Gora Kumbhar: The Potter Who Tapped the Saints

Before reading this section. It describes the death of an infant. If that is not something you want to read today, go to the next section, which is about the testing of the saints and is the part of his life that is actually used.

What the tradition says happened

• Gora was treading clay, which is done barefoot, for hours, in a pit
• He was singing the name and was absorbed in it
• His infant son came to him, or was left near the clay pit
• The child went under his feet in the clay
• He did not notice
• His wife Santi found the child dead in the clay

What follows in the accounts:

• Santi was destroyed by it, and in most tellings she blamed him and cursed him
• He is said to have received it without visible reaction, saying it was Vitthal's doing, which the accounts do not present as admirable so much as inexplicable
• He vowed not to touch anybody again with his hands, or in some versions Santi refused to let him touch her, and he kept his hands folded and stopped working
• Much later, at a gathering at Pandharpur, the child is said to have been restored

How to handle this story. Directly, and with the necessary things said.

First, what it is: a thirteenth or fourteenth century hagiographic episode, of a kind that exists in many traditions, in which absorption in the divine is dramatised by having it override the strongest natural attachment there is.

Second, what it is not: an endorsement.

A child died because an adult who was responsible for that child was not paying attention. That is what the story describes. No amount of devotional framing changes it, and this app will not pretend otherwise.

Third, the tradition itself does not sit comfortably with it. Santi's grief and anger are in the story. The vow he takes afterwards is a response to something he understood as a catastrophe, not a triumph. And the story requires a restoration at the end, which is the tradition admitting that what happened was intolerable.

Fourth, and this is the part that matters practically:

• Nothing in any tradition asks you to be less attentive to a child. Absorption that costs a child's safety is not a spiritual state, it is a failure of care
• Small children die in exactly this kind of ordinary domestic accident, in water, in fires, under vehicles, in machinery, because an adult was distracted for a minute
• If you have small children in a house with a workshop, a kitchen fire, an open well, a water drum, a terrace or a road outside, the supervision is the practice
• In India, Childline 1098 is the free 24 hour child helpline
• Emergency services are 112
• If you have lost a child, grief of that kind is not something to carry alone. Tele MANAS 14416 is free, 24 hours, in many languages, and bereavement support exists

And the reading of the story that the Varkari tradition itself supports, since it is worth saying:

Gora is not held up in Maharashtra as a model of what to do. He is held up for the thapi story, the testing of the saints, which is about honesty, and for having been a working potter who sang while he worked.

The clay pit episode is the tradition's most extreme illustration of absorption, and extreme illustrations are not instructions.

This is the story he is actually known for, and it is one of the best in the tradition.

The setting: a gathering of the Varkari saints at Gora's house at Ter, or in some accounts at Pandharpur.

Who was there: Jnaneshwar, Nivruttinath, Sopan, Muktabai, Namdev, Chokhamela, Sena, Savata, Narahari, and others. Effectively the whole first generation of the tradition in one room.

What was proposed. Somebody, in most versions Jnaneshwar or Muktabai, said that Gora was a potter, that a potter can tell a finished pot from an unfinished one by tapping it, and that he should therefore test the assembled company and say which of them were done.

The instrument: the thapi, the wooden beater a potter uses to shape and finish a pot.

What he did: he went round the room and tapped each of them on the head with it.

And everybody sat still, and let him, and he pronounced each of them baked.

Except one.

Namdev objected. He moved, or protested, or said something to the effect that this was absurd and he would not be struck on the head by a potter.

And Gora said he was kaccha. Unbaked. Not finished.

Why that is the answer

Because the test was never about the tapping.

The others had let a potter hit them on the head in front of everybody, without objection, because it did not occur to them to mind. There was nothing in them that needed defending.

Namdev minded. And the fact that he minded, and said so, was the reading.

Namdev's standing at this point was very high. He was the great singer of the group, close to Vitthal by every account, and he had a following. That is precisely what made him unfinished, and the story is careful about it: the objection was not vanity in a crude sense, it was a man who knew what he was worth and could not have it treated casually.

What happened next. This is the important part, and it is why the story is told.

Namdev accepted it.

He went to Jnaneshwar, who told him he needed a guru, and sent him to Visoba Khechar, at the temple at Aundha Nagnath.

And what Visoba did to him is one of the other famous episodes of the tradition. Namdev found him lying in the temple with his feet on the shivalinga. Outraged, he told him to move them. Visoba said he was old and could not, and asked Namdev to move his feet somewhere there was no Shiva. And every place Namdev moved them, a linga appeared under them.

Namdev received initiation from him, and everything he wrote afterwards is held to be different from what came before.

So the sequence is: a potter tapped a famous saint on the head, told him he was not finished, the saint accepted it, got a guru, and became what he is remembered as.

What to take from this

One. The test for whether somebody has arrived is what they do when they are not treated as important.

That is directly usable. It is worth applying to any teacher, and it is worth applying to yourself, which is harder.

Two. A working potter was qualified to assess a room of saints. The tradition has no problem with this. Craft knowledge transferred straight across, and nobody in the room said a potter was not entitled.

Three. The best outcome in the story belongs to the one who failed. Namdev is the one who learned something. The ones who passed the test are not described as having gained anything from it.

Four. Being told you are unfinished is survivable. He did not leave, sulk, or dispute it. He asked what to do about it.

His position among the Varkari saints

Gora is the elder of the first generation. He is often addressed as Gorobakaka, uncle Gora, and in the collective imagery he is the senior one at whose house the others gather.

The list he belongs to. The Varkari tradition's roll of early saints is deliberately a list of trades:

• Gora, the potter
• Savata, the gardener
• Sena, the barber
• Narahari, the goldsmith
• Chokhamela, the labourer
• Janabai, the servant
• Kanhopatra, a courtesan's daughter
• Namdev, of a tailor family
• Damaji, a revenue officer
• Jnaneshwar and his siblings, outcast brahmanas

That list is the tradition's argument, made by composition rather than by statement. There is no way to look at it and conclude that access depends on birth.

And each of them practised inside the trade. The name went with the wheel, the shears, the razor, the hammer, the grinding stone, the plants. Nobody was asked to stop working.

The mande story. He appears in Muktabai's entry too.

Muktabai wanted to make mande, the thin festival flatbread, and the earthen vessel for it was not to be had, in the version most told because Gora's wheel was idle. Jnaneshwar heated his own back yogically and she baked them on it.

It is a small domestic story and it is told with affection, and it belongs to the same cluster of episodes around this group of friends.

Where he is

Ter, in Dharashiv district, formerly Osmanabad, Maharashtra:

• Around 20 kilometres from Dharashiv town
• The Gora Kumbhar samadhi and temple
• The ancient site of Tagara, with a museum holding excavated material, including a great deal of pottery
• The Trivikram temple, an early structure of unusual form
• His samadhi is dated to around 1317

Pandharpur: he is present in the collective devotion there, and his palkhi participates in the wari from Ter.

His abhangas: a small surviving body, plain in style, using the trade directly. The recurring image is the pot: the body as a vessel, the firing as what makes it hold, and the tapping as what tells you whether it will.

A note on the Kumbhar community: potters across India carry the caste name, and Gora is a figure of pride within it. In Maharashtra the community holds him as its saint, and Ter is a pilgrimage for potters specifically.

One. The tapping test, applied outward.

When you are assessing a teacher, an organisation, or anybody claiming spiritual standing, the question is not what they say when they are being honoured. It is what happens when they are not treated as important.

• Are they easy to interrupt
• Do they need the seat, the title, the order of precedence
• What do they do when contradicted by somebody with no status
• Is there a fee, and does the fee buy access to them
• Do they mind being tapped on the head

And the standing warnings that go with this series: any teacher who requires money for blessings, who isolates you from your family, who demands secrecy, who claims exclusive power over your outcomes, or whose conduct toward women or juniors would not survive being described plainly, is failing the test, and no lineage or reputation overrides that.

Two. The tapping test, applied inward.

This is the harder one and it is the point of the story.

Notice what happens in you when you are overlooked, corrected in public, seated further back than you expected, or treated as ordinary by somebody who does not know what you have done. The reaction is the reading.

Namdev is the model here, not the ones who passed. He minded, he was told, and he did something about it.

Three. The trade is the practice.

Gora threw pots and sang the name to the wheel. That is the whole Varkari method. You do not need a different life; you need the name attached to the one you have.

Practically:

• Pick the repetitive part of your work
• Attach one name to its rhythm: Vitthal Vitthal, Rama Krishna Hari, or whatever is yours
• Do not add anything to your day

Four. And the limit, which this entry has already stated but which belongs in the summary.

Absorption is not an excuse for inattention where somebody depends on you. The story of the clay pit is the tradition's extreme illustration of absorption, and extreme illustrations are not instructions. Children, patients, passengers and anybody in your care come first, and any practice that competes with that is being done wrong. Childline 1098, emergency 112.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Rama Krishna Hari, to the rhythm of whatever you do with your hands
• Once a week, the honest version of the thapi question: what did I do this week when I was not treated as important
• And, if you are ever told you are unfinished by somebody with no status: Namdev's response, which was to ask what to do about it

A closing thought

A potter in a town that had been making pots since before the Roman trade, who tested his own work by tapping it and listening, was asked to do the same to the greatest saints of his generation.

He hit all of them on the head with a wooden beater, and they let him, except the most famous one, who objected.

And the potter said, in front of everybody, that the famous one was not baked yet.

And the famous one went and got a teacher.

Who: Gora Kumbhar, roughly 1267 to 1317, a potter of Ter in Dharashiv district, Maharashtra, and the senior figure of the first generation of Varkari saints, often called Gorobakaka.

His trade: digging and treading clay, throwing pots, firing them, and testing them by tapping and listening, which is how a potter tells a finished pot from an unbaked one.

His practice: singing the name to the rhythm of the work, which is the Varkari method in its plainest form.

The famous story: at a gathering of the saints, he was asked to test which of them were finished, and went round tapping each on the head with his thapi, the potter's beater. All of them let him, except Namdev, who objected, and Gora pronounced him kaccha, unbaked.

Why that was the answer: the test was what they did when not treated as important, and Namdev minded.

What Namdev did: accepted it, went to Jnaneshwar, was told he needed a guru, and was sent to Visoba Khechar at Aundha Nagnath, where he found him lying with his feet on the shivalinga and could not find a place to move them where no linga appeared.

The hard story: his infant son died under his feet in the clay pit while he was absorbed in singing. It is a hagiographic illustration of absorption and it is not an instruction. Nothing in any tradition asks for less attention to a child. Childline 1098, emergency 112.

Where to go: Ter, around 20 kilometres from Dharashiv, with his samadhi, the ancient site of Tagara and its museum of excavated pottery.

The test to keep: what do you do when you are not treated as important.