Person · Ganapatya saint
Moraya Gosāvi
Also known as Morya Gosavi, Moraya Gosavi, Morya Gosawi
The central saint of the Gāṇapatya tradition in Maharashtra, who walked from Chinchwad to Morgāv every fourth day of the month until age stopped him, whereupon the image is said to have followed him home. He took sanjīvan samādhi at Chinchwad, where his line held the shrine for seven generations.
- Date
- c. 14th–17th century, traditions differ
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Gāṇapatya tradition; Chinchwad Deva records
- Confidence
- Traditional / narrative attribution
Worth knowing
The cry Ganapati Bappā Moraya, heard at every Maharashtrian visarjan, carries his name in it — the saint's name attached to the god's, which almost no other Indian invocation does. Whether it honours him or the Morgāv shrine he walked to is argued both ways.
Connections (2)
- PilgrimageMoreshwar, Baramati
Moraya Gosāvi walked from Chinchwad to Morgāv on the fourth of every month for most of a long life, and the tradition says that when he could no longer make the journey the image came to him. The Aṣṭavināyaka circuit's habit of starting and ending at Morgāv follows his practice.
- Pilgrimage order ofGāṇapatya tradition
Moraya is the figure through whom the Gāṇapatya tradition became a Maharashtrian mass devotion rather than a textual sect. His name is in the cry raised at every immersion — Ganapati Bappā Moraya — which puts a seventeenth-century saint into the mouth of anyone who has ever carried an idol to the water.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Morya Gosavi”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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