A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s4.6

v1.c5.s4.6

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.