Shivaji and His Times c4.s5: §5. Religious teachers
Shivaji and His Times c4.s5
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§5. Religious teachers
c4.s5.1
The same sense of equality was fostered by religion. The Brahmans, no doubt, tried to maintain their monopoly of the sacred lore and their aloofness from other castes as a sort of spiritual aristocracy. But strong religious movements arose and swept through the length and breadth of the land, teaching the sanctity of conduct rather than mere birth, the superiority of a living personal faith to mere ritual, and the oneness of all true believers before God. These popular movements were hostile to the haughty claims of the Brahman hierarchy, and their chief centre was Pandharpur, one of the most famous seats of pilgrimage in the land.
c4.s5.2
"Like the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 16th century, there was a religious, social, and literary revival and Reformation in India, but notably in the Deccan in the 15th and 16th centuries. This religious revival was not Brahmanical in its orthodoxy; it was heterodox in its spirit of protest against forms and ceremonies and class distinctions based on birth, and ethical in its preference of a pure heart, and of the law of love, to all other acquired merits and good works. This religious revival was the work also of the people, of the masses, and not of the classes. At its head were saints and prophets, poets and philosophers, who sprang chiefly from the lower orders of society,—tailors, carpenters, potters, gardeners, shop-keepers, barbers, and even mahars (scavengers)—more often than Brahmans. The names of Tukaram [born about 1568], of Ramdas [b. 1608], of Vaman Pandit [b. 1636], and of Eknath [b. 1528] still retain their ascendency over the minds of the people of Maharashtra.” (Ranade, 10; also Bom. Gaz. xx. 473; Sardesai, i. 38-78.)
c4.s5.3
The fairs held at the chief places of pilgrimage on particular holy days tended to foster a sense of Hindu unity, like the national games of ancient Greece, though to a lesser extent, because caste has always remained with us a disintegrating force. These shrines became distributing centres of cult and culture, and broke down tribal or parochial narrowness, though imperceptibly.