śrī rāmadeva cālīsā

Forty verses in Rajasthani-inflected Hindi to Ramdev — the figure venerated across western India as Ramdev Pir, and in his own tradition a descent taken deliberately in human shape. The second doha says as much: he came from the lord of Dvaraka and took the birth of a man, and the house of Ajmal, his father, was made glad by it and the cry of victory went up. He is not Rama, and the chalisa nowhere confuses the two. What the forty verses recount is his life and the wonders told of him, and the closing doha gives the instruction such texts usually give, that whoever reads them for forty days obtains what the mind has wished for.