A History of the Mahrattas v1.c7.71

v1.c7.71

² [Tukārām, perhaps the most popular poet among all classes in Mahārāshtra, was born in 1608 in Dehu village about thirty miles from Poona, and is popularly believed to have been translated to Vaikunth (heaven) in 1649. By means of his ābhanga, or metrical hymns, he endeavoured to preach the superiority of Bhakti (devotion to God) over Karma (ritual), and spared neither Brahman nor Gosāin in his efforts to inculcate more rational motives on the subject of religion and morality. His metrical compositions invariably end with the Marāthi words ‘Tuka mhane,’ i.e. ‘Tuka said,’ which has been compared with the αὐτὸς ἔφα of the Pythagoreans. The principal documentary account of his life is the Bhakti Līlāmrita, written in A.D. 1774, which embodies the legends and miracles associated with his name. Some of the latter appeared to Dr. Murray Mitchell to show traces of the influence of Christian beliefs. Tukārām and his family were devotees of the god Vithobā of Pandharpur, by whose personal intervention Sivājī is supposed to have escaped from the Muhammadans on the occasion of his visit to Tukārām in Poona. (J.B.B.R.A.S., vol. i (July) 1841, and vol. iii (January) 1849; Macnicol, Indian Theism, pp. 122-6). For Tukārām and Nāmadēva