Varanasi: Pandit Kishan Maharaj, one of India's best-known classical percussionists, passed away in this temple town after battling a brain stroke for five days. He was 85.

The leading tabla exponent was pulled off life support systems on Sunday night. He had suffered a stroke on Tuesday and efforts had been on to stave off brain death.

Kishan Maharaj is survived by a son and three daughters.

Sources here said the tabla legend suffered the stroke when sarod artist Pandit Amjad Ali Khan and his family, including sons Ayaan and Amaan, went to meet him a day after the Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroh, an important musical event in the town. Kishan Maharaj also attended it.

Kishan Maharaj was born in 1923 in a family of professional musicians. He was trained in classical music by Pandit Hari Maharaj, his father. After his father's death, Pandit Kanthe Maharaj, his uncle, took him under his wings.

Kishan Maharaj was conferred the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan.

"After shahnai maestro Bismillah Khan's death, he was the lone surviving classical music legend in Varanasi," said Anshuman Pandey, a music aficionado associated with Kishan Maharaj for more than a decade.

Kishan Maharaj, who had a distinctive style of his own, was known for his ability to play cross-rhythms and produce complex calculations. He could accompany any instrument, be it sitar, sarod, dhrupad. He was equally at home accompanying a dancer.

"He played with Birju Maharaj, Sitara Devi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Bismillah Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Ustad Faiyaz Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, almost everyone of his time," Das said.

Das, who had been Kishan Maharaj's disciple since the age of nine and lived with him for 11 years in Varanasi to learn the tabla, has fond recollections of his Guru. According to him, Kishan Maharaj was one of the strictest Gurus, a stern disciplinarian, serious about punctuality and a perfectionist. Apart from tabla, the master percussionist had several passions, including poetry and art (he was an accomplished painter), said renowned Kathak dancer Pandit Birju Maharaj. "Right from childhood, (since the age of 11), when I started dancing, Kishan Maharaj had been the percussionist of my choice. He followed the action and then decided on the rhythm (taal)," Birju Maharaj told IANS.