\engtitle{.. The Mystic Poets of Maharashtra ..}##
\itxtitle{.. ##The Mystic Poets of Maharashtra## ..}##\endtitles ##
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There was a resplendent galaxy of poet saints in Maharashtra from the 13th
to the 17th Century, from Jnandev (1275-'96) down to Turkaram (1608-'90).
Altogether this was a time of great national vitality, covering the Maratha
struggle for independence of the Moghul Empire and its final achievement
under Shivaji. On the whole, however, the poet-saints showed no concern with
such matters.
They were a strong, rugged, outspoken dynasty drawn from all social classes.
Jnandev was a Brahmin, but there were also Namdev, a tailor; Gora, a potter;
Savanta, a gardener; Chokha, a sweeper; and Tukaram, a tradesman. There were
women too among them: Jnandev's sister Muktabai, Namdev's servant Jani,
Chokha's wife Soyara. Their outstanding quality is a beautiful fusing of
bhakti (devotion) with Jnana (knowledge). They worshipped and merged into
Oneness with the God they worshipped. This is especially prominent in
Tukaram. He declares for instance, "When I meditate on the Lord of Pandhari
the body becomes transformed together with the mind. Where is there room for
speech then? My I-ness is become Hari (God). With the mind merging in Divine
Conciousness all creation looks divine. Tukaram says: 'how shall I put it?
All at once I became lost in God-conciousness." And again, "The glory of the
bhaktas is known only to themselves. It is hard for others to understand. In
order to increase the happiness of love in this world they display duality
without actually dividing. This is understood only by those who have
experienced Unity through faith."
Jnandev with his sister Muktabai and his two brothers, all four of them
poet-saints, had an unhappy childhood. Their father, after living the life
of an ascetic, returned to married life, and on that account the orthodox
Brahmins ostracised the whole family. They were orphaned young and their
genius blazed forth while still in their teens. Jnandev, the greatest of
them, is better known as Jnaneshwara, the 'Lord of Wisdom'. His great work,
the Jnaneshwari is a monumental verse commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Apart
from this there are also his Anubhavamrita or 'Elixir of Experience'. Having
himself attained this elixir, he says,
"The distinction between liberated, aspirant and bound subsists only so long
as this Elixir of Experience is unknown to one. The enjoyer and the enjoyed,
the seer and the seen, are merged in the non-dual, which is indivisible. The
devotee has become God, the Goal has become God, the Goal has become the
path; this indeed is solitude in the universe.'
This magnificent achievement was completed by the age of 22, when he
declared that his life's work was finished and ceremoniously entered into
samadhi in a specially prepared crypt, having given instruction that it was
to be bricked up. This was in the village of Alandi in Poona district. There
is a beautiful atmosphere of sanctity and serenity there. It contains a tree
under which an unending chain of recitation of the Jnaneshwari has gone
until the present day. Jnaneshwara has remained a perrenial fount of
inspiration for Maharashtra. He was at once the foundation and crown of this
amazing dynasty.
Namdev, who arose next, described the three brothers as manifestations of
Para-Brahmin and spoke of them as shining suns. In his youth he had been a
thief and murderer, until one day, hearing a young mother explain to her
fatherless child that they had to live in penury because his father had been
killed, he realised with sudden horror that it was he who was the killer,
and with a violent revulsion of feeling he rushed to the nearby temple to
take his own life. He was prevented, however, and he devoted the rest of his
life to penance and worship. He wrote in Hindi as well as Marathi (two
sister languages both derived from sanskrit, as are most of those of North
India), and it is interesting to note that some of his Hindi songs are
included in the Granth Sahib, the scripture of the Sikhs, which their
founder, Guru Nanak, partly wrote and partly compiled.
While he was still a simple devotee of God in the form of Vithoba it was
Jnaneshwara's sister Muktabai who awoke him to deeper understanding. when he
met her she astonished him:
What if you have become a devotee of the Lord?
The Inner Refuge is beyond your ken;
Never have you turned your gaze Spiritward!
What use is your godly talk till then?
Your Self you have never found;
I-ness has you in its iron grip.
Yet, unmindful of your own failure,
You question us about our roots.
She also wrote for him:
All form is forever permeated with formlessness.
Shape it has none, but enveloped in Maya
The devotee does with form endow
The all-pervading Boundless That within.
Such was the celestial group of which one, the sweeper Chokha proclaimed:
'God neither has form nor is without form.'
Another, the servant-girl Janabai, felt that she 'ate God, drank God, slept
on God and carried on all her activities with God.'
Namdev died in 1350. He desired his ashes to be buried under the doorstep to
the main entrance of the temple of Vitobha at Pandharpur so that all
devotees who went there might bless him with their holy feet.
The next great saint of this galaxy was Eknath (1533-'99). He taught that
bhakti and jnana are like flower and fruit, inconcievable in seperation. He
carried on the tradition of Jnaneshwar and Namdev. The text of the Jnashwari
had become corrupted, so he re-edited it, and his recension has remained
current to the present day. He was both scholar and poet, and his verse
exposition of chapter XI of the Bhagavata is as illuminating and as popular
as the Jnaneshwari. His copious and varied compositions (including
folk-songs called 'Bharudas') have enriched Marathi literature with their
unique quality.
Eknath had a contemporary, Father Stephens, an English Jesuit from Oxford,
living in Goa who composed a Christa Purana in Marathi distinctlyreminiscent
of Eknath's Bhagavata.
There are many sayings that bring out the pure advaitic understanding of
Eknath. "My body is Pandhari" (a place of pilgrimage) he says, and Atma is
Vitthala (God) therein." And again: "When I bathe in the river the water is
liquid conciousness!"
He was famed for his never-ending patience as well as for his tolerance and
compassion. He was carrying holy water for his worship but gave it to a
thirsty donkey. On the anniversary of his ancestors he called an untouchable
for food and gave him the consecrated dishes prepared for the Brahmins.
The next great figure in this dynasty, Tukaram, (1608-'50) was a peasant
trader by profession but ranks as the crown of Maratha sainthood after
Jnaneshwara. The woman poet Bahinabai speaks of him as the steeple or
pinnacle of the edifice whose foundation Jnaneshwara had laid. Rameshwar, a
contemporary disciple, declaired that " in jnana, bhakti and vairagya
(dispassion) there was no one to match Tukaram".
Even today his songs sway our emotions as they did his contemporaries.
The secret lies in the rustic simplicity and utter frankness on
self-revelationin his songs together with their profound understanding and
ardent devotion. He had not an easy life. He could not get up any interest
in trade, with the result that he and his family often went hungry,and his
wife developed into a scold, as well as she might. The local Brahmins
declared that, being of low caste, he had no right to compose poems and
ordered him to throw them into the river flowing through the town.
Obediently he did so, but the waters washed them ashore undamaged. Abashed
by this, his critics allowed them to be kept. He rose above
body-conciousness while still in the body. In a well known poem he declares;
"I witnessed with my own eyes my bodily death. That was indeed a unique
sacrament!" He started (like his prototype Namdev) as an ordinary devotee of
God as Vitthala but attained transcendent experience "I went to see God and
there stood transfigured into God'" he says.
He is one of those rare saints who have disappeared bodily at the end of
life. Since there was no body to entomb there is no shrine to him to which
pilgrims can repair. Instead they go to the spot on the river bank where his
poems were washed ashore. There is a beautiful atmosphere there.
Apart from this fraternity of saints centred around Pandharpur, there were
two other contemporaries of Tukaram who were eminent Marathi poet-saints.
One of them was a Muslim faqir , Sheikh Muhammed, whose tomb at Ahmednagar
became a place of pilgrimage for Muslims and Hindus alike. The other was
Samartha Ramdas, the powerful inspirer of Shivaji, whose shrine is at
Sajjangad in Satara District.
Sheikh Muhammed is chiefly remembered today for his Yoga-sangrama, a long
allegory in songs describing the spiritual struggle as a 'battle of yoga'.
He confesses: "I do not know refined speech. Cultured pandits may laugh at
my uncouth expression. But look into the core and understand my soul." Like
Kabir he understood the basic unanimity of the religions and he could have
said with Kabir: " Ram and Rahim, Ishwar and Allah are all the same." He
regarded all sadhus as the same and not other than the Absolute, whatever
their external forms or religions. "The peel of the jackfruit is rough and
prickly but the pulp inside is sweet. The shell of the coconut is hard and
rough, but the milk and kernel inside are delicious." He also said: "There
is no difference between Paramatma (universal spirit) and saint. They are
essentially the same although they appear different." Tukaram said in almost
the same words: "All saints are the same. They appear different only in
externals, just as milk is all the same though it comes from cows of
different colour."
Samartha Ramdas also said the same: "Sadhus look different, but, merged in
Self, they are all manifestations of the One Real." What distinguished him
from the Pandharpur group of saints was that, unlike them, he was interested
in the national life also. He became the Guru of Shivaji and inspired the
freedom struggle against Aurangzeb. His Das-Bodha is a Marathi classic of
rare merit. Though composed in the ovi metre, it has the terseness and
forthrightness of vigorous prose. Its pragmatism is impregnated with the
highest spiritual values. It inculcates Vedanta in practical terms of
work-a-day life. Its code of enlightened conduct covers all social classes
and applies to both ruler and ruled.
The message and mission of Ramdas were summed up in the meaningful phrase
'Maharashtra Dharma'. His work contained that mixture of realism and
intuition which are so characteristic of Maharashtra through the ages. In
fact his Das-Bodha with Tukaram's Gatha or Book of Songs and the Jnaneshwari
can be looked upon as the 'Triple Veda' of Maharashtra down to this day.
Their appeal is both to the head and heart. They are couched in a form which
some might consider more like rythmical prose than verse. But they are all
alike embodiments of Satyam-Sivam-Sundaram - 'Truth, Purity, Beauty'. The
truth must be experienced, and these had experienced it and could indicate
it for others to experience.
From the Mountain Path