New History of the Marathas v1.c5.66

v1.c5.66

Chakradhar himself never wrote any work of his own. He had a large number of gifted disciples all passionately devoted to him and whole-heartedly co-operating with him in his attack on orthodoxy. Every act and incident of his life, as also every utterance of his, were properly recorded and later arranged in two important works,—the first containing his sermons and utterances is termed *Siddhanta-Sutra-path*⁹ and has become the sacred book of the sect which the followers read and recite. The other, recording his acts and incidents, is called *Lilacharitra*.¹⁰ In order to preserve the sanctity of the text of these works, they were purposely written in thirteen different code-scripts according to as many sub-divisions, which prevented their being tampered with by ignorant readers. These two form the sacred scriptures of the Mānabhāv sect and are the compositions of Mahindra Bhatt Vyās, a learned scholar, who was helped in his task by half a dozen other scholars of equal calibre. One noticeable peculiarity of these works is that exact dates and places are mentioned in most cases for the occurrences that are narrated, and this fact materially helps the student of history. The use of the code scripts has preserved the original language from any manipulation or interpolation by subsequent scribes, so that in the Mānabhāv works we find today the very words, phrases and forms of the day of their composition, without the modernization which has vitiated the contents and form of the writings of our other Mahārāshtra saints like Jnaneshwar and Eknāth.