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Poems of Tukārām
Tukārām probably lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, most likely between 1608 and 1649, near what is now the city of Pune. He composed a large body of short lyric poems called abhangs, which are mainly in the Vaiṣṇava tradition of devotional poetry, but also carry traces of the Śaiva tradition, among others. He is one of the four most important bhakti poets or sants canonized by the Vārkarī sect in premodern and modern Maharashtra.
Tukārām’s poems and the hagiographic tradition surrounding him portray him as the second son in a low-caste Hindu family of Dehu, a small village on the Indrayāṇā River. The family probably belonged to the kunbī caste, which in Maharashtra consists primarily of agricultural laborers, sharecroppers, and poor farmers. Tukārām’s family appears to have been relatively secure at the time of his birth, since it cultivated about fifteen acres of land, managed a grocery shop on weekly market days, and engaged in some local moneylending. Tukārām’s elder brother lost his wife prematurely and, in response to the tragedy, became a wandering ascetic or renouncer of the world associated with the Gosavīs, an order of spiritual practitioners of the Nāth sect in premodern Maharashtra. As a consequence, Tukārām had to play an active role in the family occupations at an early age. At thirteen he was married to Rukmābāī, but since she turned out to be severely asthmatic, a second marriage was arranged for him, this time to a shrewish woman named Jījābāī. When Tukārām’s parents died in his seventeenth year, he became the sole support of two wives, some children, and younger brothers and sisters. In the terrible famine that overran the Deccan between 1629 and 1631, Tukārām lost his livelihood, and his first wife and eldest son died of starvation.
In or around 1630, apparently in the midst of this turmoil, Tukārām became a devotee of Viṭṭhala, the god of the Vārkarī sect. Viṭṭhala (also known as Viṭhobā and Pāṇḍurang) was the famous god of the holy town of Paṇḍharpur in southern Maharashtra, who had been assimilated into the Vaiṣṇava pantheon as an avatar of Kṛṣṇa several centuries earlier, but had nevertheless remained a common folk deity in the Maharashtrian countryside. During the next fifteen years or so, Tukārām became famous throughout the western Deccan region as a devotee, and drew a large number of followers to Dehu. However, reports of his simple but strong poetry, his numerous miracles, his criticism of some Hindu rituals and social conventions, and his advocacy of devotion to Viṭṭhala apparently angered a number of powerful priests and landowners in the region. Rāmeśvar Bhaṭṭ, a well-known brahman and perhaps Tukārām’s most formidable antagonist, secured an administrative order to have the poet’s notebooks thrown into the Indrāyṇī River. But the notebooks containing the text of numerous abhangs surfaced thirteen days later, unharmed by the water, and with the help of this miracle Tukārām overcame his persecutors. Sometime in the year 1649 he disappeared mysteriously, without leaving behind the kind of monument associated with the other major Marathi saints of the premodern period. One popular account of Tukārām’s life suggests that he “flew up to heaven” on the eagle Garuḍa, Lord Viṣṇu’s vehicle.
The text of Tukārām’s poems, preserved and transmitted by the poets, commentators, and priests of the Vārkarī sect, was closed only in the nineteenth century. It contains more than 4,600 abhangs (most of them in Marathi, but also several dozen in Hindi), of which about 1,300 can be traced back to the seventeenth century and probably constitute the authentic core of the poet’s work. The poems vary in length, mostly from five stanzas to about fifteen, and are at once literary and folk compositions, written and oral, fixed and fluid, verbal and musical, textual and preformative. Tukārām’s phrases and lines are frequently quoted in modern Marathi discourse. The poems are still recited, chanted, sung, and danced to regularly during the monthly, seasonal, and annual pilgrimages to Paṇḍharpur organized by the Vārkarī sect, and they often serve as models and reference points in modern Marathi literature, especially poetry.
A Tukārām abhang usually has a simple poetic structure and makes a commonplace religious or social argument. Its devotion is frequently directed toward Viṭṭhala, a small dark god with large eyes who stands akimbo on a brick in his temple in Paṇḍharpur. The speaker of an abhang often portrays himself as a poor, low-caste man who has faced much misfortune, humiliation, and torment. He frequently addresses God directly, calling him interchangeably Viṭṭhala and Pāṇḍurang, Hari and Nārāyaṇa (the last two being among Viṣṇu’s older, more general names), and sometimes going so far as actually to quarrel with him face to face. The imagery and symbolism of an abhang most often relates directly to the Maharashtrian countryside, its system of villages and small towns, its basically Hindu organization, and especially its agricultural economy.
The following selection of twelve abhangs draws on several distinct types of poems in the Tukārām tradition, and can be divided into three sets, each containing four interrelated poems. The first set is broadly social in its orientation. Of these four poems, “The Rich Farmer,” “The Harvest,” and “The Waterwheel” are situated explicitly in the farming community of rural Maharashtra. “The Rich Farmer” is a criticism of a representative of a locally powerful group of farmers, from the double viewpoint of a poor farmer and a Vaiṣṇava householder. Unlike the rich farmer, a good Vaiṣṇava (like Tukārām in this poem) would consider the recitation of a sacred text, the domestic cultivation of basil, charity to poor brahmans, and courtesy to guests very meaningful rituals in Hindu society. “The Harvest” figuratively uses the familiar activities on a farm (guarding the crop near harvest time, working on the threshing floor, distributing fair shares of the grain to the farm hands) to establish social, economic, and ethical ideals, and even to describe the process of working out one’s salvation. Similarly, “The Waterwheel” uses the Persian wheel, commonly employed for drawing irrigation water from wells, to explain the notion of rebirth in poetic terms. In Indian theories of karma and saṃsāra, a “living thing” is born 8,400,000 times on earth during the existence of a particular universe. Tukārām compares this succession of lives to the series of clay pots strung onto a waterwheel, which seems endless when the wheel rotates in the mouth of the well. The fourth poem in this set, “The Jangamas” is similar to “The Rich Farmer” in that it criticizes a particular social type in Tukārām’s immediate world. The target in this case, however, is not a social class but a religious group or subsect, the Jangamas, who are Vīraśaiva devotees of Śiva, and originate in the Kannada-speaking area (now the state of Karnataka) just south of Maharashtra.
The second set of four poems is concerned more directly with the devotee, his chosen god, and their mutual relationship. “The Divine Play” portrays the ignorant and symbolically blind devotee in search of the one who will grant him final liberation from suffering and rebirth. The poem also portrays the one as a two-faced god. On the one hand, he is the compassionate “driver” of the universe (here conceived of as something of a machine or vehicle), who responds favorably to his devotees’ cries for help. On the other hand, he is a cruelly playful master who unleashes “the dogs of desire upon us.” The next poem, “The Prisoner,” depicts the devotee as someone trapped helplessly in the world by action and suffering from the fruits of action, and identifies his god as the only one capable of freeing him permanently from that situation. “God as a Thief’ and “Quarreling with God,” however, dramatize the elusive, perplexing, and contradictory nature of that god. In one perspective, he is like a thief who raids his own house (the devotee’s embodied self) and then cunningly, even deviously, eludes his would-be captors (the “posse” of devotees on a godhunt that is similar to a manhunt). In another perspective, God is like a bully in the marketplace, inclined to obscene self-display and to picking on innocent passers-by.
The last set of four poems uses this general social and religious context to deepen the expression of the devotee’s predicament and anguish. These abhangs are composed in the personal confessional mode, and are addressed directly to God or are meant to be overheard by him. “Begging for God’s Compassion” is a typical supplication, in which Tukārām narrates his entrapment in action and rebirth, denigrates himself for being a victim of worldly and spiritual impoverishment, and begs God to free him forever. In “Viṭṭhala,” Tukārām uses the invocation of God’s name and form to praise both Viṭṭhala and the practice of devotion itself, and to contrast divinity and divine things with the created world, which possesses serpentlike “sharp and hostile stratagems.” In contrast, “The Resting Place” stays within the confessional mode, but moves beyond self-abasement to arrive at a sense of fulfillment in oneness with God. At this stage of Tukārām’s spiritual evolution as a bhakta, Viṭṭhala is initially a generalized male god (Nārāyaṇa) but then changes into a very maternal goddess figure (Pāṇḍurangā). Finally, “The Flood” articulates the state of perpetual joy, happiness, or bliss, which the devotee enters when he has broken through to God with his many good deeds of devotion.
The translations below are based on the Marathi text and numbering in Śrītukārāmmahārājgāthabhāṣya, with a commentary by Shankar Mahārāj Khandārkar, 2 vols. (Ambarkheḍ, District Yavatmāḷ: Śrīsādhumahārāj Sansthān, [1965?]).
Further Reading
J. Nelson Fraser and K. B. Marathe, trans., The Poems of Tukārām, 3 vols. (1909; reprint Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), contains prose translations of all the abhangs. For background, interpretations, and some translations, see G. A. Deleury, The Cult of Viṭhobā (Poona: Deccan College, 1960); Arun Kolatkar, “Translations from Tukārām and Other Saint-Poets,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 17:1 (Winter-Spring 1982), 111-14; R. D. Ranade, Mysticism in India: The Poet-Saints of Maharashtra (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983 reprint of Indian Mysticism: Mysticism in Maharashtra [Poona: Aryabhushan Press Office, 1933]); S. G. Tulpule, Classical Marathi Literature from the Beginning to A.D. 1818, vol. 9, fasc. 4 of A History of Indian Literature, edited by Jan Gonda (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1979); and Eleanor Zelliot, “The Medieval Bhakti Movement in History: An Essay on the Literature in English,” in Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions, edited by Bardwell L. Smith (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976).
The Rich Farmer
Dagaḍācyā devā
He has vowed undying devotion
to a god of stone,
but he won’t let his wife go
listen to a holy recitation.
He has built a crematorium
with his hoarded wealth,
but he thinks it wrong to grow
holy basil at his door.
Thieves plunder his home
and bring him much grief,
but he won’t give a coin
to a poor brahman.
He treats his son-in-law
like a guest of honor,
but he turns his back upon
his real guests.
Tukā says, curse him,
may he burn.
He’s only a burden
and drains the earth.
Abhang 2,712; vol. 2, p. 1,060
The Harvest
Seta āle sugi
The field has ripened:
watch its four corners.
The grain is ready for harvest,
but you mustn’t stop working.
Guard it, guard it!
Don’t fall asleep,
don’t take it easy:
the crop’s still standing on the ground.
Put a stone in your sling:
the force of your shot,
your shouting and shooing
will scatter all the flocks of birds.
Light a fire, keep awake,
keep changing places:
when your head rolls,
you won’t have your strength, your wits.
Give generously from the threshing floor,
make the world happy.
When the grain’s piled up,
pay your taxes, give everyone his share.
Tukā says that’s the moment
when there’s nothing left to be done.
What’s ours is in our hands,
and the chaff and husks have been thrown away.
Abhang 813; vol. 1, p. 322
The Waterwheel
Kiti yā kāḷācā
How long must you endure
the whirlwind of death, of time?
It’s at your back
all the while.
Free yourself
from your eighty-four hundred thousand births:
enter the shelter
of Pāṇḍurang.
The seed that sprouts to life
brings death with it,
and when it dies
it’s quickly born again.
Tukā says one’s lives
are strung like pots on a waterwheel:
a pot frees itself
only when the cord is broken.
Abhang 939; vol. 1, p. 376
The Jangamas
Houni jangama
They’ve become Jangamas
and put on the sacred ash:
they go from house to house
blowing their conches.
They don’t serve Śiva’s shrine,
where the offerings have gone stale:
they ring their bells
only for their own bellies.
Tukā says they don’t have
the true devotion to Śiva:
they merely carry on
the commerce of this world.
Abhang 3,061; vol. 2, p. 1,190
The Divine Play
Bahuta sosile
I suffered a lot in the past
because I was ignorant.
Now I should be blind
to what lies ahead.
I should put this in the hands
of the one who’s one.
I shouldn’t grope about
for the other gods, who’re many.
Whoever he may be
who drives the universe,
he’ll call out to us
if we call out to him.
Tukā says he has set
the dogs of desire upon us.
Without this divine play
there would be no torment.
Abhang 889; vol. 1, p. 357
The Prisoner
Suṭāyācā kāhi
I find ways and means
to set myself free:
but, look, they only
entangle my feet.
I’m caught like a prisoner
under this sorrow’s warrant:
I’ve lost my strength,
my wits.
All my past deeds
and present actions,
gathered in one place,
come dragging after me.
I’m trapped in the snare
of do’s and don’ts:
I cut them one by one
but they can’t be sorted out,
I collect them, but they grow back
like each other’s limbs.
In desire’s company
I’ve found unhappiness.
Tukā says, Lord,
now you must set me free:
I’ve become
completely powerless.
Abhang 676; vol. 1, p. 264
God as a Thief
Devācyā ghari
God was the thief
who raided God’s home.
God plundered God
and left him begging.
Run a posse! Run a posse!
He wasn’t in the villages
we left behind.
Where shall we hunt him now?
The thief chose
to stay put in the house.
At the first opportunity
he wrecked everything.
Tukā says
there’s no one here at all.
Who plundered
whose what?
Abhang 1,844; vol. 1, p. 730
Quarreling with God
Lāja na vicāra
You’re shameless,
and you don’t think.
You quarrel with us
like a man in the marketplace.
And then you’re delighted
whenever you meet
someone who has become
just like you.
You’re itching to take off
your loincloth.
And in the end
you’ll strip us all naked.
Tukā says, you heartless man,
you don’t give a damn
about yourself
or anyone else.
Abhang 1,817; vol. 1, p. 719
Begging for God’s Compassion
Bahuta jācalo sansārī
The world has bothered me no end.
I’ve lain in the womb in my mother’s belly.
I’ve become the beggar who begs at the doors
of eighty-four hundred thousand yonis.
I live like a slave in someone else’s hands.
I’m caught and whirled in the powerful snare
of all my deeds, done now and in earlier births,
whose fruits stick to me, to ripen now and later.
My belly’s empty and there’s no rest.
No destination, no resting place, no home town.
Lord, don’t spin me like this, I’ve lost my strength.
My soul sputters in torment, like a rice grain on a hot griddle.
So many times have gone by like this,
and I don’t know how many more lie ahead of me.
They come around again and again without a break.
Maybe the string will snap only when the world ends.
Who will take away such anguish from me?
On whom can I press my burden?
Your name ferries us across the world’s ocean,
but you hide in a hole, waiting in ambush.
Strike me now, run me over, O Nārāyaṇa.
Do this for me, impoverished wretch that I am.
Don’t ask a man without goodness for good things.
Tukā begs for your compassion.
Abhang 4,029; vol. 2, p. 1,700
Viṭṭhala
Cāngale nāma
His name is good, his form lovely.
They cool my eye and drive away my fever.
Viṭṭhala, Viṭṭhala is my rosary.
So short and sweet, so easy, and always there.
This name is a weapon, the arrow of nirvana,
a means for the moment when death is near.
What’s the use of preparing for a funeral?
Nārāyaṇa breaks up your pain if you fix your sights on him.
This is the very best of all that’s known.
Because it frees you from the world, and frees you forever,
you must go and seek out the Lord’s protection.
It’s all you need to do, and it’s enough.
That’s why I’m angry with the world,
this gleaming, poisonous serpent.
It keeps us apart, me and you, my giver,
with its sharp and hostile stratagems.
It has made me taste the fruit of this world,
it has fixed the wrong verses in my mind.
I’ve grown fat and heavy with my many sojourns,
I’ve grown bald with the mockery heaped on me.
I’ve had the punishment for what I’ve done,
I’ve eaten what’s eaten in many castes and births.
I must break it up now, put an end to it.
Lord, Tūka lays himself down at your feet.
Abhang 4,031; vol. 2, p. 1,702
The Resting Place
Barave jhāle
It’s good that I was born this time,
that I fastened my link with a human body.
I got the best lot, which brought me great gain,
I’ve become the vessel of every happiness.
You’ve given me the organs of sense and action,
hands, feet, ears, and eyes, and a mouth to speak with.
Thus you’ve connected me with you, O Nārāyaṇa,
and the world’s sickness of living rots away.
Goodness accumulates grain by grain,
and yet it links up so many births,
letting your name surface in our speech,
letting the communion of saints take place.
So I’ve found my resting place.
How shall I give you thanks and praise?
I’ll leave this piece of life at your feet,
for you’re my mother, O Pāṇḍurange.
You’ve wiped out the longing locked in my eye,
you’ve washed away my dirt of good and bad.
You’ve cooled me by placing me at your breast,
you’ve put me to sleep like a child in its resting place.
There’s nothing to pair with this joy,
I taste its sweetness even as I tell my story.
Tukā says you even found your form and shape
because of our love, which must be encountered face to face.
Abhang 4,012; vol. 2, p. 1,986
The Flood
Pūra ālā ānandācā
This is a flood
of sheer bliss:
love’s waves splash,
fly up in a spray.
Let’s tie ourselves
to Viṭṭhala’s float:
we’ll swim across
to the other shore.
Everyone’s a servant
of the lord:
dear brothers,
take the plunge.
This doesn’t happen
all the time:
the waters of bliss
can’t be measured.
Tukā says
our merits are great:
this water flows down
the path they’ve made.
Abhang 339; vol. 1, p. 138