Pandit Bhagvati Sahai

Bhagvati Sahai learned from his father, Pandit Baldev Sahai, alongside his elder brothers Durga and Lakshmi. He worked at the Tamkuhi court near Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, and within the gharana his name is bound to one particular form: the fard, a fast composition built from tightly repeating phrases, which he is said to have played faster than anyone of his generation.

The most telling testimony comes from outside the family. Pandit Anokhelal Mishra — himself the most admired Benares tabla player of the mid-twentieth century, and famous for his own speed — said that he would go and listen to Bhagvati Sahai practise, and tried to play as much like him as he could.

All four of his sons learned tabla. The eldest, Mangala Sahai (1927–1943), was the last left-handed player in the family and died at eighteen; the second, Vidya Sahai, broke his arm at fifteen and turned to sarangi instead. The third was Pandit Sharda Sahai, who was about eleven when his father died and was then taken as a disciple by Pandit Kanthe Maharaj — his father's father's student. Sources differ on the year of the death: 1946 in the lineage notes and in his son's published biography, 1942 on the family website.

Known for velocity and evenness in the fard form, within the resonant Benares baj inherited from his father.