Tradition · Bhakti tradition & pilgrimage order
Varkarī sampradāya
Also known as Warkari, Varkari panth, Warkari sampradaya
A Maharashtrian devotional order built around Vitthal of Pandharpūr and the twice-yearly walk to reach him. Its scripture is Marathi verse, not Sanskrit; its practice is the vārī, the walk itself; and its dindis have from the start admitted members without regard to caste, which is what distinguished it.
- Date
- from the thirteenth century
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Abhanga corpus; Varkarī practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
The order's poets span four centuries and most of the social order — Dnyāneshwar a Brahmin outcast, Nāmdev a calico-printer, Chokhāmelā a Mahār, Janābāi a maidservant, Tukārām a grain-trader. That range is the tradition's argument, made by who wrote it rather than by what they said.
Connections (2)
- Pilgrimage order ofPandharpūr
Pandharpūr is what the Varkarī order is organised around: the vārī, the twice-yearly walk to Vitthal at Āshādhi and Kārtiki Ekādashi, is the observance from which the order takes its name. A vārkarī is simply one who makes the vārī, so membership is defined by walking rather than by doctrine or birth.
- Teaching lineageEknāth
Eknāth of Paithan stands between Dnyāneshwar and Tukārām in the Varkarī succession. He recovered and edited the Dnyāneshwarī text, which had drifted in copying, and wrote bhārūds — dramatic songs in the voices of washerwomen, Mahārs and street performers that carried Vedānta in the idiom of people outside it. Tradition says he was directed to the neglected samādhi at Ālandi in a dream, which is how an editorial project came to be told as a devotional one.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Varkari”. Sangeet Natak Akademi and Ministry of Textiles documentation, and the standard field studies.
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