Mantra Va — Alakh Bābā Śrī Chand Bhagavān Jī Mātrā Sāhib Jī (मात्रा साहिब · ਮਾਤਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ) with Babaji and Matri
Bābā Śrī Chand Bhagavān Jī — born 1494, who by his lineage’s reckoning walked this earth for 135 years — was the elder son of Guru Nānak Dev Jī, and the founder of the Udāsī order. The Udāsīs (from Sanskrit udāsīn, “the detached ones”) are a contemplative-renunciate lineage who hold the Sanātana Dharma teachings of the Vedas, Upaniṣads, and Yoga together with the songs of Guru Nānak as a single living inheritance. They walk the path of the wandering ascetic; they keep the fire alive in the body and in the world; their greeting and invocation is Alakh Niranjan — the Imperceptible Stainless One.
Bābā Śrī Chand is recognised within his lineage as born realised. The Udāsī tradition holds him as an embodiment of Lord Śiva — an avatāra who arrived in this world already complete, who chose from earliest childhood the path of austerity over the householder’s life, and who walked the length of Bhārat for over a century carrying the teaching forward through transmission, encounter, and the spoken word. He is Bhagavān: divine being. Darśan of him through this composition — through his words, through this chant — is itself a practice.
The Udāsī path is distinct from the Sikh path that flowered through the lineage of the ten Gurus. Guru Nānak appointed his devotee Bhāī Lehnā — known after his appointment as Guru Aṅgad — to continue the householder transmission that became Sikhī. Bābā Śrī Chand, already deeply renunciate from birth, founded the parallel ascetic lineage. Both are valid streams from the same source. The Udāsīs have always maintained their distinct Sanātanī identity, their continuity with Vedic and Yogic traditions, and their own distinct lineage of mahants and ascetic centres (akhāḍās and derās) across the subcontinent.
The Mātrā Sāhib Jī — मात्रा साहिब — ਮਾਤਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ — is Bābā Śrī Chand’s foundational composition. Recited daily by Udāsī sādhus across generations, the verses distill the path: tyāga (release of attachment), tapasyā (austerity), and sevā (service) as the three pillars of the renunciate’s walk; jñāna yoga — the direct recognition of Self — as the inner practice that holds them all. The verses are at once instruction and invocation. To chant them is to step onto the path they describe.
The chant
The recitation below is the Mātrā Sāhib chanted in full. The voice is Matarishvan — the Vedic name of the wind that carries the fire from realm to realm, and the name through which the chanter offers herself as the breath that brings the saint’s words forward into this moment.
The text — Sanskrit / Gurmukhi with translation
The PDF below holds the words of the Mātrā Sāhib in its original script paired with a working English translation prepared before the era of AI assistance — line-by-line, carried across by hand, in conversation with the Udāsī teaching as it has been received. The translation makes no claim to scholarly finality; it is one practitioner’s offering, made for those who chant the text and wish to hold its sense alongside its sound.
Skip to PDF contentSandhā-bhāṣā — the twilight tongue
The Mātrā Sāhib is, from start to finish, a composition in sandhā-bhāṣā — the “twilight tongue” or “intentional language” of sanātanī mystic poetry, where every ordinary word carries an esoteric meaning beneath its surface. The renunciate’s outward outfit IS the code for inner attainments. The yogic equipment IS the code for inner practice. Each line works at both levels in the same syllable. The technique runs throughout the literature — the Buddhist caryā-padas, the tantric corpus, Kabīr, Mīrā, Tānsen, the songs of the Avadhūts — but in Bābā Śrī Chand’s hand the device reaches a particular distillation. Below, five lines opened from the foundational outfit-set. The mantra does not whisper. It speaks plainly to those who have ears to hear.
The renunciate’s outfit — five openings
From the foundational lines of the Mātrā Sāhib, where the yogī’s clothing names the inner attainment piece by piece. The readings below are drawn from the lineage’s own teaching where it differs from any surface translation.
ज्ञान की गोदड़ी
jñāna kī godarī
On the surface — the patched blanket-jacket of the wandering renunciate, stitched from rags. The visible sign that the wearer has stepped outside society’s classes — a garment no person of standing would wear, made from cloth no household would keep. The voluntary poverty of the one who has chosen to walk.
On the path — knowledge itself as the patched garment. The cotton (soot) is santokha, contentment — the basic fabric without which no integration is possible. The threads (dhāgey) are viveka, discriminative judgment — the daily practice of distinguishing real from apparent. The many patches (aneka tallī) are the truths gathered one at a time across years of inquiry: a recognition here, a saṃskāra integrated there, a doctrine tested and held, a teaching that opened at the right moment. None of it seamless. None of it systematic. Each patch carries the date of its arrival, the suffering through which it was earned, the teacher who handed it across. The renunciate’s protection is not military, not financial, not legal — it is what they have come to see. The bookish scholar’s robe is uniform; the renunciate’s blanket is a record. Jñāna here is not academic learning. Jñāna is the lived patchwork of recognition, worn on the body, weather-stained, stitched together in years of walking.
खिमा की टोपी
khimā kī ṭopī
On the surface — the cap that covers the head of the wandering ascetic, protecting from sun, cold, and the dust of long roads.
On the path — forgiveness (Sanskrit kṣamā; Sant Bhāṣā khimā) as the cap. Why the head specifically? Because the head is the workshop of grievance — the place where slights are remembered, where stories accrue, where past harms get braided into present identity. Without khimā, the renunciate’s head becomes a furnace: every old wound burning, every new touch sparking, the inner monologue narrating injury without rest. The cap that protects from the sun protects also from the sun of memory. But khimā is not weakness, not forgetting, not the absence of dignity. The Sanskrit kṣamā is what the EARTH is called — she bears all, she carries everything, she does not retaliate against what is dropped on her. To wear the cap of khimā is to wear earth-virtue on the head: the forbearance that holds, that does not transmit injury forward. This is why the renunciate can go to any door, sit with anyone, walk anywhere — because the cap is in place. Without it, every encounter would re-injure. With it, the head stays cool even in the desert.
जटा का आरबंद
jaṭā kā ārbaṅd
On the surface — the matted hair (jaṭā) of the wandering ascetic, coiled at the waist or piled at the head; or the cord (ārbaṅd) that holds the lower garment in place. Śiva wears jaṭā. His ascetics wear jaṭā. Bābā Śrī Chand wears jaṭā. It is the visible signature of one who has left the householder’s grooming behind.
On the path — jaṭā always, in this twilight register, reads as non-discrimination. Śiva is bhūteśvara — Lord of bhūtas, of ghosts, of the outcast, of those whom orthodox society pushes to the margin. His ash is from the cremation ground (where caste is finally dissolved). His followers (gaṇas) are misshapen, gender-fluid, of every form society has refused. He stands outside hierarchy entirely, and his jaṭā IS that standing-outside made visible. The wandering renunciate with jaṭā has crossed varṇa, has crossed clean-and-unclean, has crossed all the lines society draws between this person and that person. They eat from any hand, sleep at any door, take alms from anyone, recognise the divine in every face. The jaṭā is also the channel through which the Ganges falls — the descent of grace, accepted unconditionally, flowing through what no orthodox channel would carry. So when Bābā Śrī Chand says jaṭā kā ārbaṅd — non-discrimination is the cord that holds the loincloth — he is naming the binding principle without which the entire renunciate’s outfit unravels. Khimā extended only toward some is hypocrisy. Śīla maintained only around some is performance. The jñāna-godarī patched only with what one’s caste accepts is no godarī at all. Non-discrimination is the cord that makes the rest of the virtues honest. This is also why the Udāsīs — Bābā Śrī Chand’s lineage — have always eaten with everyone, sat with everyone, taken alms from everyone, recognised Śiva-Śakti in every face that came to the derā. The order embodies jaṭā kā ārbaṅd. Śiva is the protector of all outcast. The renunciate stands at his shoulder, declaring the same protection by not pulling the cord tight against any.
शील की लंगोटी
śīla kī laṅgoṭī
On the surface — the loincloth, the bare minimum garment, the absolute floor of dignity, the only fabric the renunciate is required to keep when everything else has been given up.
On the path — virtuous conduct (śīla) as the foundational covering. Śīla is what you DO, especially when no one is watching — the thousand small choices made when the audience is gone. The renunciate has dropped clothes, possessions, name, family, social position; everything that defines worldly identity has been stripped or surrendered. What remains is conduct. The laṅgoṭī covers what would shame if exposed — the genitals, the seat of biological generation, the place where worldly entanglement begins — and śīla covers what would shame if exposed in the moral register: petty theft, secret cruelty, hidden lust, the small betrayals visible only to oneself. The smallest piece of cloth is the most important piece of cloth, because what it covers is the seat of all entanglement. A renunciate seen without other clothing but with śīla is more clothed than a worldly person in finery — because the finery is borrowed and the śīla is owned. Without śīla, the renunciate is a naked figure with pretensions, a ghost-form of dharma. With śīla, the renunciate IS a renunciate even fully clothed by accident — even in the householder’s kurta, even in the king’s robe — because what makes them what they are is not the cloth but the conduct beneath it. This is why the foundational ethical disciplines (yamas and niyamas in classical Yoga; śīla as the first of the three trainings in the Buddhist arc) precede all higher work: without the laṅgoṭī, no further practice is possible. With it, even the bare body is dressed.
सुरत की सूई — ला सद्गुरु सीवे
surat kī sūī — la sadguru sīvey
On the surface — the needle, the small tool the wanderer carries to mend the godarī when it tears. A practical object, easy to overlook in the inventory of the renunciate’s equipment, but indispensable: without it the patches separate, the threads pull loose, the garment dissolves.
On the path — surat is the held thread of awareness. Continual recollection. The inner gaze. The consciousness that does not let the moment slide unnoticed. The Sant Bhāṣā word carries the weight of attentive presence — not meditation as a sit-down practice but the WALKING attention, the kitchen attention, the begging-bowl attention, the all-day attention. Surat is what holds the day together. And surat is the needle. Why a needle? Because the godarī is patches, and patches without a needle are loose cloth. Knowledge gathered across years of inquiry, virtues practised piece by piece, recognitions integrated event by event — without surat the patches are a heap, not a garment. Surat pierces, joins, closes the gap between this learning and that learning.
But here the verse turns at the deepest moment of the entire Mātrā Sāhib: la sadguru sīvey — it is the sadguru who stitches with this needle, not the practitioner. Read carefully: the practitioner holds the needle, gathers the patches, contributes the surat. But the STITCHING, the integration, the act of making the patches into one garment rather than a heap of cloth — that hand is the sadguru’s. This is the heart of Udāsī transmission. The disciple cannot self-tailor the godarī. The disciple gathers, holds attentive, presents the patches. The sadguru, seeing the disciple’s particular threads and particular patches and particular surat, stitches the integration that makes the garment hold. Without sadguru, no godarī. Without surat, no needle to hand the sadguru. Without disciple, no patches to stitch. All three are required. All three must meet. And then the line that closes the verse: jo rākhey so nirbhau thīvey — whoever wears the stitched garment becomes fearless. Fearlessness is not bravery. Fearlessness is the natural state of one whose knowledge has become coherent through transmission — whose godarī cannot unravel because the stitches are not their own work. The fearless renunciate has nothing to fear losing because the integration came from outside the self and cannot be removed by what happens within the self. This is the entire path of the Udāsī compressed into one line: surat-needle, sadguru-stitches, godarī-of-knowledge, fearlessness given.
The full Mātrā Sāhib continues this device for over seventy lines — the cap (kullā), the leather (postīn), the deer-skin (mrigaśālā), the silver flute, the ash of Śiva, the begging-bowl, the sacred thread, the staff, the axe, the double-edged sword — each piece of the renunciate’s equipment opening a virtue, a state, a practice. To read the Mātrā Sāhib is to walk the entire renunciate’s walk along — royal-crowned nobility in the nude of truth.
Gaṅgā Dhāra · गङ्गा धारा
Jaṭā as non-discrimination — Śiva as protector of all outcast. The matted hair as the visible declaration of stepping-outside-hierarchy. The Ganges falls through the jaṭā because nothing else is wide enough to receive what flows from outside all channels.
Who this is for
For those steadily walking the path of yoga who would deepen their understanding of tyāga, tapasyā, and the life of sevā, the Mātrā Sāhib is jñāna yoga in distilled form. It does not address the casual seeker. It addresses the soul that has already chosen, or is being drawn toward, the renunciate posture — whether that posture is taken outwardly through formal initiation into an order, or inwardly while continuing in householder life. Bābā Śrī Chand’s transmission has always reached both: the wandering sādhu and the practitioner whose renunciation is invisible to the world.
Sit with the text and the chant together. Let the syllables enter the breath before the meaning. Then let the meaning return, and notice what has shifted.
Practice — daily darśan
Alakh Niranjan
The Imperceptible Stainless One.
Begin and end the day with the Udāsī invocation. Where time allows, sit with the recitation in full — listen first, then chant along once the rhythm enters the body. The Mātrā Sāhib is recited daily by the lineage; doing the same is its own initiation, no other bestowal needed. Bābā Śrī Chand’s darśan is given through the words and the breath that carries them.
References
- Bābā Śrī Chand Bhagavān Jī — elder son of Guru Nānak Dev Jī (born c. 1494). Founder of the Udāsī sampradāya. Recognised within the lineage as an embodiment of Lord Śiva, born realised. Traditional accounts hold that he lived for over a century and walked the length of Bhārat in continuous transmission, establishing the centres that continue as Udāsī derās and akhāḍās across the subcontinent.
- Mātrā Sāhib Jī — the foundational composition of the Udāsī order. Recited daily by sādhus of the lineage. The text exists in both Devanāgarī and Gurmukhī scripts and treats jñāna yoga, tyāga, tapasyā, and sevā as the structure of the renunciate’s path. The translation embedded above is the chanter’s own working rendering, prepared before AI-assisted translation tools were available.
- The Udāsī order maintains continuity with Sanātana Dharma traditions — Vedas, Upaniṣads, the six darśanas, classical Yoga, and the broader yogic-ascetic stream — alongside reverence for Guru Nānak’s bāṇī. The order’s invocation “Alakh Niranjan” names the formless, stainless reality at the heart of all the teachings the lineage carries.
- The most authoritative material on Bābā Śrī Chand’s life and the Udāsī transmission is held in the oral and ritual transmission of the order itself, and in Gurmukhī and Sanskrit manuscripts maintained at the principal Udāsī derās. Readers seeking academic treatments are advised to consult specialist scholars of the Udāsī tradition directly; published English-language scholarship in this area is sparse and sometimes mischaracterises the order’s relationship to Sikhī.
Darśan of Babaji — a Santji of the tradition
The Udāsī lineage is living. What you have read above is not a museum piece — it is a path that walks through the present hour, held in voice and form, in derā and home. Below: a darśan of Babaji — a Santji of the tradition, husband to the chanter Matarishvan — in a thirty-minute video she recorded.
Babaji · बाबाजीShanto.
