Place · Jnaneshwar samadhi town · India
Ālandi
The town on the Indrayani river, 25 kilometres north of Pune, holding the samadhi of Jnaneshwar (1275-1296), the 13-year-old Marathi mystic who composed the Jnaneshwari — a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita in demotic Marathi that founded the Varkari tradition and made Marathi a vehicle of philosophical theology. Jnaneshwar entered sanjeevan samadhi (living entombment) at Alandi at age 21. The temple complex, substantially rebuilt by Shivaji's descendants and the Peshwas, is one of two palkhi start-points for the Pandharpur Wari — the three-week walking pilgrimage with Dehu that gathers over a million Varkaris each Ashadhi Ekadashi.
- Function
- Burial and funerary
- Tradition
- Varkari tradition; Marathi sant literature
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.677, 73.899
Connections (5)
- Monastic transmissionTryambaka / Trimbakeshwar
Nivrittinath, Dnyaneshwar's elder brother, is said to have received Nath initiation at Trimbakeshwar after being separated from the family on the Brahmagiri hill, and he passed that lineage to Dnyaneshwar, whose Marathi commentary on the Gita founded the Varkari tradition. So the devotional movement that walks to Pandharpur traces part of its descent through an ascetic order at this jyotirlinga, two hundred kilometres away, and the connection is still recited in Varkari lineage lists.
- Samadhi atDnyāneshwar
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.
- Procession toDehū
The Ālandi and Dehū palkhīs set out within a day of each other and walk roughly parallel roads south, meeting at Wākhri outside Pandharpūr on the eve of Āshādhi Ekādashi. Between them they move several hundred thousand people on foot across Maharashtra each monsoon, in dindis that keep their own order on the road.
- Procession toPandharpūr
The Dnyāneshwar palkhī leaves Ālandi about eighteen days before Āshādhi Ekādashi and walks some two hundred and fifty kilometres to Pandharpūr. The pādukās ride in a silver palanquin; everyone else walks, in dindis that hold their own order on the road, singing abhangs and stopping at the same villages every year.
- Site withinPune
Ālandi lies within Pune — the two sites sit about 18 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Ālandi is one of the specific sites that give Pune its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
On these journeys
Sources
Jnaneshwar / Alandi palkhi tradition
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