Jnaneshwar: The Gita in Marathi, Written at Sixteen

What the children went for. A shuddhi patra, a certificate of purification, which would allow them back into the community.

Paithan was the seat of brahmanical authority in the Deccan and the place where such a thing would be issued.

What happened there. The story is the best known in Marathi devotional literature.

• The assembly refused
• They objected to the children's very existence and to their claim to knowledge
• Somebody, in the argument, addressed the boy by name: Jnanadev, the lord of knowledge, and asked scornfully whether he thought knowledge was in everything
• A buffalo was being driven past, and was being beaten
• The name of the buffalo was also Jnana, a common enough name
• Jnaneshwar said that the same thing was in the buffalo as in them
• He was challenged: if that were so, let the buffalo recite the Vedas
• And the buffalo recited

What that story is doing. It is a very precise attack.

The Vedas were the property of a class defined by birth, and their recitation was the boundary marker of that class. The claim being made against the children was that they were outside it and could not have access.

The answer is that an animal, being beaten in the street, recited them.

That does not say the children are qualified. It says the qualification is not what you think it is, and it demonstrates it in the most humiliating available way.

What followed: the certificate was granted, and the family was restored, though the tradition is clear that the acceptance was grudging.

Whether it happened. A guide should be honest.

The buffalo episode is hagiography and cannot be verified. What can be said is that the story was told and retold in Maharashtra for seven hundred years, and that it functions as the Varkari tradition's foundational statement about who may approach knowledge.

The abuse in the story. Worth noticing.

The buffalo is being beaten when it is brought into the argument. That detail is not incidental: the story places an animal being mistreated at the centre of a dispute about who is worthy, and the animal is the one that answers.

The Varkari tradition afterward is notably attentive to animals, to labour, and to the people who do it, and the buffalo is where that starts.

Nivruttinath. The elder brother, and Jnaneshwar's guru.

• He received initiation from Gahininath, of the Nath lineage
• The Nath connection is important: the Varkari tradition descends in part from the Nath yogis, through Nivruttinath
• He instructed Jnaneshwar to write the commentary
• He is treated in his own entry elsewhere in this app

The four siblings. All four are saints in the tradition.

• Nivruttinath, the eldest, the guru
• Jnaneshwar, the author
• Sopan
• Muktabai, the youngest, a sister, who is treated in her own entry in this batch

They are worshipped together, their samadhis are at Alandi, Nevasa, Saswad and Edlabad, and the Varkari tradition treats the four as a unit.

What it is: a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, in Marathi, in around 9,000 verses in the ovi metre.

Its proper name is the Bhavartha Dipika, the lamp of the meaning, but nobody calls it that.

When and where:

• Composed at Nevasa, in Ahmednagar district, around 1290
• He was around fifteen or sixteen
• He spoke it, and Sacchidananda Baba wrote it down
• The pillar he leaned against at Nevasa while dictating is shown

Why it mattered. Because of the language.

• The Gita was in Sanskrit
• Sanskrit was restricted, by education, which meant by caste and by gender
• The commentary tradition was in Sanskrit, which restricted it further
• Jnaneshwar put it into Marathi, the language spoken by farmers, weavers, potters and women in the Deccan

And he said so. The text contains explicit statements about the language.

He writes that he will make Marathi compete with Sanskrit, that he will bring the meaning into the speech of the country, and, in one of the most quoted lines, that he will make amrita available in the mother tongue.

What that did. It made the Gita available to everybody who could hear Marathi, which was everybody in Maharashtra.

The Varkari tradition afterward, the whole body of abhanga poetry, the saints who were potters and gardeners and servants, and the annual walk to Pandharpur, all follow from a text being available in the spoken language.

The style:

• Ovi metre, the Marathi folk metre used in grinding songs and lullabies
• Enormous use of similes drawn from ordinary life: cooking, farming, weaving, the household, animals, weather
• Digressive, expansive, and affectionate toward the reader
• Much longer than the text it comments on

The similes are the reason it is loved. He explains philosophical points using flour, milk, salt in water, a lamp in a room, a child and its mother, a river and the sea, cloth and thread, and a very large number of images from things people were doing while listening.

The Pasayadan. The closing prayer, and the most famous passage in Marathi.

Having finished the commentary, he asks his guru for a prasad, a favour, and what he asks for is this:

Let the crooked go straight. Let all beings be friends. Let the darkness of sin be gone. Let everybody's own dharma give them light. Let the rain of desire fall on everybody so that they get what they want. Let there be a constant company of the good on earth. Let those who are hungry for it be given. And let all beings everywhere be happy.

It asks for nothing for himself.

The Pasayadan is recited at the end of Varkari gatherings, in Marathi schools, at public functions across Maharashtra, and by people with no particular religious commitment. It functions in Marathi roughly as a secular blessing.

His other works:

• Amrutanubhav, the experience of immortality, an independent philosophical work, much shorter and much harder, on the nature of the self and its identity with reality
• Changdev Pasashti, sixty five verses addressed to Changdev
• Haripath, twenty seven abhangas on the name, which is recited daily by Varkaris

The Haripath is the practical one. Twenty seven short verses on the sufficiency of the name of Hari, recited by very large numbers of people every day, and available with translation and in recordings everywhere.

The best known episode from Jnaneshwar's short life after the Jnaneshwari, and it is a story about age and accomplishment.

Changdev:

• A yogi of great reputation
• Said to be fourteen hundred years old, having repeatedly extended his life by yogic means
• Possessed of siddhis, powers
• With a large following

The letter. He heard about Jnaneshwar and decided to write to him.

• He began the letter and could not work out how to address him
• Ji, sir, was too respectful for a boy of sixteen
• A familiar address was wrong for somebody of that reputation
• He could not resolve it
• So he sent a blank sheet

The reply. Muktabai, Jnaneshwar's younger sister, saw it and said, in effect, that a man of fourteen hundred years was still a blank page.

And Jnaneshwar wrote back: sixty five verses, the Changdev Pasashti, explaining the nature of reality to him.

The meeting. Changdev came to see him.

• He came in state, riding a tiger, using a live snake as a whip, with his disciples
• Jnaneshwar and his siblings were sitting on a wall
• Seeing him approach, Jnaneshwar told the wall to go and meet him
• And the wall moved, carrying the four of them, and went to receive him

What the story is doing. It is very precise.

Changdev's power is over living things: he has mastered a tiger and a snake, which are the most dangerous animals available, and he arrives displaying that mastery.

Jnaneshwar's answer is to move a dead thing. A wall is inert. Nothing in yoga gives you power over a wall.

The point being made is that Changdev's siddhis are an extension of ordinary capacity, obtained by long effort, and that what Jnaneshwar has is of a different kind entirely and did not take fourteen hundred years.

And Changdev accepted it. He got down, and asked to be taught, and became a disciple of Muktabai, the youngest of the four, a girl.

That last detail is the point of the story. A yogi of fourteen hundred years took initiation from a teenage girl.

On siddhis. Since the story is about them, the tradition's position is worth stating.

• The classical texts, including the Yoga Sutras, describe siddhis and then warn against them
• Patanjali lists them at length in the third chapter and then says they are obstacles to samadhi
• Every serious tradition in this series says the same: powers are a by product, pursuing them is a diversion, and displaying them is worse
• The Tamil siddhas say it, the Nath tradition says it, and the Varkari tradition says it here

And the practical version: anybody demonstrating powers to you, or offering to teach you powers, or charging for them, is doing the thing every tradition warns about.

Changdev's own end. He is a saint in the tradition in his own right, with a samadhi at Puntamba on the Godavari, and abhangas attributed to him.

So the story ends with the man who arrived on a tiger being included in the same list as the family he came to impress.

The end. In 1296, at twenty one.

What he did:

• He returned to Alandi
• He asked for a place to be prepared
• He entered a stone chamber, in the presence of the assembled devotees
• He sat in samadhi
• The chamber was closed

Sanjeevan samadhi. The tradition's term: a living samadhi, entered consciously and not left.

How to describe this. Honestly, and with what needs saying.

What the tradition holds: that he entered the state deliberately, that he is present there, and that he did not die in the ordinary sense.

What it is, described plainly: a twenty one year old sealed himself into a chamber, with the community's participation, and did not come out.

Both of those are true statements and the tradition holds the first.

What must be said:

• This is a hagiographic account of a saint's end, in 1296, and it is not a model
• No tradition asks anybody to do this
• The practices around samadhi and jal samadhi in the traditions are not instructions to any reader
• If reading this produces any thought about ending your own life, that is a signal to talk to somebody. Tele MANAS is 14416 in India, free, in many languages

What happened afterward. This is the part that matters practically.

• His three siblings followed within about a year, each taking samadhi at a different place
• The four samadhis are at Alandi, Nevasa or Sopan's at Saswad, and Muktabai's at Edlabad or Mehun
• The Alandi samadhi became a pilgrimage centre
• And two hundred and fifty years later, Eknath found the Jnaneshwari text corrupted, went to Alandi, and produced the corrected edition, which is described in his own entry

The tree. There is an account, told by Eknath, that when he went to the samadhi he found a root of the ajanavriksha tree had grown around Jnaneshwar's neck, and that he removed it.

That episode is why the Eknath recension exists and it is the tradition's own explanation for how the text was recovered.

Alandi now:

• On the Indrayani, around 25 kilometres from Pune
• The samadhi mandir, the principal shrine
• Very large numbers, particularly at the Ashadhi and Kartiki ekadashis
• The starting point of the palkhi, described below

The palkhi. This is what Alandi is for.

• Every year, in Jyeshtha, the padukas, the sandals, of Jnaneshwar are placed in a palkhi, a palanquin
• It sets out from Alandi and walks to Pandharpur, around 250 kilometres
• It arrives for Ashadhi Ekadashi, in June or July
• Hundreds of thousands of people walk with it
• A second palkhi, of Tukaram, sets out from Dehu at the same time
• Others come from Paithan for Eknath, from Saswad for Sopan, from Trimbakeshwar for Nivruttinath, and from Muktainagar for Muktabai

The Wari. The walk itself.

• Around 21 days on foot
• The walkers are Varkaris, those who do the wari, the annual journey
• They walk in dindis, organised groups, singing abhangas, with taal cymbals and the mridang
• They carry tulsi on their heads, particularly the women
• The ringan, a formation in which a horse runs in a circle through the assembled walkers, is performed at set points
• People feed them along the route

Who walks. Anybody.

Farmers, labourers, students, professionals, old people, children, and every community. The wari is one of the largest annual pedestrian pilgrimages in the world and it is famously unstratified: people who would not eat together at home eat together on the road.

That is the Varkari tradition's actual achievement, and it is a direct consequence of a sixteen year old putting the Gita into Marathi.

Reading

The Pasayadan first. It is one passage, it is short, it is the most famous thing in Marathi, and it asks for nothing except that everybody be well.

Available everywhere with translation, and in very many recordings including a famous one by Lata Mangeshkar.

The Haripath next. Twenty seven abhangas on the name, recited daily by Varkaris, short, and available with translation and recordings.

The Jnaneshwari itself:

• Nine thousand ovis, so it is not read in a sitting
• The standard approach is chapter by chapter, alongside the Gita
• English and Hindi translations exist
• Marathi editions with modern paraphrase are widely available
• The Nevasa manuscript tradition and the Eknath recension are the textual history

How to use it with the Gita. This is the recommendation.

Read a chapter of the Gita, then the corresponding section of the Jnaneshwari. The commentary is far longer than the text and is discursive, so it slows the reading down considerably, which is the point.

It is the most affectionate Gita commentary in any Indian language and it explains things using cooking and farming rather than technical vocabulary.

Amrutanubhav is much harder and is for later.

Walking

The Wari is open to anybody.

• The Alandi palkhi and the Dehu palkhi set out in Jyeshtha, generally June
• They arrive at Pandharpur for Ashadhi Ekadashi
• Around 21 days, around 250 kilometres
• People join for the whole distance or for a few days

Practical points if you are considering it:

• It is monsoon. It rains, the roads are wet, and you will be wet
• It is 21 days of walking, which requires preparation. Train beforehand
• Footwear matters more than anything else. Blisters end more waris than anything
• Arrangements exist through dindis, organised groups, which handle food, water and sleeping arrangements. Joining one is far better than going alone
• Medical camps run along the route
• If you have a heart condition, diabetes, mobility problems or are pregnant, speak to a doctor first. People do collapse
• Many people do a short section, a few days, which is entirely normal and accepted

What it is like. By every account, the thing that stays with people is not the destination.

It is the walking, the singing, the food given by villages along the way, the sleeping in fields and schools, and the fact that everybody is doing the same thing at the same pace regardless of who they are.

Pandharpur:

• On the Bhima, called the Chandrabhaga there because of its curve
• The Vitthal temple, with Rukmini
• Vitthal stands on a brick, hands on hips, in a posture unlike standard Vishnu iconography
• The Ashadhi and Kartiki ekadashis are the great days
• Chokhamela's samadhi is at the step, outside, described in his own entry

A daily practice from this entry:

• The Haripath, or one abhanga of it
• Vitthal Vitthal or Rama Krishna Hari, which is the Varkari name
• The Pasayadan, as a closing, which is what Maharashtra does
• And, once, the walk

A closing thought

A family was thrown out of its community because the father had taken sannyasa and then been told to go back to his wife.

The community said the children could not be admitted. The parents asked what would fix it and were told their own deaths, and they went into the river.

The children were still refused, went to Paithan to argue, and a buffalo being beaten in the street recited the Vedas.

And the second son, at sixteen, took the book that had been kept in a language most people could not read, put it into the language his neighbours spoke, and ended it by asking that everybody everywhere should get what they want and that all beings should be friends.

He was dead at twenty one, and every June a few hundred thousand people walk two hundred and fifty kilometres carrying his sandals.