Cite
MLA
“Veer Tejaji.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/devata/tejaji/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). Veer Tejaji. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/devata/tejaji/
A young warrior on a white horse, sword in hand, with a snake rising to bite his tongue; in village shrines, called thans, he is often a stone slab carved with the horseman and the snake.
01The youth of Kharnal
Tejaji was born at Kharnal in Nagaur district, the son of Tahar, a Jat headman, and Ram Kunwari. The dates his devotees use come from the community’s own reckoning, not from any inscription: birth on Magha Shukla Chaturdashi of Samvat 1130, about 1074 CE, and death on Bhadrapada Shukla Dashami of Samvat 1160, about 1103 CE. As a child he had been married to Pemal, daughter of Raimal of Paner in Ajmer district, and grown up without knowing it. When he learned of it, he rode off alone to Paner to bring his wife home. What follows is the gatha, the sung epic, which the bhopas of his shrines still sing at night to the beat of a drum.
02The promise to the snake
On the way to Paner, the gatha says, Teja saw a snake caught in a burning bush and pulled it out. The snake, angry, rose to bite him. Teja asked for time: he had a duty to finish, and would come back. At Paner, Pemal’s friend Lachha Gujari ran to him crying that raiders had driven off her cows. Teja rode after them alone, fought them in the hills and brought the cows back, but came out of the fight with wounds over his whole body. True to his word he went back to the snake. Finding no unwounded place to strike, the snake asked where to bite, and Teja put out his tongue. Pleased with his truth, the snake blessed him that he would be worshipped as the healer of snakebite.
03Teja Dashami and the thans
He died at Sursura in Ajmer district, where the Teja Dham now stands; the gatha says Pemal followed him. Almost every village of Marwar, Ajmer, Hadoti and Malwa has a than of Tejaji, often under a tree at the edge of the fields, and those bitten by a snake are brought to it to pray to him for healing, while his bhopa sings his name. On Bhadrapada Shukla Dashami, Teja Dashami, the day of his death, fairs gather at Sursura, Kharnal and many other places, and the gatha is sung in full. His worship reaches into Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat. India Post issued a stamp in his name in September 2011.
In the texts
- Tejaji ri gatha (oral epic, Rajasthani)
- Madan Meena, Tejaji Gatha (2012)