The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.s1.2

v4.c21.s1.2

In Mahārāshtra, the central object of devotion was Vithobā, a local form of Vishnu, who dwells at the famous shrine of Pandharpur. It was upon him that the worship of the poet-saints of the Deccan was focused. The earliest writers in Marāthī (as opposed to the Mahārāshtrī Prākrit) belong to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and flourished under the Yādavas, the last Hindu dynasty of the Deccan. They are Mukundrāj, Nāmdev (A.D. 1270–1350) and Jnāneshvar. Their object was to bring the learning of the pundits down to the level of the common people. Jnāneshvar, who lived at Ālandi near Poona, is commonly believed to have made a buffalo recite the Veda! He wrote a paraphrase of the *Bhagavad Gītā*. Nāmdev, a devotee of Vithobā, was a tailor by caste. He wrote in Hindī as well as Marāthī; some of his poems found their way to northern India, and were incorporated in the *Ādi Granth* of the Sikhs.