Namdev's work is known for abhangas, a genre of hymn poetry in India.[7] His poems were transmitted from one generation to the next within singing families, and memory was the only recording method in the centuries that followed Namdev's death.[36] The repertoires grew, because the artists added new songs to their repertoire. The earliest surviving manuscripts of songs attributed to Namdev, from these singing families, are traceable to the 17th century.[37] A diverse collection of these manuscripts exist, which have been neither compiled nor archived successfully in a single critical edition.[26][38] The state Government of Maharashtra made an effort and compiled Namdev's work from various manuscripts into the Sri Namdev Gatha in 1970.[26]

The Adi Granth of Sikhism includes a compilation of 61 songs of Namdev.[39] However, of these only 25 are found in surviving Namdev-related manuscripts of Rajasthan.[39][40] Winand Callewaert suggests that Namdev's poems in the Adi Granth and the surviving Rajasthani manuscripts are considerably different musically and morphologically, but likely to have evolved from a very early common source