Journey
Marathi bhakti — the sants
Four centuries of Marathi devotional poetry, from Dnyāneshwar's Gītā commentary about 1290 to Rāmdās advising Shivāji. Almost all of it is sung rather than read, almost none of it is in Sanskrit, and its writers run from Brahmin to Mahār to grain-trader — which is the tradition's argument, made by who wrote it.
Stops (5)
- Dnyāneshwar · Dnyāneshwar — the Gītā in Marathi, about 1290
At roughly fifteen he wrote the Dnyāneshwarī, nine thousand ovī verses expounding the Bhagavad Gītā in Marathi. Putting Vedānta into a spoken language put it in reach of people the learned tradition excluded, and every later Marathi sant works in the space he opened. He took samādhi at Ālandi at about twenty-one.
- Nāmdev · Nāmdev — the calico-printer who went north
A Pandharpūr printer whose abhangs and kīrtan shaped the Varkarī tradition and who then spent years at Ghumān in the Punjab. Sixty-one of his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sāhib, which makes a Marathi artisan scripture in two languages — the single clearest thread tying western Indian bhakti to Sikh scripture.
- Eknāth · Eknāth — recovering the text, about 1580
The Paithan Brahmin who found the Dnyāneshwarī corrupted by three centuries of copying and produced the standard recension. He also wrote bhārūds — dramatic songs in the voices of washerwomen, Mahārs and street performers — and was censured for eating with untouchables, which he continued to do.
- Tukārām · Tukārām — the abhangs, about 1640
A Kunbi grain-trader at Dehū, ruined by famine, whose roughly four thousand abhangs in plain Marathi are the most sung verse in the language. He wrote against ritual display and against the authority of those who challenged his right to write at all, and his manuscripts are said to have been sunk in the Indrāyani and recovered.
- Samarth Rāmdās · Samarth Rāmdās — Sajjangad and the other direction
The one Marathi sant of the period who is not a Varkarī: a Rāma devotee who founded hundreds of maths across the Deccan, wrote the Dāsbodh on practical conduct and organisation, and is traditionally read as Shivāji's counsellor. Devotion pointed at political capacity rather than away from it.