists a Kinsariya inscription among the district's antiquities; and a Mataji ka mela at Goth Manglod on Asoj Sudi 8 and Chaitra Sudi 8. The same volume, describing the Brahman divisions, states that the Dahima or Dadhicha Brahmans' "original seat was at Goth Manglod in Nagaur". That is the Dadhimati connection, sourced, without needing the temple legend.

One trap this table creates deliberately. There are two Shakambharis in this chapter. One is at Sambhar, the Chahamana capital, from which the region took the name Sapadalaksha; the other is Sakrai in Sikar, which the Sikar gazetteer records as dedicated to Sakradevi or Shakambhari. They are different places and different shrines. An option that pairs "Shakambhari" with a district is testing whether you know both exist.

3. The sects: Nirguna and Saguna

The organising division is between Nirguna and Saguna — worship of the formless divine against worship of the divine with attributes and form.

That division does most of the work in this topic, because it predicts the practice: Nirguna sects tend against idol worship and temple ritual, Saguna traditions are built around image worship — which is why Nathdwara's Shrinathji has pichwais hanging behind him and the Dadu Panth has nothing of the sort.

The Nath sampradaya, which this chapter previously left out

The syllabus line and this chapter's own logic both require the Naths, and four Government of Rajasthan temple records place them concretely on the map.

Gorakhnath's own site is in Rajasthan. The Devasthan Department records the dhuna of Shri Gorakh Nath at Gorakh Teela, Gorkhana, in Nohar tehsil of Hanumangarh district, on a mound from which the place takes its name. The department's own statement of the lineage: "There have been nine Siddhas in the Nath cult, the foremost of them is Shri Gorakh Nath", who "was a disciple of Matsyendra Nath". It adds that Gogaji met Gorakhnath at this place and became his principal disciple, and that the Gogaji temple lies 3 km west. A fair runs there for the whole month of Bhadrapada, and pilgrims visit the guru's site first and Gogaji's second.

A second seat, and a second practice. The Bhani Nath ji ka Dhora at Churu is recorded as a Nath sect establishment founded by Kishan Nath, who came from what the department calls "the principal Gaddi of the Nath sect", at Fatehpur. Its record notes that when a Nath mendicant dies he is buried there and a tomb is built over the burial place, and that the dhuna fire is kept alight.

A third, and the most visited. Bhartrihari Dham, about 30 km from Alwar, is recorded as belonging to the Nath cult: Bhartrihari, a king of Ujjain, renounced his kingdom, became a Nath and took Gorakhnath as his guru, and practised asceticism there. The site keeps a dhuni maintained by Nath sadhus and an Akshaydeep, a lamp said to have burned for centuries. A fair is held in Bhadrapada.

And the Shaiva layer under all of it. The Devasthan record of Eklingji at Kailashpuri, Udaipur, names Bapa Rawal as its founder, describes the four-faced lingam with Brahma to the west, Vishnu to the north, Surya to the east and Rudra to the south, and records that an inscription on the south wall attributes the installation to Maharana Raimal (1473 to 1509), that the Maharanas rule as representatives of Eklingji, and that a statue of Bapa Rawal stands facing the image of Maharshi Harit carved at the entrance to the sabha mandap. Bapa Rawal and Harit Rishi are therefore on a state record together, at the shrine, which is what the Pashupata story in preparation material is built on.

One dated inscription, which is the hardest fact in this whole block. The Sikar gazetteer states that the inscription from the Harshnath temple on Harsh hill, now deposited in the Sikar Museum, shows that construction began in the reign of the Chauhan king Simharaja in Samvat 1018 and was completed by his successor Vigraharaja in Samvat 1030, with several villages dedicated to the temple, and that a further inscription there speaks of 84 temples on the hill. Samvat 1030 is 973 CE. That is the date preparation material attaches to the Harsha inscription, and it is correct.

A conflation to refuse. Preparation material names "Nath Muni" as the founder of the Nath sampradaya. Nathamuni is the tenth-century Srivaishnava acharya who compiled the Divya Prabandham, a different tradition entirely. The Devasthan Department's own line, that Gorakhnath was a disciple of Matsyendranath and foremost among nine Siddhas, is the lineage to carry. Do not write "Nath Muni".

The Saguna seats, which are places and not just names

This chapter's Saguna column was two names. Here are the three Rajasthan institutions behind them, each from the Devasthan Department's record.

The Raiwasa fairs fall on Phalgun Sudi 5 and Guru Purnima.

Note what the Raiwasa entry does to the Nirguna and Saguna table. A Ramanandi seat founded in 1513, whose deity is Janaki and whose mood is sakhi bhava, is Saguna to its foundations, and it sits 10 km from Jeen Mata in the same tehsil, and a short distance from the Nath gaddi at Fatehpur in the next district. The traditions this chapter separates on a page are neighbours on the ground. That is the additive argument again, and here it is a matter of road distances.

Sant Pipa and Sant Dhanna, and the one primary text that settles them

Pipa appears on this page as a name in the Nirguna list, which undersells him. The strongest evidence about both Pipa and Dhanna is not a Rajasthani source at all: it is the Guru Granth Sahib. Ang 695 carries, in Raag Dhanasari and in this order, a shabad of Trilochan, one of Sri Sain, one of Peepaa, and one of Dhanna. Pipa's ends "Peepaa pranvai param tat hai, satgur hoe lakhaavai".

That is a compiled scripture, dated and unaltered, and it is worth more than any number of hagiographies. It establishes that both men were counted among the bhagats whose verse the Sikh tradition preserved, and it is the reason their names travel far outside Rajasthan. The biographical particulars that circulate for both, Pipa's birth at Gagron and Dhanna's at Dhuwan in Tonk, are not carried here; they are flagged below.

The Dadu Panth

Dadu Dayal, 1544 to 1603. He settled first at Sambhar, then moved to Naraina, near Jaipur, which became the main seat of the Dadu Panth.

The Panth does not believe in idol worship or temple ritual, which places it squarely in the Nirguna tradition.

What the Dadu Dwara at Naraina records, which is the Panth's own institutional account. The Devasthan Department's record of Mandir Shri Dadu Dwara, Naraina states that Dadu was born at Ahmedabad in Gujarat in 1544; that "there are controversies regarding his caste but they are of little importance"; that at eleven he came into contact with the sage Vriddhanand; that at Sambhar he established the Brahma Sampradaya, later renamed the Parabrahma Sampradaya and then the Dadu Panth; that he met Akbar at Amer in about 1586; that he travelled to Delhi, Kashi, Bihar, Bengal and Gujarat; that his language shows a mixture of Sindhi, Gujarati and Marwari; that he had 152 disciples of whom 52 are said to be the pillars of the Panth; and that he died at Naraina near Sambhar in 1603, after which the place became the Dadu Dwara.

The relics are listed, and they are the kind of detail an examiner likes. Dadu's hair, his tumba or gourd water-container, his chola and his khadau are preserved at Naraina. The Dwara itself was built in 1884 and is the principal seat of the Acharya of the sect, who is succeeded by his principal disciple. The record names two kinds of sadhus in the sect, Nihang and householder.

Three cautions, because this is where the standard account overreaches.

• The meeting with Akbar. The state record says Amer, about 1586. Preparation material says Fatehpur Sikri, 1585, for forty days. Give the state's place and year; the forty days and the Sikri setting are not carried here.
• The fifty-two. The record supports fifty-two principal disciples out of a hundred and fifty-two, which is the basis of the Bawan Thamba idea. It does not support a scheme of five named branches, and that scheme is flagged below.
• The name of the book, which is a genuine trap. The Devasthan record of the Dadu Dwara calls Dadu's collected utterances "Anabhai Vani", with "Kayabeli" as his second book. The Devasthan record of the Ram Niwas Dham at Shahpura says that at the Phuldol gathering "the holy book called Anabhei Waniji is read", meaning Ramcharan's. Two temple records of the same department attach the same title to two different saints. The title belongs to both traditions. An option that gives Anbhai Vani and asks for one author is not a safe question, and if it is set, the Ramsnehi answer is the one this page has always given.

Sambhar again. That town has now appeared in this unit as an ancient mound, as the Chahamana capital Shakambhari, as the site of Akbar's 1562 marriage to Bharmal's daughter, and now as Dadu Dayal's first residence. Four appearances, four centuries apart each time.

The Ramsnehi sampradaya

Headquartered at Shahpura, in Bhilwara. Saint Ramcharan founded the Shahpura branch, and the collection of his teachings is the Anbhai Vani.

The four branches, which is a standing match-the-following.

Learn that table, because it is what gets asked. Then notice what is wrong with it.

Dariyavji was born about 1676 and died in 1758. Ramcharan was born in 1720 and died in 1799. So the founder of the Ren "branch" was born forty-four years before the man usually called the founder of the sampradaya, and died when Ramcharan was thirty-eight. A branch cannot be founded out of a body that did not yet exist.

The resolution is in the word. Ramsnehi — lover of Ram — names a family of related Nirguna Ram-devotional traditions rather than one organisation with four sub-offices. The seats arose separately, in different decades and different districts, and were grouped afterwards under a shared name and a shared theology: rejection of idol worship, rejection of ritual, devotion to a formless Ram.

For Prelims, give the standard pairings. For Mains or an interview, the chronology is the more interesting fact, because it shows a label being applied backwards over traditions that did not begin as one thing — which is how a good deal of Indian sectarian history actually works.

What a state gazetteer does confirm, from the Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Bhilwara, the district the principal seat is in:

• The Ram Snehis have a shrine at Shahpura called the Ram Dwara.
• The Phuldol festival at Shahpura is held by the Akhil Bhartiya Ram Snehi Sampraday every year from Chaitra Badi 1 to 5, drawing people from Bombay, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and even Burma.

A second Government of Rajasthan record, and it settles the Nirguna question from the sect's own seat. The Devasthan Department's entry for the Ram Niwas Dham at Shahpura states that no deity in anthropomorphic form is enshrined, that the worshippers meditate on Shabda Brahma, the revealed word, and that the ultimate reality is the revealed word Rama, which is devoid of attributes. Under the heading of religious aspect it prints four words: "Faith in Nirguna Bhawan". It describes the seat as the head religious centre of the international Ramasnehi Sampradaya, records the Ramdwara built in marble with a twelve-doored hall on 108 pillars and an octagonal samadhi beneath, and dates the building to Vikram Samvat 1855, 1798 A.D., raised by Ramcharan himself. Its Phuldol note matches the Bhilwara gazetteer: the first to the fifth day of Chaitra, immediately after Holi.

So the position is now this. The Bhilwara gazetteer, working from census returns of 1931 and 1961, files the Ram Snehis within the Nimbarka Sampradaya. The Devasthan Department, describing the seat itself, records an aniconic Ramdwara and faith in the formless. Both are Government of Rajasthan documents and they are not answering the same question. One classifies a community; the other describes a shrine. The Nirguna framing this page gives is now backed by a state record and not only by exam convention, and that is a stronger position than the page held before.

One date on the Devasthan page contradicts another on the same page, and it is printed here rather than quietly dropped. The header says the Dham was built in Vikram Samvat 1855 (1798 A.D.) by Ramcharan, while the body says the Ramsnehi cult was "founded by Maha Prabhu Rama Charanji in 1650 A.D." A man cannot found a sect in 1650 and build its principal seat in 1798. The 1798 building date is consistent with Ramcharan's death in 1799; the 1650 is not consistent with anything, and is not carried.

That fair date is the most examinable thing in this section, because it is an official record of a lunar date attached to a named organisation. Chaitra Badi 1 to 5, Shahpura, Phuldol.

And the gazetteer classifies the sect in a way the exam framing does not. Its religion section — built on the Census of 1931 and the Census of 1961 Social and Cultural Tables — places the Ram Snehis within the Nimbarka Sampradaya, a Dvaitadvaita Vaishnava tradition. This site elsewhere groups the Ramsnehi among the Nirguna traditions and Nimbarkacharya among the Saguna, so the two placements pull against each other.

Do not treat that as one of them being wrong. It is the same pattern as the Census language groupings, where Wagdi is a Rajasthani dialect on a linguist's map and a Bhili mother tongue in the Census. An administrative classification derived from census returns and a theological classification are answering different questions. For an exam, give Nirguna; for an interview, knowing that a state record files them under Nimbarka is the better answer.

Sourcing note, stated plainly. The Ram Dwara, the Phuldol dates and the Nimbarka placement are from a Government of Rajasthan gazetteer. The four branch-and-founder pairings and all four sets of dates are not — they come from secondary and community sources, and the gazetteer consulted does not name Dariyavji, Haridas or Ramdas at all. The internal chronological check is ours, which is why the caution accompanies the table rather than the table being reproduced unqualified. The other three are flagged below.

The Bishnoi

The most consequential sect in the syllabus, and the one with a date, a place and a body count.

Guru Jambheshwar — Jambhoji — founded the Bishnoi sect in 1485, at Samrathal Dhora, in Marwar, and laid down 29 principles for his followers.

The founding year is now on a Government of Rajasthan record, and so is the rest of his life. The Devasthan Department's entry for the Jambhoji temple at Samrathal states that "in Samvat 1542 the Vishnoi sect was established by Jhambo ji". Vikram Samvat 1542 is 1485 CE. The same record gives his birth as Samvat 1508 and his living entombment as Samvat 1593, which are 1451 and 1536 in the common era, and places his birth at the village of Pipasar in Nagaur district.

Learn the two places, because they are different and an option will swap them. The samadhi is at Himmatsar, known as Mukam, near Nokha in Bikaner district, where the tomb stands in white marble; Samrathal, the mound where he practised asceticism and gave the twenty-nine teachings, is about 3 km away. Fairs are held at the site on the Amavasya of Ashwin and of Phalgun. The department's summary of the rules is worth quoting because it is a state agency saying it: "20 and 9 rules made by Jambhoji are regarding the preservation of environment, security of animals and all creatures and mercy for every living being."

One figure on that page is arithmetically wrong, and the error is instructive. The page prints "born in Samvat 1508 (1499 A.D.)". Samvat 1508 is 1451, not 1499. The samvat is the datum and the bracket is the slip. When a page gives you both a samvat and a Gregorian year, check the subtraction before you memorise either.

The founder's clan is given two ways by two Government of Rajasthan sources, and both are printed here. The Devasthan Department calls Jambhoji "a Tanwar Rajput of the village Peepasar". The Churu and Nagaur gazetteers both describe the Bishnois as deriving their name "from their creed of twenty nine (bis + nau) tenets which they adopted at the instance of the Panwar Rajput ascetic named Jambha towards the end of the fifteenth century", and both add that the Bishnois "were originally Jats". Tanwar from the temple record, Panwar from the two gazetteers. There is no basis on which one can be silently preferred, so both are given.

And the Churu gazetteer independently confirms the burial practice this chapter carries from Nagaur, adding detail: the Bishnois are vegetarians and teetotallers, they have discarded the scalp-lock, and they bury their dead, sometimes in a sitting posture like the Sanyasis. The same passage records a controversy, drawn from the Punjab Census Report of 1891 and the Bikaner Census Report of 1931, over whether Jambhoji added tenets to accommodate the Muslim rulers at Nagaur, and notes that the Bishnois dispute it. That dispute is recorded, not endorsed.

The name is the number. "Bish" is twenty and "Noi" is nine in the local dialect: Bishnoi means "twenty-nine". That etymology is a gift to a candidate, because it makes the number impossible to forget.

Two of the twenty-nine carry the tradition's reputation:

• Jeev Daya Palani — show compassion to all living beings.
• Runkh Lila Nahi Ghave — a strict prohibition on cutting green trees.

Khejarli, 12 September 1730

A Bishnoi woman named Amrita Devi stood in the way of soldiers sent to fell Khejri trees, embraced a tree and refused to let it be cut, declaring that losing one's life to save a tree was a worthy sacrifice. She inspired others to do the same. By the end, 363 Bishnois had died.

Place this against the peasant-movements chapter, because the comparison is the point. Bijolia begins in 1897; Khejarli is 1730 — one hundred and sixty-seven years earlier, and it was not about revenue at all. It is the earliest mass non-violent resistance in this syllabus, it was conducted by a religious community on a doctrinal ground, and it was directed at the state's agents. A chapter on "religious life" that does not notice this has missed the most politically significant thing in it.

The Jasnathi sect

The lifespan is the first thing to notice: about twenty-four years. Given as 1482 to 1506, Jasnathji founded a sect, laid down thirty-six rules and took samadhi before the age at which most people are established in anything. The dates are widely and consistently given; they are also striking enough to be worth checking against any source that offers a different pair.

Thirty-six is the number to hold, and it pairs with a twenty-nine. The Jasnathi rules number 36; the Bishnoi rules number 29, from bish and noi. Two Nirguna sects of western Rajasthan, two rule-counts, and an option will swap them. The Bishnoi number is built into the name and the Jasnathi number is not, which is the memory hook.

And this is the sect behind the fire dance. The folk-dance chapter records, from the Government of Rajasthan's own description, that the fire dance is performed by the Jasnathis of Bikaner and Churu, by men, only on Janmashtami and Holi, with fire tricks to drum beats. The performers are reported to chant Fateh-Fateh. A question about a fire dance is, underneath, a question about a devotional order — and the Katariyasar of this table is the same Katariyasar the dance belongs to.

One practice a state gazetteer does record, and it is worth more than it looks. The Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Nagaur states that while Hindus and Jains cremate their dead as a rule, ascetics such as Gosains and Sanyasis, and some sects — naming the Jasnathis, the Bishnois and the worshippers of Jambhaji — bury theirs.

That pairs the two sects a second time, and the pairing is now doubled. Jasnathi and Bishnoi already share a swap-trap on rule-counts — 36 against 29. They also share burial against cremation, and both are Nirguna traditions of western Rajasthan. Two sects, two rule-counts, one shared practice — and a question can attack any of the three.

Note also that the gazetteer names Jambhaji's worshippers separately from the Bishnois in the same breath, which is a reminder that the sect and the devotional following of its founder are not always recorded as the same thing.

Sourcing note, stated plainly. The burial practice is from a Government of Rajasthan gazetteer, and the fire-dance attribution from a Government of Rajasthan page. Jasnathji's dates, the thirty-six rules, the Jyani-gotra descent and the black thread are not — they come from secondary and community sources and are given as reported. The gazetteers consulted do not carry them.

Saint Laldas, and the shrine two communities prayed at

The Alwar gazetteer carries Laldas as one of the two saints who shaped devotional literature in that district, and it gives him dates.

Laldas was born in Samvat 1597 at Dholidub, about four miles from Alwar, and died at the age of 108 in Samvat 1705, 1648 A.D., at Nagla, a village in Bharatpur. Samvat 1597 is 1540 CE, and the arithmetic of the gazetteer's own two dates works out at exactly 108 years. His son Pahara and daughter Sarupa are named. His sayings, "in simple and familiar verse", were preserved by his disciples in the form of a gutka, and his composition is described as an admixture of Urdu and Brijbhasha, commonly known as bani.

Three sentences from the gazetteer carry the whole significance of the man. "He appears to have followed the Kabirpanthi marg." "He condemns begging vehemently." "His followers are called Lal Dasi Sadhs. Many consider him a Pir."

And the gazetteer records, from police and state files, what that shared reverence looked like in practice. On 24 September 1946, about fifteen Laldasi Hindus went to Dholidhup in Alwar nizamat to perform a shradh at the Laldasi shrine; Meos also went there to offer their prayers; the first namaz passed off peacefully and some Meos were entertained at the feast given by the Hindu Laldasis; and the day ended in an attack in which a Laldasi and five constables were injured.

Do not sentimentalise that. It is the clearest documented instance in this chapter of a shrine that two communities used and neither owned, recorded by a government that was watching it fail. A page arguing that Rajasthan's religion crosses community lines has an obligation to carry the day it did not.

What is not asserted here. The account in preparation material that Laldas was a Meo Muslim woodcutter with a Chishti guru is not what the Alwar gazetteer says; the gazetteer calls his followers Hindu Laldasis and places him on the Kabirpanthi path, while recording Meo devotion at his shrine. Both descriptions are on the table and neither is written here as settled.

Saint Charandas, and the two women who carried his teaching

The same Alwar gazetteer gives Charandas twice, once among the saint-poets and once in the literature section, which is why the details can be cross-checked.

Charandas was born in Samvat 1760, 1703 A.D., at the village of Dehra about six miles from Alwar. His actual name was Ranjeet. He was a disciple of Guru Shukdev. He migrated to Delhi in later life and does not appear to have returned or to have preached in his own neighbourhood. He died in Samvat 1839, 1782 A.D. His available works number twenty, preserved by his followers in the Charan Das gutka, in which Sanskrit words appear frequently. The gazetteer summarises his teaching in two clauses: he condemns family life, and he assigns a high place to the guru, because it is the guru who shows the way to Govind.

Now the line RPSC keeps coming back to. "Among his chief disciples were the two ladies, Sahajo Bai and Daya Bai. The former composed the work known as Sahaj Prakash and the latter, Daya Bodh."

That is a named guru with two named women disciples and their two named books, on a state gazetteer's authority. It is the most securely sourced fact about women's devotional authorship anywhere in this chapter.

The gazetteer classifies both Laldas and Charandas as Kabirpanthis, which sits against the practice in preparation material of filing the Charandasi order on the Saguna side. The gazetteer's placement is the one carried here.

Two further names from the same passage, because they belong to this chapter's argument. Karama Bai of Garhi Mamor, a woman poet and a contemporary of Jahangir; and Rao Ali Bux of Mandawar, a Muslim jagirdar who wrote cantos in praise of Krishna and is known locally as the Raskhan of Alwar.

Saint Mavji of Sabla, and what Baneshwar actually is

The Dungarpur gazetteer devotes a headed section to Mavji, which makes him the best-documented saint of the Vagad region on this page.

Mavji was a Brahmin born in the village of Sabla, and is "considered to be a pre-incarnation of Kalki, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu yet to take place". The gazetteer gives his birth as Magh Shukla Panchami, Samvat 1771, 1714 A.D., and then does something a coaching note never does: it adds that "others believe that it was the date on which, at the age of 12, he declared that he was an incarnation of Kalki". The uncertainty is the source's own, and it is reproduced rather than resolved.

His books. There are five, locally called Choparas, written in Devanagari script in a language mixing Hindi, Gujarati and Wagdi, some of them beautifully illustrated. One is at Poonjpur and one at Sabla; the others are outside the district, including one at Sejpur in Salumber tahsil of Udaipur. On Deepavali the villagers gather at Poonjpur to hear recitations from the Chopra.

His image and his seat. Mavji travelled on horseback, as Kalki is supposed to do, and his effigy on a horse is the main object of worship; at Poonjpur there is an idol of Nishkalank riding a horse. He built a temple at Sabla, called the Hari Mandir, which is the permanent residence of the Goswami, his successor. The gazetteer records that he had four wives, two Brahmin girls, a Rajput girl and a Patel widow, a fact that says more about the movement's social reach than any slogan about it would.

The story the gazetteer tells about his end is worth carrying. Maharawal Shiv Singh summoned him and tested him, finally asking him to walk on the waters of Gaipsagar. Mavji replied that not only he but all the people would walk on that pond, and left for Sheshpur, or Sahaspur, in Mewar, where he settled. The pond is said to have dried that year.

And now the correction that matters, because it goes against the standard account. Preparation material states that Mavji established Beneshwar Dham. The Dungarpur gazetteer says otherwise. It describes Baneshwar as the temple "containing the most revered Shiva Linga of the area", standing on a delta formed at the confluence of the Som and Mahi rivers, about 1.5 km from Nawa Tapra village and 7 km from Sabla, and states that the temple is believed to have been built during the times of Maharawal Askaran. The fair runs from Magh Shukla Ekadashi to Magh Shukla Purnima.

Two things follow. Baneshwar is a Shaiva site with its own history, and Mavji's connection to the area runs through Sabla, 7 km away, not through founding the Shiva shrine. And the confluence, in the gazetteer's description, is of two rivers, the Som and the Mahi; the three-river version that adds the Jakham is not what the state record says. Give the gazetteer's version.

Terapanth, and which Terapanth

One fact about the Jain Terapanth can be given with a date and a central-government source, and it is the one that matters most for a general-studies paper. The University Grants Commission's consolidated list of universities records Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Tulsi Gram, Ladnun 341306, Nagaur, Rajasthan, as a Deemed University with effect from 20.03.1991. A Jain reform order founded in Rajasthan now runs a deemed-to-be university in Nagaur district, and the address itself, Tulsi Gram, carries the name of the acharya it is built around.

The trap is in the word. There are two Terapanths. The Svetambar Terapanth of Bhikhanji is the order behind Ladnun. But the Sikar gazetteer's schedule of registered temple trusts includes "Shri Digambar Jain Terapanthi, Naya Mandir, Sikar", the Digambar Terapanth, a separate tradition with a separate history. An option that says "Terapanth" without qualifying it is either careless or testing you. Ask which one.

The founding particulars of the Svetambar order, its 1760 date, the thirteen monks the name is usually derived from, and the Anuvrat movement, are not carried here; they are flagged below.

4. The Sufi tradition: Ajmer and Nagaur

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer in 1192 and died there in 1236. He is known as Gharib Nawaz, the benefactor of the poor, and he established the Chishtiyya order in India.

The date of his arrival is worth pausing on. 1192 is the year of the Second Battle of Tarain, when Muhammad of Ghor defeated Prithviraja III and Chahamana power at Ajmer ended. The saint and the conquest arrive in the same year, in the same city — a coincidence of dates that says a good deal about how religious and political history in this region run together.

The Dargah at Ajmer is his tomb, and it is among the most revered Sufi shrines in India. His teaching is characterised by an emphasis on universal compassion, communal harmony and service to all, including people of other faiths, and it is credited with fostering syncretic religious traditions in medieval India.

The Urs is the annual observance of his death anniversary. Its logic is worth stating precisely, because it is often described wrongly: an urs marks a union with the Divine rather than a mourning, which is why it is celebratory. It involves qawwali, devotional singing, the distribution of langar, and very large pilgrimages.

On who built the dargah, this page previously declined to answer. It can now say something better than nothing.

The Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Ajmer states that "Ajmer was not a well known centre of Muslim pilgrimage even up to the middle of the 15th century", and then, flatly: "no masonry tomb was built over the remains of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chisti up to 1464 A.D." It adds that "for two hundred and fifty years the saint remained almost forgotten", his reputation surviving only in the songs of minstrels.

That single sentence disposes of two competing attributions at once. One source consulted for the earlier version of this page credited the shrine to Humayun, who reigned in the sixteenth century; preparation material commonly credits Iltutmish, who died in 1236. On the state gazetteer's evidence there was no masonry tomb there at all until 1464, so neither attribution can be right as stated, and the shrine is the work of many patrons over centuries. The refusal this page made earlier is now a finding rather than an omission.

How Ajmer became Ajmer, on the same authority. While hunting near Midhakur, eight miles west of Agra, Akbar heard songs in praise of the Khwaja, and set out for Ajmer in January 1562. He returned via Sambhar, where he received the hand of the Amber princess, and was back in Agra on Friday 13 February 1562. His repeated pilgrimages, the gazetteer says, "changed the very status of this town". The dargah's fame and the Mughal-Rajput marriage belong to the same journey, which is the sharpest possible version of this chapter's argument that religious and political history here run together. It is also the same Sambhar that appears in this chapter as an ancient mound, a Chahamana capital and Dadu Dayal's first residence.

One date to hold loosely. The Ajmer gazetteer gives the saint's death as 1235; this page has carried 1236, which is the more commonly printed conversion of the same Hijri year. Both are in circulation and neither is being called wrong.

A second Rajasthan dargah, and a different tradition. The Dungarpur gazetteer records that Galiyakot, in Sagwara tahsil, is a well known place to the Dawoodi Bohras throughout the country, that visitors come from outside India as well, and that thousands throng there every year from the 25th day of Moharram to pay homage to Syedi Fakhruddin, whose mortal remains were entombed there. The Bohra urs at Galiakot is the second named Muslim pilgrimage of this syllabus after Ajmer, and it belongs to a Shia Ismaili tradition rather than to any of the Sufi silsilas.

Set Ajmer against the rest of this chapter. The Bishnoi, the Dadu Panth and the Ramsnehi are reform traditions of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries; the Panch Peer are deified local figures; and the Chishti shrine is a thirteenth-century Sufi centre that draws pilgrims of every community. All of them coexist in the same state, and several in the same districts — which is the additive argument this chapter opens with, demonstrated rather than asserted.

And note where it is. Ajmer has appeared in this unit as the Chahamana capital, as the Rajputana Agency's first seat, as the home of Mayo College, as the site of the Walter Sabha's opening sammelan, and as the base of the Rajasthan Seva Sangh. The dargah is the oldest layer of that.

Nagaur, and the two men called Hamiduddin Nagauri

This is the single most confusable entry in Rajasthan's Sufi history, and the confusion is the examinable content. There are two thirteenth-century figures of that name from Nagaur. They belonged to different orders, they are buried in different cities, and sources that merge them produce a biography that cannot be true of anyone.

How to keep them apart in one move: the burial place decides it. The one buried in Nagaur is the Chishti; the one buried in Delhi is the Suhrawardi — which is the reverse of what the shared surname suggests, and is exactly why the pair is worth setting as a question.

Sufi Hamiduddin Nagauri, the Chishti, is the one who matters most for Rajasthan. His title Sultan-ut-Tarikin was earned by a complete disregard for worldly possessions. He lived as a self-sufficient farmer, cultivating land at the village of Suwal, near Nagaur, while his wife spun cotton. He was a vegetarian and asked his disciples to be vegetarian too, and his khanqah served only vegetarian food and received people of every faith. His shrine at Nagaur is known as the Tarkeen Dargah, the name preserving the title.

Do not let the biography pass as a picturesque detail. A Chishti khalifa who farms his own land, refuses meat, and feeds everyone who comes is a working argument about what devotion consists of, and it is one an examiner can ask you to compare with the Ajmer establishment forty kilometres to the south. Ajmer's dargah drew emperors; Suwal's saint drew a plough. Both are Chishti.

What is not settled, and is flagged rather than smoothed over. His dates conflict across sources — his death is given as 1274 in some and 1252 in others, and one aggregated account merges him with the Qazi and produces a birth year of 1070 in Bukhara, which cannot be right for a disciple of a saint who died in 1236. That impossible birth date is the clearest signal that the two men have been merged, and it is the reason this page sets them side by side rather than writing one life.

5. Mirabai

Mirabai (c. 1498 - 1547) is the best-known Bhakti figure of Rajasthan, and she belongs squarely inside the political history of the earlier chapters.

• Born about 1498, at Kudki, in the kingdom of Marwar; her family's state was Merta, held by Rathores who were devotees of Vishnu.
• Married in 1516 to Bhoj Raj, crown prince of Mewar — whose father was Rana Sanga. She went to live at Chittor.
• Bhoj Raj was wounded in war in 1518 and died in 1521.
• She is said to have been a disciple of Guru Ravidas.
• She died at Dwarka in 1547.

What a state gazetteer adds, and where it disagrees with the standard account.

The Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Nagaur, describing the Charbhuja temple at Merta, states that the temple "is said to have been constructed in 1458 A.D. (V.S. 1515) by Rao Duda, the founder of the town, who was a great devotee of lord Charbhuja", and continues: "It is said that the well-known devotee Mira, born at village Kurki in Merta tahsil, first took inspiration here in this temple to dedicate her life to the bhakti of Lord Krishna." A fair is held at the temple annually on Shrawan Sudi 11 for seven days, and the volume's fairs table records a "Mira Bai or Char Bhujaji ka mela" at Merta in Shrawan drawing about ten thousand people. Its introduction names her as the most prominent of the district's saints and poets.

Three things follow, and one of them is a disagreement.

• Rao Duda founded Merta and built its Charbhuja temple in 1458. That is the concrete content of this page's existing statement that Merta was her family's state, and it dates it.
• The temple, not a legend, is where the tradition locates the beginning of her devotion. The gazetteer marks it as tradition, and so does this page.
• On the district, the sources part. The gazetteer places Kurki in Merta tahsil, then in Nagaur district. Preparation material places Kudki in Pali. Two villages of that name exist and this page does not claim to have resolved which is hers. What is safe is what this page already says: she was born at Kudki, in Marwar, and her family's seat was Merta.

The genealogy is the thing to carry, because it joins two chapters. Mirabai was Rana Sanga's daughter-in-law. Sanga fought Khanwa in 1527 and died at Kalpi in 1528, from the dynasties chapter; Mirabai was widowed six years before Khanwa and outlived him by nineteen years. The most famous devotional poet of the region was inside the ruling house of Mewar at its most consequential moment, and that is a far better frame than treating her as a figure of legend.

Her compositions are padas, devotional songs to Krishna, and they belong to the Saguna side of the division set out above — the worship of the divine with form.

A note on what is not asserted here. Mirabai's life is heavily overlaid with hagiography, and several widely-repeated episodes rest on tradition rather than record. Her discipleship under Ravidas is given as it is reported — she is said to have been his disciple — and the miraculous elements of her death are not treated as historical.

6. Statement-based questions: the fault lines

Type A — The Panch Peer

• Pabuji, Mehaji, Harbhuji, Ramdevji, Gogaji. Tejaji is not among them, and that is the question.
• Clans: Pabuji Rathore, Mehaji and Harbhuji Sankhla, Ramdevji Tanwar, Gogaji Chauhan.

Type B — Deity, wrong attribute

Type C — Sect, wrong founder or seat

Type D — Ajmer, Nagaur and Mirabai

Type E — Sect, wrong number or seat

Type F — Category error

• Nirguna sects reject idol worship; the Dadu Panth is explicitly so. A statement that the Dadu Panth centres on temple ritual is false.
• Bishnoi means twenty-nine, from the number of rules — not from a founder's name or a place.
• Khejarli is 1730, and the toll is 363.

• Kshetrapal is a category, not a name. It means the guardian of a tract, and Bhairav is the guardian most widely worshipped under it. A question that treats Kshetrapal as one deity's proper name has misread the term.
• Bhomiya ji and the bhomia of the revenue chapter are the same word. Bhom is land; a bhomia held land on that tenure; the deity guards it.
• Burial rather than cremation is not only a Bishnoi practice. The Nagaur gazetteer names Jasnathis, Bishnois and Jambhaji's worshippers; the Devasthan record at Ramdevra describes burial there "like the Nath cult"; and the Bhani Nath record at Churu describes Naths being buried with tombs raised over them.
• There are two Shakambharis: the Chahamana goddess at Sambhar, and Sakrai in Sikar, which the Sikar gazetteer records as dedicated to Sakradevi or Shakambhari.

7. Writing this in Mains

Lead with the additive argument, and note that it is the same one twice. Yaksha worship, Bhagavata Vaishnavism and Mauryan Buddhism coexisted at Noh, Ghosundi and Bairath; folk deities, Nirguna sects and Saguna Vaishnavism coexist now. Rajasthan's religious history is layered, not sequential, and using the same structure for the ancient and the modern shows method rather than memory.

Use the deification pattern. Pabuji, Ramdevji, Karni Mata and Tejaji are historical or quasi-historical people of named clans and places who became objects of worship. Popular religion here sacralises the local and the recent, and it does so across community boundaries — which is a direct answer to any account that treats the region's religion as sealed by caste or creed.

Use Khejarli as the chapter's political core. 1730, 363 dead, a doctrinal prohibition on felling green trees, and a community standing against the state's woodcutters. It precedes Bijolia by 167 years, it is non-violent, and its ground is religious rather than economic. The environmental-ethics reading is real, and so is the reading of it as the earliest mass civil resistance in the syllabus.

Use the Nirguna–Saguna division to explain practice rather than to label it. Whether a tradition worships the formless or the embodied predicts what you will find at its centre: a pichwai behind Shrinathji at Nathdwara, and no image at all in the Dadu Panth.

8. Nowadays

Covering 1 January to 27 August 2026. This section is updated every month until Prelims and Mains. Everything in it is dated, because a current-affairs fact without a date is worse than no fact at all.

This is the one chapter in the unit where current affairs genuinely move, because the sects, shrines and fairs described above are living institutions with budgets, police deployments and litigation attached to them.

The state budget put money against this chapter's subject matter (11 February 2026). In the Budget 2026-27 speech, Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Diya Kumari announced a Rs 30 crore Heritage Walk-Way programme in six pilgrimage towns, Pushkar, Khatushyamji, Nathdwara, Keshoraipatan, Deeg and Chittorgarh, and, at paragraph 124, repair of the Devasthan Department's dharamshalas together with a proposed Build-Operate-Transfer policy for dharamshalas on Devasthan land, and Rs 13 crore for temple festival programmes. Source: Budget Speech 2026-27.

The fairs, with their 2026 dates. These are the ones examiners reach for, and the dates move with the tithi rather than the calendar.

Beneshwar Dham, 16 March 2026. Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma announced development of the dham at a cost of Rs 130 crore, covering ghats, roads and pilgrim facilities. Beneshwar is the tribal Kumbh of southern Rajasthan and its development is a recurring current-affairs item.

Two items that are litigation, not religion, and should be handled as such. On 19 January 2026 the Ajmer civil court took on record a plea by the national president of the Maharana Pratap Sena in the pending civil suit claiming that a Shiva temple stood at the site of the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. The suit is pending and nothing has been decided. Do not write it as a finding. Separately, on 26 August 2026 Kuchera police in Nagaur registered a case, on a court order, against eleven office-bearers of the Butati Dham temple committee over alleged irregularities of about Rs 22.74 crore. An FIR is an allegation.

Devasthan Department, and a suspension. The department opened applications on 27 May 2026 for a Senior Citizen Tirth Yatra Yojana covering 56,000 pilgrims. On 27 August 2026 it suspended the Pashupatinath (Kathmandu) leg until 31 August because of flooding in Nepal, Devasthan Minister Joraram Kumawat citing the safety of elderly travellers.

What has not changed, and it is the part that gets examined. No founder, date, seat or doctrine above was revised. The Bishnoi sect remains founded in 1485 at Samrathal Dhora with 29 rules. Dadu Dayal remains 1544 to 1603, with Naraina as the seat. Mirabai's dates remain c. 1498 to 1547. And the Urs of Moinuddin Chishti moves with the Islamic calendar, so learn the rule rather than a Gregorian date.

Important for RAS

Prelims Focus

• Jasnathi sect — founder Jasnathji, 1482-1506; Katariyasar, Bikaner, both birthplace and samadhi; 36 rules (chhattis niyam); followers called Siddhs, in saffron with a black thread at the neck; Nirguna. The fire dance is theirs — Jasnathis of Bikaner and Churu, men, on Janmashtami and Holi

• The rule-count pair — Jasnathi 36, Bishnoi 29. The Bishnoi number is in the name (bish + noi); the Jasnathi number is not

• Phuldol at Shahpura — held by the Akhil Bhartiya Ram Snehi Sampraday, Chaitra Badi 1 to 5; the shrine at Shahpura is the Ram Dwara (Bhilwara gazetteer)

• Burial, not cremation — the Jasnathis, the Bishnois and the worshippers of Jambhaji bury their dead (Nagaur gazetteer). Jasnathi and Bishnoi now pair twice: rule-counts 36 and 29, and burial

• Ramsnehi, four branches — Shahpura (Bhilwara), Ramcharan · Ren (Nagaur), Dariyavji · Sinthal (Bikaner), Haridas · Khedapa (Jodhpur), Ramdas. Give these pairings in Prelims. But note that Dariyavji (c. 1676-1758) predates Ramcharan (1720-1799), so Ramsnehi names a family of related traditions grouped under one name, not one body with four sub-offices

• Panch Peer — Pabuji (Rathore), Mehaji (Sankhla), Harbhuji (Sankhla), Ramdevji (Tanwar), Gogaji (Chauhan). Tejaji is NOT among them

• Pabuji — Kolu village near Phalodi, Jodhpur district, 1239 CE; Rathore; brought camels to Marwar; Pabuji ki Phad

• Gogaji — Jahar Veer; snake god and cattle protector; shrines under Khejri trees

• Ramdevji — 14th century, Rajput ruler and social reformer

• Karni Mata — Deshnoke, Bikaner; a warrior sage placed 14th-16th centuries; also Bhagwati, Mehaai, Jagdamba, Kiniyani

• Jeen Mata — folk song described as the longest in Rajasthan's folk literature, sung with sarangi and damru; deity of honeybees

• Bishnoi — founded 1485 by Guru Jambheshwar (Jambhoji) at Samrathal Dhora, Marwar; 29 rules, whence the name (bish 20 + noi 9); key principles Jeev Daya Palani and Runkh Lila Nahi Ghave

• Khejarli — 12 September 1730; Amrita Devi; 363 Bishnois died protecting Khejri trees

• Dadu Panth — Dadu Dayal, 1544-1603; first at Sambhar, then Naraina near Jaipur as the main seat; no idol worship or temple ritual

• Ramsnehi — headquarters Shahpura, Bhilwara; Ramcharan founded the Shahpura branch; teachings collected as Anbhai Vani

• Nirguna figures — Jambhoji, Jasnathji, Dadu Dayal, with Kabir, Raidas, Sant Pipa in the wider tradition. Saguna — Nimbarkacharya, Vallabhacharya

• Hamiduddin Nagauri, two men — Sufi/Shaikh Hamiduddin Nagauri: Chishti, khalifa of Moinuddin Chishti, titled Sultan-ut-Tarikin (king of the renouncers), a farmer at Suwal near Nagaur, vegetarian and requiring it of his disciples, khanqah open to all faiths, buried at Nagaur in the Tarkeen Dargah · Qazi Hamiduddin Nagauri: Suhrawardi, companion of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki whom he met in Baghdad, buried at Mehrauli, Delhi. The burial place is the discriminator: Nagaur is the Chishti, Delhi the Suhrawardi

• Sufi tradition — Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer in 1192 and died there in 1236; known as Gharib Nawaz; established the Chishtiyya order in India; his teaching emphasised universal compassion, communal harmony and service to all. The Urs marks a union with the Divine, not a mourning, with qawwali and langar

• Mirabai (c. 1498-1547) — born at Kudki, Marwar; family state Merta; married Bhoj Raj, crown prince of Mewar and son of Rana Sanga, in 1516; lived at Chittor; Bhoj Raj wounded 1518, died 1521; said to have been a disciple of Guru Ravidas; died at Dwarka, 1547; her compositions are padas to Krishna, on the Saguna side

• Kshetrapal, Bhairav, Bhomiya ji — the guardian-deity category under the folk deities. A Kshetrapal fair at Khadagada, Sagwara, Chaitra Shukla 15; Bherunji ka mela, Thanwala, Bhadrapada Sudi 14. Bhom is a land tenure in the same districts, which is where Bhomiya ji comes from

• Nath sampradaya — Gorakhnath, disciple of Matsyendranath, foremost of the nine Siddhas; dhuna at Gorakh Teela, Gorkhana, Nohar (Hanumangarh), where Gogaji became his disciple, 3 km from the Gogaji temple; principal gaddi at Fatehpur; Bhartrihari Dham, 30 km from Alwar, the king of Ujjain who became a Nath under Gorakhnath, with a dhuni and an Akshaydeep. Naths are buried and a tomb raised. Do not write "Nath Muni"

• Harshnath, Sikar — inscription now in the Sikar Museum: construction begun under Simharaja in Samvat 1018, completed under Vigraharaja in Samvat 1030 = 973 CE; another inscription there speaks of 84 temples

• Gogaji — Dadrewa (Churu) birthplace, fair Bhadon Sudi 9; Gogamedi (Nohar, Hanumangarh) shrine, renovated by Maharaja Ganga Singh, 1911, fair Shravan Purnima to Bhadrapada Purnima; Chauhan; "became a Nath"; Muslim priests of the Chayal caste

• Ramdevji — Runicha / Ramdevra, Jaisalmer; Tanwar; present cenotaph by Maharaja Ganga Singh; buried, not cremated, "like the Nath cult"; entry without bar of caste, creed or religion; called Ram Shah Pir by Muslims; Churu fairs Bhadon Sudi 2 to 11. His century is not settled; do not write "14th century"

• Tejaji — a Jat of Kharnal, Nagaur, 16 km west of Mundwa; died of snakebite after fighting the cattle-lifting Mers; cord on the right foot; Parbatsar cattle fair, Bhadrapada Badi 11, fifteen days; the Parbatsar fair was diverted from Sursura in Kishangarh State under Maharaja Bijai Singh; temple built by Maharaja Abhai Singh of Jodhpur, who ruled 1724 to 1750

• Jambhoji — born Pipasar, Nagaur, Samvat 1508 (1451); sect established Samvat 1542 (1485); living samadhi Samvat 1593 (1536) at Mukam (Himmatsar), near Nokha, Bikaner; Samrathal is the mound 3 km away; fairs on Ashwin and Phalgun Amavasya. Clan given as Tanwar by Devasthan and Panwar by the Churu and Nagaur gazetteers

• Dadu Panth — born Ahmedabad 1544; guru Vriddhanand at eleven; Brahma → Parabrahma → Dadu Panth, begun at Sambhar; met Akbar at Amer, about 1586; 152 disciples, 52 "pillars"; died Naraina 1603; relics: hair, tumba, chola, khadau; Dadu Dwara built 1884; sadhus are Nihang and householder

• Ramsnehi, Shahpura — Ram Niwas Dham, built Samvat 1855 (1798) by Ramcharan; no image enshrined, worship of Shabda Brahma, "faith in Nirguna Bhawan"; Ramdwara with a twelve-doored hall on 108 pillars; Phuldol, first to fifth of Chaitra, after Holi

• Laldas — Samvat 1597 (1540), Dholidub near Alwar; died aged 108 in Samvat 1705 (1648) at Nagla, Bharatpur; Kabirpanthi; condemns begging; followers Lal Dasi Sadhs; "many consider him a Pir"

• Charandas — Samvat 1760 (1703), Dehra near Alwar; real name Ranjeet; guru Shukdev; moved to Delhi; died Samvat 1839 (1782); 20 works, the Charan Das gutka; disciples Sahajo Bai (Sahaj Prakash) and Daya Bai (Daya Bodh); classed Kabirpanthi by the Alwar gazetteer

• Mavji — Brahmin of Sabla, Dungarpur; Magh Shukla Panchami, Samvat 1771 (1714); pre-incarnation of Kalki; five Choparas in Devanagari, language mixing Hindi, Gujarati and Wagdi; Hari Mandir at Sabla; Nishkalank on horseback at Poonjpur; died at Sheshpur (Sahaspur). Baneshwar is a separate Shiva temple at the Som and Mahi confluence, fair Magh Shukla 11 to 15

• Saguna seats — Salemabad (Ajmer), Nimbarka, Samvat 1520 (1463), deity Sarveshwar Prabhu, Jayanti on Kartika Purnima · Raiwasa (Danta Ramgarh, Sikar), Ramanandi, Samvat 1570 (1513), Agradeva, sakhi bhava · Nathdwara (Rajsamand), Pushtimarg of Vallabhacharya, temple 1728, image brought from Jatipura, Govardhan

• Pipa and Dhanna — both have compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib; Ang 695, Raag Dhanasari, carries a shabad of Peepaa and one of Dhanna, after Trilochan and Sain

• Goddess seats with dates — Sachiya Mata, Osian, Samvat 1234 (1177), Parmar clan goddess and Oswal clan goddess · Shila Devi, Amer, 1580, Sawai Man Singh I, image from eastern Bengal · Kaila Devi, Karauli, about 1600, Bhompal · Sakrai, Sikar, claimed Samvat 749, reign of Durlabhraja, dedicated to Sakradevi or Shakambhari · Kevaya Mata, Kinsariya, fair in Chaitra · Goth Manglod, the original seat of the Dahima or Dadhicha Brahmans

• Karni Mata — Deshnok, 35 km from Bikaner; Shakta; built by Rao Jaitasi after his victory over Kamran; the Devasthan record gives Samvat 1594 (1537) and, contradicting itself, 1573; idol called Dewali; priests are the Depawats of the Charan community, serving month by month; large fair in Ashwin Navratra

• Jeen Mata — Danta Ramgarh, Sikar, 10 km south of Rewasa; also called Jayanti Devi; an inscription inside the temple dates it to the 10th century; a Bhramari Devi temple stands at the rear, which is the honeybee connection; fairs in Chaitra and Asoj, at Sharad Purnima, and the Phalgun Harsh-Bhairav fair; Harsh is her brother and Harshnath his hill

• Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Tulsi Gram, Ladnun (Nagaur) — Deemed University from 20 March 1991 (UGC). Two Terapanths exist, Svetambar and Digambar

Interview and Mains Angles

• Khejarli was 1730, non-violent, doctrinally grounded and cost 363 lives. Why is it remembered as environmental history rather than as the earliest mass civil resistance in Rajasthan?
• Rajasthan's folk deities are historical people of named clans who became gods. What does a religion that deifies the local and the recent do to the boundary between history and worship?
• The Bishnoi prohibition on felling green trees is a religious rule that functions as an ecological one. Is it useful to separate the two, or does the separation belong only to us?
• The same shrines draw worshippers the census would have counted as separate communities. What does that say about the categories the census created?
• Ajmer's dargah drew emperors; the Chishti saint at Suwal drew a plough, ate no meat and fed everyone who came. Can one order hold both, and what does it tell us that it did?
• Moinuddin Chishti settled at Ajmer in 1192, the year Chahamana power there ended at Tarain. Is it useful to read the arrival of a devotional tradition and the arrival of a conquest as one event?
• Mirabai was Rana Sanga's daughter-in-law, widowed six years before Khanwa. What is lost when a poet embedded in a ruling house at its most consequential moment is remembered mainly through legend?
• The Parbatsar Tejaji fair was, on the Nagaur gazetteer's own account, moved there from Sursura by an official who wanted the revenue. What does it do to the study of popular religion when a shrine's importance is traceable to a fiscal decision?
• The priests at Gogamedi are Muslims of the Chayal caste; the Meos prayed at Laldas's shrine in Alwar in 1946 and the day ended in violence. What is the honest way to write about shared shrines when the state's own records contain both facts?
• No masonry tomb stood over Moinuddin Chishti's grave until 1464, and Akbar's first pilgrimage was in 1562. What made a forgotten grave into the most visited shrine in India, and what does that say about how sacred geography is produced?
• Ramdevra buries its dead "like the Nath cult", and so do the Bishnois and the Jasnathis. What holds these traditions together that a Nirguna and Saguna table cannot show?

Practice

• Practice: Religious Life — 58 questions built from this chapter: 51 MCQs, 4 assertion-reason and 3 match-the-following, plus flashcards and one-liners.

More in This Series

• Society and Culture of Ancient Rajasthan — Yaksha worship, Ghosundi and Bairath, where the additive argument is first made
• Peasant and Tribal Movements — Bijolia from 1897, against which Khejarli of 1730 should be read
• Caution for Readers — the claims that are genuinely unsettled

Aggregator Watch

Unresolved claims from this box are collected, with what was checked, on the Caution for Readers page.

Sources & Verification

Checked as of 19 August 2026.

Facts verified for this chapter include: the composition of the Panch Peer as Pabuji (Rathore), Mehaji (Sankhla), Harbhuji (Sankhla), Ramdevji (Tanwar) and Gogaji (Chauhan), and the explicit exclusion of Tejaji; Pabuji's birth at Kolu village near Phalodi in Jodhpur district in 1239 CE, his Rathore descent and his association with bringing camels to Marwar; Gogaji's identity as Jahar Veer, a snake god and cattle protector whose shrines are found under Khejri trees; Ramdevji as a fourteenth-century Rajput ruler remembered as a social reformer; Karni Mata's temple at Deshnoke in Bikaner district, her description as a warrior sage living between the 14th and 16th centuries in western Rajasthan, and her alternative names; Jeen Mata's folk song as the longest in Rajasthan's folk literature, sung with sarangi and damru, and her association with honeybees; the founding of the Bishnoi sect in 1485 by Guru Jambheshwar at Samrathal Dhora in Marwar, the 29 principles, the derivation of the name from bish (twenty) and noi (nine), and the two principles Jeev Daya Palani and Runkh Lila Nahi Ghave; the Khejarli events of 12 September 1730, Amrita Devi's stand, and the death of 363 Bishnois; Dadu Dayal's dates of 1544 to 1603, his settlement first at Sambhar and then at Naraina near Jaipur as the main seat of the Dadu Panth, and the Panth's rejection of idol worship and temple ritual; the Ramsnehi headquarters at Shahpura, Bhilwara, Ramcharan as founder of the Shahpura branch and the Anbhai Vani as the collection of his teachings; and the grouping of Jambhoji, Jasnathji and Dadu Dayal with Kabir, Raidas and Sant Pipa among Nirguna saints, against Nimbarkacharya and Vallabhacharya as Saguna.

Added on 20 August 2026, closing the two gaps this chapter previously declared. Verified for the Sufi section: Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti's settlement at Ajmer in 1192 and death there in 1236; his title Gharib Nawaz, the benefactor of the poor; his establishment of the Chishtiyya order; the characterisation of his teaching as emphasising universal compassion, communal harmony and service to all including people of other faiths, and its credited role in fostering syncretic traditions; the Dargah as his tomb and among the most revered Sufi shrines in India; and the Urs as the annual death-anniversary observance marking a union with the Divine rather than a mourning, involving qawwali, devotional singing, the distribution of langar and large pilgrimages. Verified for Mirabai: her birth about 1498 at Kudki in the kingdom of Marwar, with Merta as her family's state held by Rathores devoted to Vishnu; her marriage in 1516 to Bhoj Raj, crown prince of Mewar, whose father was Rana Sanga, and her removal to Chittor; Bhoj Raj's wounding in 1518 and death in 1521; the report that she was a disciple of Guru Ravidas; and her death at Dwarka in 1547.

One attribution was declined. A source consulted states that the Ajmer Sharif Dargah was built by Humayun. The shrine was developed over centuries by several patrons, the attribution was not corroborated, and it is not asserted here — the tomb, the saint and the dates are carried without it.

Added on 20 August 2026, closing the Sufi-silsila gap this chapter declared. Verified for Nagaur: the existence of two distinct thirteenth-century figures named Hamiduddin Nagauri; Sufi (or Shaikh) Hamiduddin Nagauri as a Chishti, the khalifa of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, titled Sultan-ut-Tarikin — king of the renouncers — for his disregard of worldly possession, living as a self-sufficient farmer at the village of Suwal near Nagaur while his wife spun cotton, vegetarian and requiring vegetarianism of his disciples, keeping a khanqah that served only vegetarian food and received people of every faith, and buried at Nagaur, where his shrine is the Tarkeen Dargah; and Qazi Hamiduddin Nagauri as a Suhrawardi, a close companion of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki whom he had met years earlier at Baghdad, and buried at Mehrauli in Delhi.

How the conflation was caught, since the method matters more than the fact. An aggregated account consulted in this pass asserted that the two names denote one person, born in 1070 at Bukhara. That is not a small error but a self-refuting one: the same account calls him a disciple of Moinuddin Chishti, who died in 1236. A birth date of 1070 makes the disciple older than the master by more than a lifetime. The internal contradiction, not any external authority, is what exposed the merge — and it is why the two men are set out side by side on this page rather than written as one life. The 1975 Rajasthan District Gazetteer for Nagaur independently supports the split, naming a Qazi Hamiduddin Nagauri in connection with a relic brought from Baghdad while calling the Nagaur shrine the Tarkin-ka-dargah, which preserves the other man's title.

A coverage gap that remains. The Chishti tradition at Ajmer and Nagaur, and the Suhrawardi presence through the Qazi, are now covered. Other silsilas in Rajasthan — Qadiri, Naqshbandi, Shattari — are not. They are named in preparation material, they were not verified in this pass, and they are not asserted rather than being written from memory. They are listed in the Aggregator Watch as the next work on this chapter.

Added on 20 August 2026, closing two more of the gaps this chapter declared. Carried for the Jasnathi sect: Jasnathji's dates as 1482 to 1506; Katariyasar in Bikaner as both his birthplace and the site of his samadhi; his reported descent in the Jyani gotra of Jats; the thirty-six rules, the chhattis niyam; the designation of followers as Siddhs, wearing saffron and a black thread at the neck; and the report that the fire dancers chant Fateh-Fateh. Carried for the Ramsnehi sampradaya: the four branches as Shahpura in Bhilwara under Ramcharan (1720-1799), Ren in Nagaur under Dariyavji (about 1676-1758), Sinthal in Bikaner under Haridas, also given as Hariramdas, and Khedapa in Jodhpur under Ramdas.

A chronological objection this page raises itself. The four-branch table is standard in preparation material and is what examiners set, so it is given. But its internal dates do not support the usual gloss. Dariyavji was born about 1676 and died in 1758; Ramcharan was born in 1720 and died in 1799. The founder of the Ren seat was therefore born forty-four years before the man commonly called the founder of the sampradaya and died when Ramcharan was thirty-eight. A branch cannot be founded out of a body that does not yet exist. The reading this page adopts is that Ramsnehi names a family of related Nirguna Ram-devotional traditions, grouped afterwards under a shared name and a shared theology, rather than one organisation with four sub-offices. The pairings are safe for Prelims; the inference that Ramcharan founded all four is not.

On the sourcing of both entries, stated plainly. The fire-dance attribution to the Jasnathis of Bikaner and Churu comes from a Government of Rajasthan page. Everything else in these two entries — the Jasnathi dates, rule-count, community and observances, and the Ramsnehi branch-and-founder pairings and dates — comes from secondary and community sources, not from a government record or a sectarian primary text, and is given as reported. The chronological check on the Ramsnehi dates is our own, and it is why the caution accompanies the table rather than the table being reproduced unqualified. Jasnathji's twenty-four-year lifespan is likewise flagged as striking: the dates are widely and consistently given, and they are exactly the kind of pair worth re-checking against any source that offers a different one.

Upgraded on 20 August 2026 from two state gazetteers. The Jasnathi and Ramsnehi entries added earlier the same day rested on secondary and community sources, and were marked as such. Two Rajasthan District Gazetteers were then read to see how much could be raised to an official record. The honest answer is: some of it, and not the parts most often asked.

What the gazetteers do confirm. From the Nagaur volume: that Jasnathis, Bishnois and the worshippers of Jambhaji bury their dead, against the general Hindu and Jain rule of cremation. From the Bhilwara volume: that the Ram Snehis have a shrine at Shahpura called the Ram Dwara; that the Phuldol festival there is held by the Akhil Bhartiya Ram Snehi Sampraday every year from Chaitra Badi 1 to 5, drawing people from Bombay, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Burma; and that the gazetteer's religion section, built on the Census of 1931 and the Census of 1961 Social and Cultural Tables, places the Ram Snehis within the Nimbarka Sampradaya.

What they do not confirm, and this is the part that matters. Neither gazetteer carries Jasnathji's dates, the thirty-six rules, the Jyani-gotra descent or the black thread. Neither names Dariyavji, Haridas or Ramdas, so the four branch-and-founder pairings remain on secondary and community sources exactly as before. An upgrade attempt that only partly succeeds is reported as partly succeeding; the entries have not been quietly relabelled as better-sourced than they are.

On the Nirguna-versus-Nimbarka question, a rule rather than a verdict. The gazetteer's placement of Ram Snehis inside a Dvaitadvaita Vaishnava sampradaya sits against the Nirguna grouping used on this site. Neither is being called wrong. The gazetteer's religion section is derived from census returns, and a census classification records what people returned and how the enumerator grouped it; a theological classification records what a tradition teaches. This is the same structure as the Census placing Wagdi under Bhili while a linguist places it within Rajasthani — and the same instruction follows: give the exam's framing, and know that an official record files it differently.

Flagged rather than asserted: (a) the four-branch structure of the Ramsnehi sampradaya, of which only the Shahpura branch was verified; (b) enumerated lists of all 29 Bishnoi rules, of which the number and two principles are verified; (c) the builder of the Ajmer Dargah, the death year of Sufi Hamiduddin Nagauri, on which sources give 1274 against 1252, the Qadiri, Naqshbandi and Shattari silsilas in Rajasthan, Mirabai's discipleship under Ravidas (given as reported) and the miraculous episodes of her life; (d) dates for Tejaji, Gogaji, Devnarayan and Harbhuji; (e) the Jasnathi sect's founding date, seat and rule count; and (f) fair and festival dates for the folk deities, which belong with the social-life chapter.

Added on 28 August 2026, with the source for each.

Added on 27 August 2026, from Government of Rajasthan departmental records, six Rajasthan District Gazetteer volumes, a UGC list and one primary scripture.

1. The guardian-deity frame. The Kshetrapal fair at Khadagada, Sagwara tahsil, on Chaitra Shukla 15 and the Bhairavji fair at Meradi on Kartik Vadi 14 are from the Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Dungarpur, ed. K.K. Sehgal, Government of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Government Central Press, chapter III (scanned volume). Bhaironji at the head of the list of commonly worshipped deities is from Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Churu, ed. K.K. Sehgal, same publisher, chapter III (scanned volume). The Bherunji fair at Thanwala on Bhadrapada Sudi 14 is from Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Nagaur, ed. K.K. Sehgal, Government of Rajasthan, 1975, fairs table (scanned volume). The land-tenure senses of Bhom, Chakoti and Bhoo, and the Bhomia of Torawati, are from Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Sikar, ed. B.D. Agarwal, same publisher, revenue-administration chapter (scanned volume).

2. Gogaji. Dadrewa as the birthplace, the Bhadon Sudi 9 fairs at Dadreva and Lunch, the description of Gogaji as a Chauhan Rajput who died against Mahmud of Ghazni's army, and the index line "Guga, the eldest son of Jevara", are from the Churu gazetteer. The Gogamedi shrine in Nohar tehsil, Hanumangarh, its age, the 1911 renovation by Maharaja Ganga Singh, the statement that he became a Nath, his inclusion among "the five renowned peers", the Muslim priests of the Chayal caste and the Shravan Purnima to Bhadrapada Purnima fair, are from the Devasthan Department, Government of Rajasthan, temple profile: Shri Goga Ji, Gogamedi.

3. Ramdevji, and a correction. The description of him as a Rajput of the Tanwar clan, an incarnation of Krishna in Marwar, worshipped by Bhambis, Meghwals and Chamars and addressed by Muslims as Ram Shah Pir, and the Bhadon Sudi 2 to 11 fairs, are from the Churu gazetteer. The cenotaph built by Maharaja Ganga Singh at Ramdevra, Runicha, the family tombs, the entry without bar of caste, creed or religion, and the statement that the dead are here buried "like the Nath cult" rather than cremated, are from the Devasthan Department, temple profile: Shri Ram Dev Ji, Ramdevra. Correction, entered 27 August 2026: this chapter previously described Ramdevji as "a fourteenth-century Rajput ruler". No Government of Rajasthan source consulted assigns him a century, and the two lifespans in circulation, 1405 to 1458 CE and Vikram Samvat 1409 to 1462, do not agree on one. The century claim has been withdrawn.

4. Tejaji. Teja as a Jat of Kharnal, 16 km west of Mundwa, his death by snakebite after the fight with the cattle-lifting Mers, the cord tied round the right foot, the silver charm showing him mounted with a snake at his tongue, the Parbatsar fair on Bhadrapada Badi 11 for fifteen days, and the account of the fair being diverted from Sursura in Kishangarh State by the Hakim of Parbatsar under Maharaja Bijai Singh, are all from the Nagaur gazetteer. The Parbatsar temple's attribution to Maharaja Abhai Singh of Jodhpur, the pran pratishtha by his minister Vijai Raj, the Vaishnava rite and the veneration by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, are from the Devasthan Department, temple profile: Shri Veer Teja Ji, Parbatsar. The "Built in the year: 1704 A.D." on that page is not carried: the Jodhpur and Nagaur gazetteers both place Abhay Singh's reign from 1724 to 1750, and the same Devasthan page's own line that "the construction is 268 years old" points to about 1734.

5. The Nath sampradaya. The dhuna at Gorakh Teela, Gorkhana, Nohar, the nine Siddhas, Gorakhnath as a disciple of Matsyendranath, Gogaji as his principal disciple and the month-long Bhadrapada fair, are from the Devasthan Department, temple profile: Shri Goraknath Teela. The principal Nath gaddi at Fatehpur, the founding of the Churu establishment by Kishan Nath and the burial of Nath mendicants with tombs raised over them, are from temple profile: Shri Bhani Nath Ji Ka Dhora, Churu. Bhartrihari of Ujjain as a Nath and disciple of Gorakhnath, the dhuni, the Akshaydeep and the Bhadrapada fair, are from temple profile: Mandir Shri Bhartrihari Dhaam, Alwar. Bapa Rawal, Maharshi Harit, the four-faced lingam and the inscription attributing the installation to Maharana Raimal (1473-1509) are from temple profile: Mandir Shri Ekling Ji, Kailash Puri. The Harshnath inscription, now in the Sikar Museum, recording construction begun under Simharaja in Samvat 1018 and completed under Vigraharaja in Samvat 1030, and the further inscription mentioning 84 temples, are from the Sikar gazetteer, places-of-interest chapter. A conflation refused: preparation material names "Nath Muni" as founder of the sampradaya. Nathamuni is the Srivaishnava acharya of the Divya Prabandham. The lineage carried here is the department's own, Matsyendranath to Gorakhnath.

6. The Saguna seats. Salemabad: the Nimbarka Peeth, Samvat 1520 (1463 A.D.), the founding by the Bhati chiefs Sheoji and Gopal Singh of Khejarli on the instruction of Parashuram Devacharya, the deity Sarveshwar Prabhu, the description as principal seat of a dualistic monist school, and Nimbarka Jayanti on Kartika Purnima, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Nimbark Peeth, Salemabad. Raiwasa: Samvat 1570 (1513 A.D.), Agradeva ji Maharaj, the Ramananda sect, the madhuropasana rite and sakhi bhava, and the fairs on Phalgun Sudi 5 and Guru Purnima, from temple profile: Shri Raiwasa Dham. Nathdwara: the Pushtimarg of Vallabhacharya, the image brought from Jatipura, Govardhan, the temple built in 1728 by Tilkayat Damodarji, the haveli form, the ashtayam service and the Ashtachhap poets, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Srinath Ji, Nathdwara.

7. The Dadu Panth. Birth at Ahmedabad in 1544, the recorded dispute over his caste, the meeting with Vriddhanand at eleven, the naming sequence Brahma to Parabrahma to Dadu Panth beginning at Sambhar, the meeting with Akbar at Amer in about 1586, the travels, the language mixture, the 152 disciples of whom 52 are pillars, the death at Naraina in 1603, the relics, the 1884 building, the Nihang and householder orders and the succession by the principal disciple, are all from the Devasthan Department, temple profile: Mandir Shri Dadu Dwara, Naraina. A title collision is flagged rather than resolved: that page calls Dadu's collection Anabhai Vani, and the department's Shahpura page calls the book read at Phuldol Anabhei Waniji, meaning Ramcharan's. The same department attaches the title to two saints.

8. The Ramsnehi seat at Shahpura. That no anthropomorphic deity is enshrined, that worship is of Shabda Brahma and of a Rama devoid of attributes, the printed phrase "faith in Nirguna Bhawan", the Ramdwara with its twelve-doored hall on 108 pillars and octagonal samadhi, the building date Vikram Samvat 1855 (1798 A.D.) by Ramcharan, and the Phuldol from the first to the fifth of Chaitra immediately after Holi, are from temple profile: Mandir Shri Rama Niwas Dham, Shahpura. This is a second Government of Rajasthan record bearing on the Nirguna question, standing beside the Bhilwara gazetteer's census-derived placement of the Ram Snehis within the Nimbarka Sampradaya. The same page's statement that the cult was "founded by Maha Prabhu Rama Charanji in 1650 A.D." is not carried, because that page dates his own building of the seat to 1798.

9. Jambhoji and the Bishnois. The establishment of the sect in Samvat 1542 (1485), the birth in Samvat 1508 at Pipasar, Nagaur, the living entombment in Samvat 1593 at Himmatsar, known as Mukam, near Nokha in Bikaner, Samrathal as a mound 3 km from the tomb, the 20 and 9 rules described by the department as environmental, and the Ashwin and Phalgun Amavasya fairs, are from temple profile: Mandir Shri Jambho Ji, Samrathal. That page's bracketed "1499 A.D." for Samvat 1508 is an arithmetic error and is not carried; Samvat 1508 is 1451. The founder's clan is given as Tanwar on that page and as Panwar in both the Churu and Nagaur gazetteers, which also record that the Bishnois "were originally Jats", that they bury their dead, sometimes in a sitting posture, that they have discarded the scalp-lock, and that a dispute recorded in the Punjab Census Report of 1891 and the Bikaner Census Report of 1931 over Islamic tenets is disputed by the Bishnois themselves. Both clan attributions are printed because both are official and neither can be preferred on the evidence.

10. Laldas and Charandas. Laldas: birth in Samvat 1597 at Dholidub near Alwar, death aged 108 in Samvat 1705 (1648 A.D.) at Nagla in Bharatpur, the children Pahara and Sarupa, the gutka, the Kabirpanthi marg, the condemnation of begging, the followers called Lal Dasi Sadhs, the note that many consider him a Pir, and the language described as an admixture of Urdu and Brijbhasha. Charandas: birth in Samvat 1760 (1703 A.D.) at Dehra near Alwar, the name Ranjeet, the guru Shukdev, the move to Delhi, death in Samvat 1839 (1782 A.D.), twenty available works, the Charan Das gutka, and the two women disciples Sahajo Bai (Sahaj Prakash) and Daya Bai (Daya Bodh). Also Karama Bai of Garhi Mamor and Rao Ali Bux of Mandawar. All from Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Alwar, ed. Maya Ram, Government of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Government Central Press, history, people and education-and-culture chapters (scanned volume). The incident of 24 September 1946 at Dholidhup, in which Laldasi Hindus and Meos both attended the shrine and the day ended in an attack, is recorded in the same volume from Alwar State police and Law Department files.

11. Mavji, and a claim refused. Mavji as a Brahmin of Sabla revered as a pre-incarnation of Kalki, the birth on Magh Shukla Panchami, Samvat 1771 (1714 A.D.) together with the gazetteer's own note that others read that as the date of his declaration at twelve, the five Choparas in Devanagari in a Hindi, Gujarati and Wagdi mixture, their locations at Poonjpur, Sabla and Sejpur, the effigy on horseback, the four wives, the Hari Mandir at Sabla, the Nishkalank idol at Poonjpur, the Deepavali recitation, and the departure to Sheshpur (Sahaspur) after Maharawal Shiv Singh's test, are from the Dungarpur gazetteer. Refused: the claim that Mavji established Beneshwar Dham. The same volume describes Baneshwar as the temple of the most revered Shiva Linga of the area, on a delta at the confluence of the Som and Mahi, about 1.5 km from Nawa Tapra and 7 km from Sabla, believed built in the time of Maharawal Askaran, with the fair running Magh Shukla Ekadashi to Magh Shukla Purnima. The gazetteer's two-river description is what is carried, not the three-river version.

12. The Sufi section, and the builder question answered at last. That Ajmer was not a well-known centre of Muslim pilgrimage up to the middle of the fifteenth century, that "no masonry tomb was built over the remains of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chisti up to 1464 A.D.", that "for two hundred and fifty years the saint remained almost forgotten", that Akbar heard the songs near Midhakur, eight miles west of Agra, set out in January 1562, returned via Sambhar where he received the hand of the Amber princess, and was back in Agra on Friday 13 February 1562, are all from Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Ajmer, ed. B.N. Dhoundiyal, Government of Rajasthan, Department of District Gazetteers, history chapter (scanned volume). This settles the attribution this page previously declined. A source consulted earlier credited the shrine to Humayun; preparation material credits Iltutmish. On the state's own record there was no masonry tomb before 1464, so neither can be right as stated. The same volume gives the saint's death as 1235, against the 1236 this page carries; both are printed and neither is called wrong. The Galiakot urs, at which Dawoodi Bohras gather from the 25th day of Moharram at the tomb of Syedi Fakhruddin in Sagwara tahsil, is from the Dungarpur gazetteer.

13. Mirabai. The Charbhuja temple at Merta, "said to have been constructed in 1458 A.D. (V.S. 1515) by Rao Duda, the founder of the town", the tradition that "Mira, born at village Kurki in Merta tahsil, first took inspiration here", the Shrawan Sudi 11 fair of seven days, and the Mira Bai or Char Bhujaji ka mela at Merta in Shrawan, are from the Nagaur gazetteer. A disagreement is left open: the gazetteer places Kurki in Merta tahsil, while preparation material places Kudki in Pali. This page does not resolve it and continues to say only that she was born at Kudki, in Marwar, with Merta as the family seat.

14. The goddesses. Osian: the temple "came into existence on Thursday, 10th of the bright half of Chaitra, Samvat 1234 (1177 A.D.)", built by Parmar Rajput kings whose clan goddess she was, called Sachchi Dhaya, also the clan goddess of the Oswals, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Ossiya Mata Ji. Amer: 1580 A.D., Maharaja Sawai Man Singh I, the image from eastern Bengal after the defeat by king Kedar in Pratapaditya's kingdom, and the shila that gives the name, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Shila Devi Ji, Amer. Karauli: about 1600 A.D., built by Bhompal, two idols, a Shakta temple observing Vaishnava rules, fairs in both Navratras, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Kela Devi Ji. Sakrai: the claim of construction in Samvat 749 in the reign of Durlabhraja by Shiv Hari's son and his nephew Sidhraj, dedicated to Sakradevi or Shakambhari, from the Sikar gazetteer. Kinsariya and Goth Manglod fairs, and the Dahima or Dadhicha Brahmans' original seat at Goth Manglod, from the Nagaur gazetteer. Refuted: the date "Samvat 699 (647 A.D.)" given for Sakrai in preparation material fails twice, once against the Sikar gazetteer's Samvat 749, and once on its own arithmetic, since Samvat 699 is 642 or 643 CE, not 647.

15. Karni Mata and Jeen Mata. Deshnok, 35 km from Bikaner, the Shakta affiliation, the building by Rao Jaitasi after the victory over "the Mughal King Kumaran", the idol called Dewali with its dimensions, the Depawat priests of the Charan community serving month by month, the rats, and the Ashwin and Chaitra Navratra fairs, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Karni Mata Ji, Deshnok. That page gives two construction years, "1573 AD" in its header and "Samvat 1594 (1537 A.D.)" in its body; 1537 is the one consistent with Rao Jaitsi's reign, and both are printed here. Jeen Mata's location 10 km south of Rewasa, her other name Jayanti Devi, the tenth-century dating from an inscription inside the temple, the mundan and Jata customs, the Chaitra and Asoj fairs and the legend of Jeen and her brother Harsh, from the Sikar gazetteer; the eight-armed Mahishasura Mardini form, the Bhramari Devi temple at the rear, the Phalgun Harsh-Bhairav fair and the alternative legend of King Ghangh of Ghoghu and an apsara, from temple profile: Mandir Shri Jeen Mata Ji. Two Government of Rajasthan sources give two different origin stories for the same goddess; both are recorded and neither is preferred. Neither supports this chapter's earlier claim that her folk song is the longest in Rajasthan's folk literature, which is now flagged in the Aggregator Watch as unverified.

16. Pipa and Dhanna. Ang 695 of the Guru Granth Sahib, in Raag Dhanasari, carries a shabad of Peepaa, ending "Peepaa pranvai param tat hai, satgur hoe lakhaavai", and immediately after it a shabad of Dhanna. Checked against the page-695 text at SriGranth. Nothing else about either saint is asserted here.

17. Terapanth. Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Tulsi Gram, PO Box No. 6, Ladnun 341306, Nagaur, Rajasthan, is listed as a Deemed University with effect from 20.03.1991 at entry 709 of the University Grants Commission's consolidated list of all universities. The Sikar gazetteer's schedule of registered temple trusts includes "Shri Digambar Jain Terapanthi, Naya Mandir, Sikar", which is why the name Terapanth alone does not identify an order.

18. On districts. Three places used above sit in tahsils whose districts have moved. The Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Jodhpur, ed. B.D. Agarwal, Government of Rajasthan (scanned volume), records that Kolu was transferred from Shergarh tahsil to Phalodi tahsil; Parbatsar and Merta were tahsils of Nagaur. Rajasthan reorganised its districts in 2023 and again in December 2024, and the current count is 41 districts and 425 tehsils. This page gives the tahsil, which has not moved, and notes that every book still prints the pre-2023 district. No current district is asserted for these villages here.

19. Links checked. Every URL above was fetched on 27 August 2026 and returned HTTP 200, and in each case the page returned was the document cited rather than a redirect to a host's home page. The seven gazetteer volumes are printed Government of Rajasthan publications; the archive.org links point to the scanned volumes and are given so a reader can check the wording, not in place of the citation.