Payo Ji Maine Ram Ratan Dhan Payo
Payo Ji Maine Ram Ratan Dhan Payo is among the best known padas of Meera Bai, the sixteenth-century Rajput princess and poet-saint whose devotion to Krishna shaped much of the bhakti literature of northern India.
The song's central image is wealth. The singer declares she has obtained the jewel-treasure of Rama's name, and the verses then measure that treasure against ordinary riches: it cannot be spent, no thief can take it, and it grows rather than diminishes with use. The final claim is that this wealth was given by her guru, and that in receiving it she found what a lifetime of accumulation could not provide.
Meera's poetry is marked throughout by this reversal of worldly value, which she lived as well as wrote — she left a royal household for a life of wandering devotion, and the padas frequently answer the family and society that objected.
The pada is sung across Rajasthan and Gujarat and has entered the wider repertoire through recorded renditions, most famously by Lata Mangeshkar. It is heard at satsangs, at Meera Jayanti, and in Krishna temples through the year.