मैया मोरी मैं नहीं माखन खायो

This song renders one of Surdas's most famous and widely loved padas — the little Krishna's innocent denial to mother Yashoda that he stole the butter. Sung by K. L. Saigal, it brings the playful, intimate vatsalya (parental-love) strand of the saint-poet's devotion into the film.

Gyan Dutt sets the pad to a light, mid-tempo bhajan melody with a teasing, childlike lilt that mirrors the innocent denial of the text. Saigal modulates his usually grave voice toward tenderness here, the gentle rhythm and harmonium keeping the mood affectionate and unforced.

This song renders the most beloved pada in Surdas's entire Sursagar: the child Krishna's playful denial to mother Yashoda that he stole the butter. The original Braj Bhasha pada is among the foundational texts of the vatsalya rasa (parental-love sentiment) tradition in Vaishnava devotion — the love between Krishna and Yashoda as a model for the soul's tender relationship with the divine. Surdas's genius in this pada lies in its perfect mimicry of a child's logic: Krishna argues that his arms are too small to reach the pot, that he has been in the forest all day, that the other cowherd boys must have told lies. Each excuse is transparently false yet irresistibly charming. D.N. Madhok's film adaptation of this immortal text gives Saigal the challenge of inhabiting a childlike persona — the grave baritone modulating toward innocence, the devotional warmth softened to playfulness. The success of the number depends on this tonal modulation.

Bhakta Surdas (1942, Ranjit Studios, Bombay, dir. Chaturbhuj Doshi) depicts the life of the blind saint Surdas, whose devotion encompassed both the anguished viraha song and the affectionate bal-bhakti (child-Krishna) tradition. Surdas's 'Maiya Mori Main Nahi Makhan Khayo' is one of his best-known padas and would have been familiar to audiences even before the film — it exists in multiple performing traditions across North Indian classical, semi-classical, and folk-devotional music. Its inclusion in the film was thus both a tribute to Surdas's own canon and a built-in point of recognition for audiences. Saigal's interpretation of the poem was a test of his range: the film established him as an actor-singer who could move from the deepest devotional gravitas (the viraha solos) to the playful lightness of this child's denial, all within the same soundtrack.

Surdas's 'Maiya Mori Main Nahi Makhan Khayo' is among the most performed and recorded padas in all of North Indian devotional music; versions exist by M.S. Subbulakshmi, classical vocalists, and bhajan singers across the century. Saigal's film adaptation is part of this larger tradition of the pada's reception. The Bhakta Surdas (1942) version gives the text a particular Bombay-studio inflection — the weight of Saigal's voice against Gyan Dutt's light accompaniment — that distinguishes it from both the classical and the folk variants.