Person · Marathi saint-poet & philosopher
Dnyāneshwar
Also known as Jnaneshwar, Dnyandev, Jnanadeva, Gyaneshwar, Dnyaneshwar Maharaj
Marathi poet-philosopher who at about fifteen wrote the Dnyāneshwarī, a nine thousand-verse commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā in the ovī metre. Writing Vedānta in Marathi rather than Sanskrit put it in reach of people the learned tradition excluded, and made him the foundation of the Varkarī sampradāya.
- Date
- c. 1275 – 1296
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Dnyāneshwarī; Amritānubhava; Varkarī tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He and his siblings Nivritti, Sopān and Muktābāi were outcast as the children of a sannyāsi who had returned to householder life. All four are said to have taken samādhi within a few years of one another; Dnyāneshwar's at Ālandi is the one the palkhī leaves from.
Connections (4)
- Samadhi atĀlandi
Dnyāneshwar entered samādhi at Ālandi in 1296, aged about twenty-one, and the town has been a place of pilgrimage since. The palkhī that leaves each Āshādh carries his pādukās rather than an image, so what walks to Pandharpūr is the sandals of a poet who has been in the ground beneath the shrine for seven centuries.
- Teaching lineageTryambaka / Trimbakeshwar
Dnyāneshwar's line runs back through his elder brother Nivritti to Gahininath and the Nāth yogis of Trimbakeshwar, where the order's Maharashtrian seat stood. The Varkarī tradition therefore has a Nāth root: a Shaiva ascetic lineage feeding directly into a Vaishnava devotional order of householders. Nivritti had taken initiation from a Nāth siddha in a cave at Trimbak, and passed it to his younger brother, so the whole Marathi devotional tradition descends from one family's chance encounter in the Sahyadris.
- Teaching lineageTukārām
Varkarī tradition sets Dnyāneshwar at the foundation and Tukārām at the summit — 'Dnyānadev laid the stone, Tukārām raised the spire' runs the saying. Three and a half centuries and a wide social distance separate them, but their two palkhīs walk the same road and arrive on the same day.
- Teaching lineageEknāth
Eknāth found the Dnyāneshwarī drifting badly in manuscript three centuries after it was written and produced the recension still used. Tradition says he was directed to the samādhi at Ālandi in a dream and had the tree root clearing away from it — an editorial act told as a devotional one.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dnyaneshwar”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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