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A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s4: IV. Marāthī Literature

A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s4

Language
English

Contents

IV. Marāthī Literature

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The late Mr. Justice Ranade, in his essay on the rise of the Marāthā power,¹ points out that the political revolution which united the people of Mahārāshtra against the Muhammadan Empire of Delhi synchronized with a religious, social and literary revival in the Deccan. This movement manifested itself in the partial emancipation of the Sūdras, the lowest of the four social orders mentioned in the Code of Manu, several of whom were elevated to the two higher orders of Kshattri and Vaish, in protests against the formal ritualism and caste-exclusiveness, introduced and fostered by Brahmanism, and in the appearance of gurus, saints and poets, drawn from the lower as well as the upper strata of society, who helped through the medium of the Marāthī language to foster the idea of nationality among the general mass of the people of Mahārāshtra. This feature of Marāthā history finds no place in Grant Duff’s invaluable work, which is concerned wholly with the political history of the time; and even had he found leisure to deal with it, one may doubt whether literary research was sufficiently advanced at the opening of the nineteenth century to have rendered possible any estimate of the influence of vernacular literature upon the progress of the Marāthā people.

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¹ Ranade, *Rise of the Marāthā Power*, pp. 9, 10.

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The Marāthī language is now admitted to be the daughter of the Prākrit ‘Mahārāshtri,’ Prākrit signifying the ‘natural, unartificial’ vernacular dialect as opposed to the Sanskrit or ‘purified’ literary language. The influence of Mahārāshtri was centred in Berār (Vidarbha), which in early days was the seat of a powerful kingdom, whose rulers encouraged the growth of literature, both in Sanskrit and the vernacular tongue. Mahārāshtri was connected with another early Prākrit, Magadhi, and under the name of Saurāshtri it was once the language of Gujarāt, before that country was overwhelmed by invasion from other parts of India, where Saurasēni was spoken. Receiving culture at an early period, Mahārāshtri became in its native land the vehicle of charming lyrics, and was carried by its popularity over the whole of Hindustan, where it was employed by the writers of epic poetry, and also by Jain religious writers of a later age. As literary culture commenced to exercise its influence upon Mahārāshtri and other Prākrits, the popular vernaculars which formed the original basis of these polished literary dialects were styled Apabhramsa, i.e. ‘corrupt,’ ‘decayed.’ As in the case of the Prākrits these Apabhramsas also began in their turn to receive polish and to be employed in literature. Marāthī, the home language of the Marāthā people, is the direct descendant of the Apabhramsa of Mahārāshtri (I.G. (1908)).

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As to when Marāthī developed into its present form from the original Prākrit, no definite evidence is at present forthcoming. ‘If we are to accept the conjectures of those that have bestowed some thought on the question,’ writes Professor W. B. Patvardhan,¹ ‘and have laboured to unearth old documents and relics, we may take it that Marāthī assumed its own form somewhere between the third and seventh centuries (A.D.). If we read the few plates in Marāthī proper, we are struck with the crudeness of style and language, and also of the grammatical forms. The whole space between the third and the tenth century is a gulf in the history of the Marāthī language and literature which has yet to be bridged. Materials to span it probably lie buried in the literary débris of Mahārāshtra, and are waiting for some patient toiler to secure them from total extinction.’ He suggests that the development of Marāthī took place during the supremacy in the Deccan of the Rāshtrakutas (A.D. 753–973 (?)), who were an indigenous dynasty, and that it may have assumed the form and proportions of a literary language under another indigenous dynasty, the Yādavas (Jādavs) of Dēvgiri, one of whose most prominent representatives, Rāmchandra or Rāmdēv (A.D. 1271–1309), is mentioned at the end of the Jñānēshvari in terms which indicate that he had extended his royal patronage to Jñānēshvar (Jñānēv or Jñānoba), the author of that work.

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¹ Wilson Philological Lectures, 1917, by Professor W. B. Patvardhan, B.A. (Cal.)

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The two chief figures of Marāthī literature, who are held to have flourished prior to the rise of the Bhakti school,¹ are Mukundrāj and Jñānēshvar. The date of the former is uncertain. Professor Patvardhan, while admitting that he may have flourished in the latter half of the twelfth century, and may have been, like the latter, a protégé of the Yādava house of Dēvgiri, points out that the language and idiom of his works and certain internal evidence supplied by the Vivekasindhu suggest that he belongs to a much later date than Jñānēshvar. On the other hand the entire absence of Arabic, Persian and Urdu words in his writings supports the belief that he lived prior to the Muhammadan invasion of the Deccan. Dr. J. N. Farquhar, however, states that Mahīpati treats Mukundrāj as a contemporary of Tukārām, and that this point has been established by the Rev. J. E. Abbott, an American missionary of New Jersey, who has made a special study of the lives of the Marāthī poets. Though the precise date is uncertain, it is quite possible that Mukundrāj flourished during the first half of the seventeenth century. A Deshasth Brahman by caste and a devotee of Siva, whose cult was then dominant, Mukundrāj was the author of three philosophical, religious works, written in the Ovi metre,² viz. the Paramāmrita, the Vivekasindhu, and the Mulastambha, of which the two former simply present in the garb of Marāthī poetry the Advaita philosophy of Shankarāchārya (c. 788–850), with its doctrines of the identity of the individual soul with the universal soul and of Māya or cosmical illusion. The Mulastambha (‘Primary Pillar’) is a panegyric of the god Siva.

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¹ For further information regarding Bhakti, see Grierson’s article on ‘Bhakti-Marga’ at pp. 2,539 ff. of Hastings’ Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (1909), and R. G. Bhandarkar’s Vaisnavism, Saivism, &c. (1913), pp. 87 ff.

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² The standard Ovi metre ‘consists of three full lines of fourteen units each, each unit quantitatively equal to a short syllable—and a fourth line of seven units.’ It was a metrical instrument that could respond to any cadence, warlike or martial, brisk or grave.’ (Prof. Patvardhan, Wilson Philological Lecture II, 1917.)

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Jnānēshvar is declared by tradition to have been born in A.D. 1271 at Apegāon, and lived most of his life at Alandi in Poona District, where his tomb and temple still exist and attract thousands of people annually to a great fair held in his honour. He was the son of a Deshasth Brahman, named Vithalpant, who had become a Sanyāsī, but subsequently reverted to the life of a Grihasta or householder, thereby incurring the displeasure of the Brahmans of Apegāon, who excommunicated him and his family. Vithalpant had two other sons, Nivrittināth and Sopāndēv, born respectively in 1268 and 1274, and a daughter, Muktabāi, born in 1277. Many legends have grown up around the name of Jnānēshvar, which testify to his divine powers and saintliness; and while his sister Muktabāi was popularly regarded as an incarnation of the goddess of learning, he and his two brothers were declared to be an incarnation of the Hindu Trimūrti or ‘ Triad of gods,’ viz. Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. Among the various literary works attributed to Jnānēshvar, by far the most important is the Jnānēshvarī or Jnānadēvī, which is an elaborate commentary in the Ovi metre on the Bhagavad Gīta; and if the traditional date of his birth be accepted Jnānēshvar must, according to Professor Patvardhan, have composed this great expositional poem of about 10,000 verses at the age of sixteen.

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While concerned primarily with the expounding of the ‘ Song Celestial ’ for the benefit of the ordinary Marāthā of his age, the author of the Jnānēshvarī takes as his underlying theme the value of service and love of God, or, briefly, of Bhakti or devotion, and must on this account be considered the direct forerunner of the Bhakti school of Marāthī poetry. Dr. Farquhar describes him as ‘ the coryphæus of the whole Bhakti movement of the Marāthā country,’ and as ‘ a true Bhakta, honouring Siva as well as Vishnu, and following Sankara in philosophy.’ Remembering that Jnānēshvar was a faithful devotee of Siva and had deeply imbibed the Vedānta philosophy of Shankarāchārya, Professor Patvardhan reasonably suggests that his emotional advocacy of the purely Vaishnava doctrine of Bhakti may have been due to the inspiration of the celebrated Vaishnava philosopher and teacher, Rāmānuja (c. A.D. 1100–1150), who is regarded as the leading opponent of the views of Shankarāchārya. The influence of the latter is clearly discernible in another work of Jnānēshvar, the Amritānubhava, a treatise on self-knowledge, which for this reason is believed by Professor Patvardhan to have been produced earlier than the *Jnānēshvarī*. Dr. Farquhar, however, accepts the suggestion of Dr. Laddu of the Sanskrit College, Benares, that Jnānēshvar was a *Bhāgavat* and that the whole *Bhakti* movement of Mahārāshtra sprang from this *Bhāgavat* origin.

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The *Bhāgavat* cult rests upon a passage in the *Harivāmsa*, which reflects the worship of the two gods, Siva and Vishnu, as equal or as one. An inscription of A.D. 528-9 proves that the *Bhāgavat* community was in existence at that date, while at a later date (c. 800-900) the *Skanda Upanishād* was written to prove the identity of Vishnu and Siva. There seems good ground for holding that the *Bhāgavat* sect, with its doctrine of the identity of the two gods, was numerous in southern India from A.D. 550 to 900, and that the great *Bhāgavata Purān*, with its doctrine of *Bhakti*, was the literary creation of the sect. In all probability Jnānēshvar was under the influence of the *Bhāgavat* Vishnuswāmi, who was his senior by only thirty or at most forty years.¹ In conclusion let it suffice to point out that Professor Patvardhan gives clear reasons for holding that the *abhangas* or trochaic odes usually attributed to Jnānēshvar were probably written by another poet of the same name, *after* the cult of Vithoba had been firmly established and Pandharpur had become one of the popular *tīrths*, or places of pilgrimage, in Mahārāshtra.² Nivrittināth, Sopāndēv and Muktabāī also composed verses which are of little importance compared with the deservedly popular works of their famous brother.

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¹ The problem is discussed in Dr. J. N. Farquhar's *Outline of the Religious Literature of India*, the proofs of which he kindly allowed me to peruse, and from which I have taken these statements.

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² Wilson Philological Lecture III, 1917, by Professor W. B. Patvardhan.

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From Jnānēshvar we pass to Nāmadēva (Nāmdēv or Nāma), who is the earliest representative of a new school of Marāthī poetry known generally as the *Bhakti* school. Romantic glorification of *Bhakti* or Spiritual Devotion is the theme of Nāmdēv and his successors, who strove to break down the barriers which for ages had debarred the populace from all access to any more knowledge than a man's particular *guru* or spiritual guide could or would communicate. Of Nāmadēva's actual life and circumstances no authentic record remains, but passages in his *abhangas* indicate that he was born about A.D. 1270, his father being by caste a Shimpī or tailor, that he was a Saiva, and that he led a lawless life as a youth, but later, being filled with remorse at the sight of the sufferings which his misconduct had caused, he foreswore evil and embraced the service of God. Dr. Farquhar holds that Nāmadēva flourished about a century later than A.D. 1270, basing the suggestion upon Sir R. Bhandarkar’s *Vaisnavism, Saivism, &c.*, page 92, and upon other considerations. He probably flourished about 1420 A.D.¹ Nāmadēva used the *abhanga* measure,² a modification of the ovi metre, and wrote with such passion and intensity that he inspired a whole congregation of minor poets, including his wife, mother, his maidservant Janabāī, whose extant poems almost equal her master’s in fervour, his sons, his daughter, and his sister. Nor was his example emulated only by his family. Among others whom his genius likewise inspired were Samvatya of the Mālī or gardener caste, Naraharī of the Sonār or goldsmith caste, Gora who was a Kumbhār or potter, and lastly Chōka Mēla, who belonged to the degraded Mahār population and must have been wholly illiterate. ‘That he (Chōka Mēla), too, burst into striking poetry is evidence that Nāmdēv’s influence acted as a strong force in awakening the devotional imagination of Mahārāshtra,’ levelling all differences of caste and class, and establishing ‘a spiritual democracy where all had equal rights and all could eat together, drink together, dance together and sing together.’³ Nāmadēva, as Dr. Farquhar points out, was influential in the Punjab as well as in the Marāthā country, as is proved by his hymns in the *Granth* and by a shrine dedicated to his memory and still in use at Ghuman in the Gurdaspur District. Besides the *abhangas*, which are very popular with the peasantry of Mahārāshtra and which usually end with the words *Nāma mhane*, ‘Nāma said,’⁴ Nāmadēva composed a good deal of other poetry, chiefly epics based upon Purānic myths and poetical lives of the saints; but his devotional *abhangas*, framed in the measure which was later perfected by Tukārām and vibrating with an intensely human note of appeal, constitute the chief source of his fame and popularity. In his verse the influence of Islam first appears in the Deccan. He and those who followed him criticized idolatry with some severity, but continued the use of idols.

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¹ A number of Nāmadēva’s hymns appear in the Sikh *Granth*. See Macauliffe’s *Religion of the Sikhs*, vi.

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² The *abhanga* is a trochaic ode, the verses consisting of four, three or two feet; every two lines rhyming with one another; and consisting usually of from four to thirty lines.

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³ Wilson Philological Lecture IV, 1917.

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⁴ This feature is also found in Tukārām’s verses, which similarly contain the words *Tukā mhane*, i.e. ‘Tukā said.’

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The disappearance from the stage of Nāmadēva marks the close of a period in the history of Marāthī literature. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries no work of importance was produced, and the literary legacy of the period is trivial. The reason is foreshadowed in the *abhangas* of Nāmadēva, which contain references to foreign incursion and to a Pādshāh, who is obviously a Moslem ruler. The Muhammadan invasions of the Deccan had commenced, rendering life unsettled and generating frequent occasions of rapine and disorder. Now for the first time, in such literary remains as have survived, foreign words, both Persian and Urdu, are introduced into the language of Mahārāshtra; while in the domain of religion the presence of foreign invaders results in a reconciliation between the two warring sects of Saivas and Vaishnavas, which is symbolized in the installation of an image of Vithoba (Vishnu) in the temple of Pandhari on the Bhīma river (Pandharpur in Sholāpur District), and its association with the *lingam* of Siva. Dr. J. N. Farquhar mentions that ‘in the chief temple of Pandharpur, Vitthal (i.e. Vithoba) wears a curious sort of crown, which the priests say is Siva’s *linga*; so that the image, standing for both gods, is truly Bhāgavata.’ ¹

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¹ Dr. J. N. Farquhar, *Outline of the Religious Literature of India*. The Bhāgavat origin of the Bhakti movement is dealt with at some length by Dr. Farquhar.

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Throughout these centuries of Muhammadan invasion and predominance the general mass of the people remained inert and indifferent to the changes around them. Professor Patvardhan holds that the philosophical doctrines of the earlier writers taught them to regard the changes and disorders of this epoch with resignation. It is more likely that the mass of the people awaited the call of a leader, whom they could follow blindly, before grappling with the foreign invader. Their attitude of docile indifference was not shared at any rate by some of the younger and more enthusiastic Marāthās, whose ancestors had been petty chieftains and had bequeathed to them traditions of daring and adventure. They realized that in the unsettled condition of the country principalities might be secured and fortunes be made by bold enterprise; and these ideas coupled with the hatred aroused by the ill-treatment occasionally practised by the foreigner inclined them to listen eagerly to anyone who could expound the old Purānic tales of warfare, the myths of mighty warriors, and stories of divine intervention on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed.¹

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¹ Wilson Philological Lecture V, 1917.

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By the commencement of the sixteenth century Mahārāshtra was ready to welcome a literature which would recall the past achievements of heroes and at the same time fan the embers of her martial ardour; and thus, after an almost complete silence of two centuries, there appeared in satisfaction of the popular need such works as the Marāthī versions of the Mahābhārata, the abhangas of Tukārām, the Dasa Bōdha of Rāmdās, the Purānic excerpts of Vāman Pandit, and Dāsopant’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.

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The earliest and most remarkable figure of this new period of Marāthī literature was the poet and reformer Eknāth, a Deshasth Brahman, who was born in A.D. 1528, or, according to others, in 1548, and died in 1608. Of the ridicule and persecution which he suffered at the hands of the Brahmans of Paithan and Benares many tales are told. On several occasions he was outcasted, and once his poems were publicly sunk in the river Godāvari.² But Eknāth paid no heed to the censures of a privileged priesthood, and preached boldly against the caste-system and other social disabilities which have no sanction in the Shāstras. His literary output was immense, the most celebrated of his works being a Marāthī rendering of the Bhāgavat Purān, containing about 20,000 verses in the ovi metre, which he completed at Paithan in 1573. It was for daring to render this famous Sanskrit work in Marāthī, the language of the Sūdras, that he was arraigned before the Brahman pandits of Benares, whose fervent advocacy of Sanskrit as the only suitable literary language was only equalled by their outspoken contempt for the vernacular tongue. But Eknāth triumphed over his accusers, and his Marāthī Bhāgavat, with its doctrine of personal service of Harī or God as the only road to salvation, is a lasting memorial of his struggle on behalf of the language of the common people of Mahārāshtra. His ābhangas, some of which reflect severely upon idolatry, and recall passages in the Old Testament, are not considered to possess as much merit as his translations from the Bhāgavat. But the influence of Eknāth, whether in the sphere of didactic, lyric or epic poetry, was immense. It is to his influence that Marāthī literature owes Dāsopant’s, and possibly also Vāman’s, commentaries on the Bhagavad Gīta and Tukārām’s lyrical ābhangas, while as regards epic poetry his disciple Gāoba was able adequately to complete, in a style worthy of his master, the Bhavārtha Rāmāyana, of which Eknāth, at the time of his death,¹ had composed only forty-four cantos.² In philosophy Eknāth was a monist, like Mukundrāj and Jnānēshvar.

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² Acworth, Ballads of the Marāthās (1894), Introduction.

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¹ The date of Eknāth’s death is uncertain, but is stated to have occurred in A.D. 1608 (Acworth’s Marāthā Ballads, p. xxvi). Another of his notable epic poems was the Rukmini Svayamvār.

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² Wilson Philological Lecture V, 1917.

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Among the more noteworthy of Eknāth’s successors was his grandson Muktēshvar, who was born in 1608 and was the first great poet to write purely for the sake of literature. His compositions, based upon old Hindu myths and stories of divine incarnations, are mostly epic poems, among them being the Rāmāyana, written in the shlōk metre, which is remarkable for its narrative and descriptive power, the Mahābhārata in the ovi metre, of which only four or five books are extant, the Gajendra-Mōksha, Hanumāntākhyana, Arjuna-Kāma-Pūrtī, Vishvamitra Bhōjana, Harischandrākhyana, and a rendering of the Bhagavad Gīta. Muktēshvar was one of the first Marāthī poets to employ Sanskrit metres, although much of his work is in the old ovi metre, which had hitherto shared with the ābhanga and dindi measures the chief popularity among vernacular writers. Besides the works just mentioned, Muktēshvar composed two poems of a different character, the Ekanātha Charitra and the Murkāchi Lakshane, ‘ Characteristics of a Fool,’ The latter throws valuable light upon the social conditions of the poet’s age.

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Contemporary with Muktēshvar was Tukārām (1608–49), who represents the zenith of the Bhakti school of devotional poetry.

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He was born at Dehu village, Poona District, and was the son of a Vānī (trader), whose family for several generations had associated itself closely with the worship of Vithoba of Pandharpur, in whose honour Tukārām composed many of his verses. His compositions are marked by a high level of religious exaltation, and the style of his *abhangas*, which are supposed to number more than 8,000, is simple and often full of pathos. He has been described as ‘the Kabir of the Marāthās,’ and no other poet has contributed so many familiar quotations to the common speech of Mahārāshtra.¹ Yet Tukārām could on occasion display a mastery of invective, and in his crusade against the empty ritual and barren ceremonial of Brahman priestcraft chastised with unsparing ridicule both Brahman and Gosāin. The following verses exemplify his attitude towards the Gosāin whose only tangible mark of asceticism is discoverable in the colour of his garments.²

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¹ Acworth, *Ballads of the Marāthās* (1894), Introduction.

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² Essay on the vernacular literature of the Marāthās, *J B.B.R.A.S.*, vol. i (1841–4).

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‘Brother, we have become a Gosāin and abandoned everything.
Pātel—build us here a chapel, bring bhāng and tobacco in plenty,
Provide daily food for me, and send a sister to serve me,
Tukā said that such devotion resembled the mask worn at the Shimga (annual Saturnalia).’

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The story goes that Sivājī once sent some of his councillors to Tukārām to beg him to come to court; but Tukārām sent him a few stanzas instead.

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To Tukārām a number of minor poets owed their inspiration, among them being Rāmēshvar Bhat, Sēna Nhāvī, Narāyan Bava, Kanhoba, Prēma Bāī and two Muhammadans, Sheikh Muhammad and Sheikh Sultān. The traditional story of his life, and the popular legends which have grown around his name, are enshrined in two later works, the *Bhakti Līlāmrita* and the *Bhakti Vijāya*, of which the former was composed by Mahīpati in 1774. In this work Dr. Murray Mitchell professed to discern traces of the influence of Christian thought and ideas, and suggests that Tukārām’s biographer may have been acquainted with Father Guimaraens’ Purān on the Life of Christ, which was written in the Konkani dialect of Marāthī and published in Lisbon in 1659.¹

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¹ For alleged influence of Christian thought upon Marāthī literature, see N. Macnicol’s Indian Theism, App. C.

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Another notable figure of this epoch was Sivājī’s guru or spiritual guide, Rāmdās Swāmī (1608–81), who is credited with the authorship of a considerable body of Marāthī verse. Less fluent, less pathetic than Tukārām, Rāmdās is remarkable for the analytical power and practical wisdom displayed in his poetry. His poems, composed in both the shlok and ovi metres, are important by reason of the political or philosophical lessons which they may be held to embody; and his stray verses, entitled, ‘Admonitions to the Mind,’ written for the benefit of Sivājī, are almost worthy to rank with Solomon’s Proverbs.² His name is perpetuated in the small sect of Rāmdāsis, whose headquarters are at Parli (Sajjangarh) in Sātāra District. The sect uses a secret mantra of its own, and contains many Sādhus or professional ascetics. Rāmdās was the centre of a group of poets, of whom the most notable were Rangnāth Swāmī of Paithan, Rangnāth of Nigadi and Vāman Pandit of Kolhāpur.

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² Acworth, Ballads of the Marāthās, Introduction, p. xxvi.

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Two years before Rāmdās’ death in 1681, was born at Nazre, near Pandharpur, the famous Srīdhar, a Deshasth Brahman, who is perhaps the most popular of all Marāthā poets. ‘In every town and village in the Deccan and Konkan,’ writes Acworth, ‘especially during the rains, the pious Marāthā will be found enjoying with his family and friends the recitation of the Pōthi of Srīdhar, and enjoying it indeed. Except an occasional gentle laugh, or a sigh, or a tear, not a sound disturbs the rapt silence of the audience, unless when one of those passages of supreme pathos is reached, which affects the whole of the listeners simultaneously with an outburst of emotion which drowns the voice of the reader.’ Srīdhar’s chief poems are the Rāmā Vijaya and Harī Vijaya, composed in A.D. 1703; the Pāndava Pratāp in 1712, and the Shiva Līlāmrita completed in 1718. Acworth quotes on page xxviii of his introduction to The Ballads of the Marāthās certain observations of Srīdhar on the value of the Marāthī tongue, which ‘offer a good illustration of his pleasing style, the sweetness of his diction, picturesqueness of ideas and images, and multiplicity of metaphor and simile.’ Srīdhar’s influence is not directly religious, except in so far as the stories he reproduces have a religious character. He died in 1728, at the age of fifty.

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Another Deshasth Brahman writer of the seventeenth century was Vāman Pandit, who was a Sanskrit scholar of repute, and in his early days wrote only in that language. Following the example of the pedants of that age he disdained the vernacular tongue of Mahārāshtra. But a change gradually came over him, and his later works which are numerous and include every variety of poetic composition were all written in Marāthī. His major works are the Yatārtha Dīpika—a commentary on the Bhagavad Gīta, the Bhīshma Pratidnya, Sīta Svayamvār, Kālīya Mardan, Bhāma Vilās, Rasa Krīda and Bhārat Bava, in most of which he displayed that ingenuity and felicity of rhyme which led to his being styled ‘Vāman Yamakya,’ i.e. ‘Vāman the Rhymer.’ He died in 1773.

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One of the most voluminous writers of the eighteenth century was Moropant, a Karhāda Brahman, who was born in 1729 and died in 1794. He began work as a clerk or accountant. He composed poems in the ārya metre in honour of Vishnu and other gods, epics in imitation of the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata, and miscellaneous poems such as the Kekāvali or ‘peacock’s cry.’ ‘The greater part of his writings is disfigured by pedantry, and they are so overloaded with pure Sanskrit words that they are less pleasant reading than the simple verse of Tukārām or Srīdhar.’¹ His popularity with the Brahmans is due to the fact that he was a Purānik or expounder of the legends, and decidedly belonged to the class of pedantic Pandits referred to by Srīdhar.²

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¹ Acworth, Ballads of the Marāthās, Introduction, p. xxx.

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² Ibid.

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Contemporary with Moropant was Amratrāo, who wrote the Dāmāji Pant Rasīd—a eulogy of the Pandharpur shrine, and various other stray poems in the katav or katibandha metre, ‘in which most of the Pavadas or historical ballads of the Marāthās are composed.’³ After him comes Mahīpati, a Brahman of Tārabād, near Paithan, who wrote four large works, the Bhakti Vijaya, Santa Līlāmrita Sāra, Bhakti Līlāmrita, and Katha-sārāmrita, which celebrate the lives and achievements of the devotees and saints of Mahārāshtra and also various shorter poems including the Tukārāmcharitra or ‘Life of Tukārām.’ The last conspicuous poet of the eighteenth century was Raghunāth Pandit, whose one surviving poem is the Svayamvār, describing the marriage of Nala and Damayanti. ‘The episode,’ writes Acworth, ‘is taken from the Sanskrit, but the composition shows great originality and power.’ The lesser poets of this period include Ananta Tanaya, Madhu Munēshvar, Shivadnia Kēsari, who are not well known; Dēvidās, author of a rhapsody entitled Vyankatēsh-Stōtra; Vishvanāth, author of Nauka Krīdan; Anant or Ānand Phandi, who wrote songs in praise of the Pēshwā Bājī Rāo II and Bāpu Gōkhalē; Narāyan, author of Ānand Sāgar; and several others.

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³ Ibid., p. xxxi.

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In addition to the classical poetry of Mahārāshtra, described above, Acworth draws attention to two other orders of poems in the Marāthī language, viz. the Lāvanis or love-songs, and the Pavadas or historical ballads. The former are frankly erotic, and have been justly described as both licentious and coarse. ‘The greatest of the Lāvani-writers, Rām Jōshi, is however free from this imputation. He was the son of a well-to-do Deshasth Brahman of Sholāpur, was born in 1762 and died in 1802. He has written many hundreds of Lāvanis, and they are, with some exceptions, morally unobjectionable. He is said to have travelled from place to place, expounding sacred tales from the Purāns, and reciting his own verses and those of Moropant, whom, like other Brahmans, he held in high esteem. He has also written several interesting Pādas and some descriptive ballads in Lāvani style, one of which gives a beautiful and touching account of the great famine of 1803.’¹ This poem is included in a collection of Marāthī ballads published by Mr. Acworth and Pandit Shāligrām in 1891; while another of Rām Jōshi’s poems, describing Jasvant Rāo Holkar’s raid in Poona and Khāndesh in 1802, is included in Mr. Acworth’s later collection of ballads, published in 1894. At the present day lāvanis are largely sung by Murlīs, i.e. women dedicated to the god Khandoba, who wander into the larger towns, accompanied by two or three musicians, and support themselves and their adherents by singing and prostitution. They also take part in the tamāshas or lalitas, which represent the modern form of old village dramatic representations, played by the Gōndhalīs or wandering minstrels of the Deccan, and which were much in favour two centuries ago with the people of Mahārāshtra.¹

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¹ Acworth, *Ballads of the Marāthās*, Introduction, p. xxxi.

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¹ Acworth, *Ballads of the Marāthās*, Introduction, p. xxxiv.

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A full description of the *Pavada* or historical ballad, which is not a written poem but has been handed down orally by the Gōndhalīs from generation to generation, will be found at pages xxxii to xxxviii of Acworth’s *Ballads of the Marāthās*, published by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. in 1894. Excellent examples of this form of wandering minstrelsy will be found in this valuable publication; and there is little to add to the author’s account, except to remark that since he compiled the collection the gradual relinquishment by the Gōndhalīs of their time-honoured vocation, to which he drew attention, has become even more marked. The gradual spread of education, the march of industrial enterprise, and constant immigration into the capital of the Presidency, with its theatres, cinemas and other modern forms of amusement, have together tended to render obsolete the occupation and the songs of the vagrant minstrel-caste of Mahārāshtra.

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Of prose literature prior to the nineteenth century there is little to be recorded, the chief works being the *Vetal Panchāishi*, the *Panchopākhyan* and *Sinhāsan Battishi*, which are books of fable, and the *Bakhars* or accounts of Sivājī’s life and times, the respective historical values of which have been explained by Professor Jadunāth Sarkar on pages 500, 501 of his recent (1919) publication—*Shivaji and His Times*.

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With the establishment of the British government in the Deccan and Southern Marāthā country, a new era in Marāthī prose literature commenced. Missionary enterprise was not slow in publishing works in which religion and philanthropy played a leading part, and they were followed, as education on Western lines advanced, by works of a more secular character—historical, biographical, scientific and so forth. The introduction of typography and lithography, the establishment of printing-presses also, aided to swell the stream of Marāthī publications, and it is no exaggeration to say that examples of every type of work, from the novel or romance to the historical treatise or the handbook of science, are obtainable in the Marāthī language.

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At times there has been a certain reaction against the new type of literature arising from closer contact with Western thought and methods of education, and this has manifested itself in the reproduction of the older Marāthī literature, both religious and historical, and in the publication of commentaries and explanations thereof. But speaking generally, in the words of Professor Patvardhan, ‘the impact with Western people, Western institutions and Western literatures, the growing acquaintance and association of the East and the West, have already produced salutary results, and the present-day literature of Mahārāshtra is certainly tending towards the Western type.’ Like other Prākrits, Marāthī, as Professor J. Sarkar points out (*Shivaji and His Times*, p. 15), had no literary prose till well into the eighteenth century, and the prose that was created by the official classes in their letters and chronicles was a barbarous jargon, composed mainly of Persian words and idioms. ‘The Sanskritised, elegant and varied prose that is now used is a creation of the British period.’

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In conclusion one may venture to remark that there is a tendency among some writers to over-estimate the influence upon the public mind of Mahārāshtra of the message of the Marāthī poets of the Bhakti school. They would have us believe that these poets welded the different and often mutually hostile groups composing the population of Mahārāshtra into one people, that they made the Marāthās a nation, and that they ennobled and humanized the moral character of the people so deeply that the latter relinquished the tendency to gain their ends by violent means, and adopted in the face of all the trials and chances of those unrestful years an attitude of humility and resignation. It cannot be gainsaid that the remarkable literary movement, which centres so largely about the god Vithoba and Pandharpur, bears many of the signs of true spiritual devotion, and that in its revolt against the empty ritual and thaumaturgic priestcraft of Brahmanism it embraced persons of various castes, and elevated to sainthood representatives of even the lowest classes in Mahārāshtra. Some of those associated more or less closely with the Pandharpur movement were women; ‘a few were Muhammadan converts to Hinduism, nearly half of them were Brahmans, while there were representatives in the other half from among all the other castes—Marāthās, Kunbīs, tailors, gardeners, potters, goldsmiths, repentant prostitutes and slave-girls, and even the outcaste Mahārs.’¹ Nowhere perhaps did the great religious revival, associated in other parts of India with the names of Rāmānuja and Tulsīdās, exercise an influence so genuinely for good as in the case of the worship that gathered about Vithoba of Pandharpur² (Macnicol, *Indian Theism*, pp. 126–7).

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¹ Ranade, *Rise of the Marāthā Power*, p. 146.

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² For a brief sketch of the *Bhāgavats* of Mahārāshtra to-day, see p. 301 of Dr. J. N. Farquhar’s *Outline of the Religious Literature of India*. The chief centres of the sect are Pandharpur, Alandi and Dehu. No outcaste is admitted to the *Bhāgavat* Temples in the Deccan.

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Yet it is doubtful whether the poetry of the saints and writers of the Bhakti school ever reached, or made much impression upon, the general mass of the people of Mahārāshtra. Messrs. Acworth and Shāligrām have pointed out that Marāthī poetry is ‘little known to the ryots and Māvalis of Mahārāshtra, and would not command their attention or admiration if it were known. . . . It is not to be supposed, however, that they are without a poetry of their own. With the Marāthās, the feelings of the commons have taken shape in the ballads, which are the genuine embodiment of national enthusiasm.’ And this national ballad literature, as Professor Sarkar remarks, was the creation of the age of Sivājī and his successors.

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Nor again was the success of the Marāthī poets, from Jnānadēv to Srīdhar, in overcoming the prejudices of caste anything more than partial and temporary. Far more efficacious than the devotional teaching of the poets in suppressing caste-exclusiveness and fostering a sense of ‘nationhood’ was the rise to power of the Sūdra, Sivājī, and his constant association with himself in the task of political and military administration of men who, in many instances, were not Brahmans. With Prabhus acting as his civil and military officials, with Marāthās and Bandhāris forming the bulk of his forces, with Kolīs or Rāmosīs acting as his comrades in hazardous enterprises, and with Mahārs and Māngs holding his hill-forts, the general mass of the people must have obtained a clearer and more practical idea of a common nationality and the limitations of an exclusive caste-system than they could ever have obtained, wholly illiterate as they were, from the public repetition of quotations from the *abhangas* of Tukārām or Nāmdēv. And when Sivājī’s descendants degenerated into a line of royal phantoms and the Pēshwās usurped all power, the ancient spirit of caste-exclusiveness reasserted itself with redoubled force, and the passionate cry of the Marāthī poet, ‘Find, O find, some means or other, To bring God and man together,’ was forgotten amid the caste-disputes and the class-intrigues of that era of Chitpāvan predominance. While accepting, therefore, all that admirers of the old Marāthī poetry claim for it as regards the truly reverent, spiritual and catholic character of its message, one cannot but point out that its influence at the time it was composed, upon the general population of Mahārāshtra cannot have been as great as is occasionally pretended, and that its power to mould the public mind did not survive the early days of Marāthā political dominance. ‘There was no attempt,’ says Professor J. Sarkar,¹ in reference to the character of the Marāthā State, ‘at well-thought-out, organized communal improvement, spread of education, or unification of the people, either under Shivaji or under the Pēshwās. The cohesion of the people in the Marāthā State was not organic, but artificial, accidental, and therefore precarious. It was solely dependent on the ruler’s extraordinary personality and disappeared when the country ceased to produce supermen.’

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¹ *Shivaji and His Times*, pp. 485–6.

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