New Theatres Ltd. of Calcutta had built its reputation on Bengali literary adaptations before 1933, so its decision to direct Debaki Bose toward a Punjabi devotional legend for his own directing debut in Hindi was itself a departure. The gamble paid off commercially, and it also placed the studio inside a much older pattern: Puran Bhagat has been retold on Indian screens more than almost any other regional legend, with versions made in 1928, this 1933 version, and again in 1949 and 1952 alone.
That repetition is worth pausing on. A legend does not get remade across separate decades, separate studios and separate directors unless it keeps answering something audiences want retold. Part of the answer is simply a strong dramatic shape, betrayal, mutilation, miraculous restoration, and a happy return that the hero then walks away from. But part of it is specific to what the story is actually about: a prince who has every reason to reclaim his throne chooses ascetic renunciation instead, guided there by a real tradition's own founding guru.
Each new film version was, in effect, a fresh act of putting Gorakhnath and the Nath order's ascetic ideal back in front of a mass popular audience, dressed as entertainment rather than instruction. The 1933 version did that job with genuine craft and a music score audiences responded to strongly enough to keep the film in circulation and in critical memory nearly a century later.