The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India

We have observed in the preceding chapters how, through the Yadava rulers’ benign ambivalence toward Marathi, an environment was created for a flourishing Marathi public culture to engender a new literary medium. Two Brahmin spiritual innovators emerged from this context, and each became associated with a text that enunciated that figure’s cultural politics while reflecting the conditions of the times. These texts and their purported authors transmit two different features of the emergent moment of Marathi literature.

This chapter and the next one will take a fine-grained approach to exploring the cultural politics of vernacularization at this crucial period in Maharashtrian, and Indian, history by using the Līḷācaritra as an archive for this historical instant, the vernacular moment. This chapter will examine the ways that the Līḷācaritra registered and responded to social inequity. I argue that the Līḷācaritra represents the cultural politics active during the process of vernacularization, a process that likely preceded the creation of the Jñāneśvarī by several decades, as the periods depicted in the Līḷācaritra appear to cover the first three-quarters of the thirteenth century. For this reason, we will study the content of the Līḷācaritra first, before we examine the nature of the text, its ethics and the logic of its creation as the first work of Marathi literature. This may seem to the reader a backward sort of way to do things, but my rationale is derived from my impression that the Līḷācaritra is a text that responds to its time, rather than a work that consciously precedes and envisions a new world, which is an attribute of the Jñāneśvarī. The social conditions the Līḷācaritra records fundamentally constitute the rationale for the creation of the text itself—those conditions are part of the sacred and social landscapes through which Chakradhar traveled. We begin by exploring the social ethics of Chakradhar and the early Mahanubhavs, a subject amply recorded by the Līḷācaritra.

Throughout the Līḷācaritra we hear details about Brahminic privilege and elitism. For example, we learn of lavish practices of feeding Brahmins and other high-caste figures and we find stories of diehard Brahminic puritanism in which various Brahmin jatis are positioned against one another within their larger varna grouping.⁵ In a rather comical lila, we hear that Chakradhar’s male follower, the Brahmin Daimba, is mistaken for a particular woman’s husband. Though Daimba is not this woman’s husband, he brings the woman back to meet Chakradhar. Chakradhar settles the dispute by asking the woman’s jati (or rather her father’s jati), which is Madhyajan Brahmin, rather than Daimba’s jati, which is Karhade Brahmin.⁶ If they are not of the same Brahmin jati, the social logic follows, then it is very unlikely they were married. This story is noteworthy because it highlights the deep practices of endogamy, rife within and between jati and varna groups, registered in this text, in which it would not only be against social norms to marry outside one’s varna, but even to marry outside one’s jati within the same varna. For Brahmin jatis alone, we hear of many: Madhyajan, Karhade, Dixit, Laad Samavedi, Deshastha, and so on. The text appears keenly aware of the minutiae of the Brahminic social world. In addition, there is great awareness of those jatis that intersect with, and often compete with, Brahmin jatis, such as those of Kayasthas and Guravs. And the multiple divisions of caste enumerated within the text are significant. We hear of an assortment of Brahmins, as mentioned, as well as Kayasthas and Guravs, who appear as direct challengers to Brahminic power. But we also hear of multiple “Untouchable” jatis, such as Mahars, Chamars/Chambhars, Matangs, Mangs, and Dhoras, among others, as well as Mhalas and Kalals. We also hear of Shudras and Shudra jatis, such as those of the Shimpi, Teli, Mali and Kunbi, Koli, as well as many middle castes, such as Gondhols and many, many others.⁷ In its depth of detail about the social conditions and conventions of its time, the Līḷācaritra forms its own veritable ethnology of caste and caste practices. This is in part a result of Chakradhar’s ascribed personal interest in the ethnological subject. At one point he imitates the way Shudras worship at Shiva temples—recreating their vocalizations and actions—something that he can do because of his own careful observations of Shudras’ rituals of action and language.⁸ We will return to this story a little later on.

The text also registers the anxiety of Brahmins around questions of pollution. Early in the Līḷācaritra, Chakradhar meets a key character, Dados, who is also a guru, and who will become an ambivalent associate of Chakradhar, but later a Mahanubhav himself. We learn that thieves had killed Dados’s father and that he and his household were in mourning, thus their home was “polluted” by their father’s death. Expecting that Chakradhar would hold to the same conventions of pollution, Dados asks that he be allowed to take food to Chakradhar so that Chakradhar will not have to visit Dados’s polluted home to dine. However, Chakradhar dismisses this highly conventional notion of pollution, saying, “that means nothing to me.”⁹ In another incident, his Brahmin follower Lukhadeoba returns from Devgiri, where he had drunk “the polluted water touched by a Dhora” and a “Chambhar”—two jatis considered “Untouchable.”¹⁰ As a way to purify himself, he shaved his head. Chakradhar, noticing Lukhadeoba’s shaven head and, hearing what had inspired it, teases his Brahmin follower for this display of adherence to the conventions of Brahminic ritual purity, mockingly calls him “Punya Mahatma” or “The Mahatma of Merit.”

In some fundamental way, the Līḷācaritra is a “Brahminic text” and also a text about proper social behavior, thus it is in line with the dominant subject of the age within the Sanskrit Brahminic ecumene of the Yadava century. It is not a text about the conventions of Dharma Śāstra in the way, for example, Hemadri’s Caturvarga Cintāmani is. But it is a text about dharma, as is the Jñāneśvarī. As I argued in part 1, the dominant literary and philosophical subject of the Yadava century was dharma in some form or another. And while the Līḷācaritra rejects Sanskrit, it absorbs this primary subject of Sanskrit texts of its age. However, the Līḷācaritra’s engagement with normative social dharma is one of critique, not support. The stories recounted suggest that though this is a Brahminic text, it is not particularly positive about Brahmins or the conventional interpretation of dharma associated with Brahmins and with Dharma Śāstra. Indeed, the text registers a consistent critique of Brahmins and Brahminism, referred to as brahmanya and brahmanatva at various points in the text, as we will see. In this way, I view the Līḷācaritra as a text that links the Brahminic ecumene with the quotidian world via a critique of Brahminism itself, and thereby sets up the context in which this small group of Brahmins who had gathered around the figure of Chakradhar would forego—or at least try to forego—their caste prejudices while observing such prejudices in their own community and in the world around them.

This point is made immediately in the Līḷācaritra, for the text spares no time in critiquing Brahmins. While still discussing the life of Changadev Raul,¹¹ we learn about a Brahmin who is robbed by thieves on his way to Dvaraka in Gujarat to offer meals to one thousand Brahmins.¹² His wife cleverly holds her gold earrings in her mouth during the robbery, and they use these secreted earrings to purchase their offering. Changadev, who was among the thousand Brahmins, is served first and quickly consumes the equivalent of five hundred meals before any of the other Brahmins can even begin eating. The Brahmin’s wife complains about this behavior, and Changadev stops eating and leaves the meal. The Brahmin, enraged, says to his wife, “Die, die, you sinful woman! Why did you do that? Giving him [alone] the meals of one thousand Brahmins would have been the same as feeding one thousand different Brahmins!” This story’s primary emphasis is perhaps to make clear the holy nature of Changadev, but both the Brahmin characters’ actions implicitly carry a critique of Brahminic behavior as mechanical, unreflective, concerned with quantity, and always in the service of some gain.¹³ It is perhaps unfortunate that a female Brahmin must stand as the object of this critique, however, given the great number of Brahmin female followers of Chakradhar and their vital role in the Mahanubhav order and its preservation. And this is of course a parody of Brahmins, not an accurate portrayal. In any case, while we may see the Brahmin’s wife as someone who mistakes quantity for quality, the reaction of her husband is extreme, and he emphasizes, again, a simple arithmetic of merit and a crude understanding of the divinity and message of the object of his devotion, Changadev. The lesson is clearly not to go on feeding a holy figure like Changadev, but rather to give up the very practice of feeding Brahmins for merit and find one’s virtue in other forms.

At another point, shortly after this episode, Changadev finds a dead dog in the street and carries the carcass on his head, disposing of the body outside the village square.¹⁴ The responsibility for removing such carcasses would normally fall to the village “Untouchables” and hence the Brahmin Changadev appears to disrupt normal caste expectations. Furthermore, his mode of carrying the dog’s body is particularly startling—to bear such impurity on the purest part of the body, the head. These very opening sections of the Līḷācaritra focused upon Changadev presage the critique of caste that runs throughout the stories that follow the life of Chakradhar.

After the narration of Chakradhar’s early years, we learn that he travels southward to Andhra where he has several encounters that express his lack of adherence to caste distinction, especially while seeking alms, a lesson he will later struggle to teach his own followers. First Chakradhar dines at the home of a member of the Teli or oil-presser caste, considered a Shudra in Maharashtra and Andhra in that period,¹⁵ and later he observes Gundam Raul accepting food from Matangs,¹⁶ an “Untouchable” jati.¹⁷ While in the Vindhya Mountains bordering northern Maharashtra, Chakradhar again breaks caste taboos by dining at the home of Gonds, who are classified as a Scheduled Tribe in contemporary India and bear the prejudices attached to “tribals” in the period of the Līḷācaritra as well.¹⁸ These episodes all clearly register the fact that for divine beings, such as Changadev, Gundam Raul, and Chakradhar, caste distinction is utterly meaningless; yet, diegetically, the stories are told in the context of the shock these actions provoke within the quotidian world around them precisely because of the caste distinctions of the time in which their human incarnations existed.

Perhaps the most poignant early example of caste prejudice and its sometimes violent effects occurs after Chakradhar returns to the region of Maharashtra, to what is now the district of Beed. Here we encounter a curious story about Chakradhar’s association with a Chambhar, a member of an “Untouchable” jati that, in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, was associated with shoemaking and leatherwork.¹⁹ The Chambhar and his wife happen upon Chakradhar. The Chambhar man is hypnotized by Chakradhar’s radiance, praising him as “without equal”—this, we will see, is a regular reaction to the public’s encounter with Chakradhar. The Chambhar’s wife demands that he leaves Chakradhar’s presence so that they can continue on their way, but the man refuses. Curiously, the woman then threatens that she will divorce him if he doesn’t move along, and he flatly responds, “Divorce me.” She apparently does so and, as promised, goes her way.²⁰

The man is then initiated by Chakradhar and begins to sit in the town square and preach. The villagers object that he is only “playing at” being a holy man—for how can a Chambhar have the authority of a Brahmin? They call a Brahmin legal expert in Dharma Śāstra who declares that the Chambhar man is polluting the village with his presence.²¹ When the Chambhar man refuses to leave, the Brahmin declares his judgment: the man will be buried in a water-limestone pit, a particularly horrible form of capital punishment in which the limestone “burns” away the person’s flesh very slowly. While the sentence is being carried out, a bystander declares that he has just seen that same man in the market, garlanded and strolling carefree. When the people rush to the market and find the Chambhar man there, as described, they repent, falling at his feet and declaring, “we are all like sinful Chandals [“Untouchables”] [because] we harassed you.”²² Given how few stories there are in the Līḷācaritra about “Untouchables,” it is significant that two long lilas at the beginning of this text tell the story of this Chambhar man, who is also one of the earliest initiated devotees of Chakradhar.

These passages suggest a harsh reaction to caste transgression in the Yadava era and the violent means required to reinforce caste-based social codes. The villagers, we should assume, were not mostly Brahmin, though they call a Brahmin expert in Dharma Śāstra to adjudicate the situation. We might also note the irony that the villagers, in repentance, declare themselves “Chandals,” a general term for “Untouchables,” even while they have punished a man for being an “Untouchable” displaying “uppity” behavior befitting a social station above that ascribed to him.²³ The text indicates this social situation by quoting the villagers’ language, in which they describe the Chambhar as “playing at” being a holy man.²⁴ It is ironic that, in apologizing to an “Untouchable,” these villagers would refer to themselves as “Untouchables.” The irony is perhaps present in this text: the villagers at once apologize for their actions because they realize he is a “God man,” but they do not apologize for almost brutally killing a Chambhar who dared to sit in the town square; in other words, notwithstanding this miracle, they seem to believe their horrific actions would have been justified in normal instances, but that this was an exceptional instance. The use of “Chandal” as a self-directed insult reinforces the caste prejudice the story conveys, albeit as a secondary social commentary: the primary meaning of the story is the greatness of Chakradhar’s ability to transfer sacred power to others.²⁵ Yet, in the context of the previous stories, this tale of an “uppity” Chambhar is also a story of social inequity and injustice wrapped up in the language of caste prejudice of the thirteenth century, all carefully recalled by the composers of the Līḷācaritra. This lila and many others show that the authors of the Līḷācaritra were keen to represent caste inequity prevalent in their age, which may seem an odd thing for a group of presumably privileged Brahmins to do.²⁶

At several points the text gives us evidence of the physical separation of castes within villages of the Yadava realm. We learn, for example, that graveyards and cremation grounds are places where Mahars live and work,²⁷ and they are entitled to the items used to adorn or accompany dead bodies. In an early lila, Chakradhar is at a burning ground in the area of Patur, in the district of Akola, and takes some cloth that had been on a dead body.²⁸ Chakradhar is at first accosted by a Mahar man who claims that such rags are his right alone to take, but when the Mahar realizes Chakradhar’s nature he gladly gives the rags to him. The long-held association between the management of dead bodies and “Untouchability” is reinforced here, as are the kinds of “rights” associated with castes who are obliged to undertake this work. In two other lilas we come to understand that Mahars in particular were not allowed to live within the village proper, but confined to mahārvāḍs or Mahar areas outside villages. In one story, rife with ironic humor, thieves, who had originally planned to rob Chakradhar, instead offer to guide him home safely. They helpfully inform Chakradhar that they ought to escort him through the “Mahar neighborhood” because, as the thieves point out (with no apparent irony), it is an area full of thieves.²⁹ In another episode, Akaisa, a Brahmin female devotee, leaves old bread “at the edge of the village” where it is touched by a group of Mahar boys and becomes “polluted,” and so she allows the boys to have the bread, which, we can guess, was always her intention; the “pollution” is just a rationale within the divisive logic of social norms.³⁰

The emphasis in the Līḷācaritra on authentically representing Chakradhar’s speech, and hence the argots of the region and time, reveal a linguistic world differentiated by caste. This is apparent when Chakradhar imitates the vocalizations of worship by Shudras, for example, as mentioned earlier. But it is also apparent in the kinds of jokes and even playful insults Chakradhar offers. There are at least three points in the Līḷācaritra when Chakradhar gently derides his Brahmin female follower, Ausa, by calling her a “Dhora,” which is the jati name for a caste of “cowherders,” which is both an “Untouchable” jati name as well as an insult for someone who is perceived as only useful in pulling around cattle.³¹ It is not clear why Ausa, in particular, receives this epithet so regularly, but one can speculate that the reason is because she has a particular attachment to her Brahminic status and anxiety over that status, which is displayed several times in the text.³² As we will see with Jnandev in the Jñāneśvarī, this is an example of the use of a Marathi colloquialism that is likely not meant to insult Dhoras but is a way to chide Ausa, a Brahmin. However, the use of the term to tease a Brahmin woman conveys the implicit understanding that to be a Dhora is a bad thing. It also suggests a colloquial culture where calling someone an “Untouchable” of some kind is an insult. The nature of such colloquialisms will also be an important subject when we examine the Jñāneśvarī.

In addition to these hierarchical views of caste difference, we get a few stories that display caste prejudice and rivalry outside Brahminic contexts. For example, to explain a folk origin story of how three liṅgas, aniconic forms of Shiva, come to be arrayed outside a temple by a drainage ditch,³³ Chakradhar tells a story about a Koli and a Gauli—a low-caste fisherman and a cowherd according to their jati associations. The two were close friends and hunting companions, an association that did not contravene the norms of caste. One day, however, the Gauli told the Koli that he wished to dine at the Koli’s house. The Koli refused, saying, “How can you come to my home to eat? I am a Koli and you are a Gauli.” They ultimately dined together at the Gauli’s home. Though this story appears to be an analogy for the meeting of Shiva and the soul,³⁴ generated perhaps from Chakradhar’s Natha Shaiva yogic pedigree, the social description that underlies it is the separation, not simply between high castes and low castes, but among all castes, even very close ones in normative rules of purity, along lines of endogamy and commensality. This passage also reinforces the fact that Shudras were not allowed inside temples in the Yadava realms, in suggesting that the Shaiva symbols were placed at the drainage ditch by the low-caste Koli and Gauli because they could not enter the temple.³⁵ But the story also expresses the fact that Shiva is intimately associated with these two low-caste figures, and thus the divine realm can transcend the social one.

The denial of temple entry, sometimes to Shudras, and almost always to “Untouchables,” is a common feature of South Asian Hindu temple culture, and this was one of the several key reform subjects of the colonial and postcolonial periods.³⁶ Temple restrictions did not just apply to people of a low caste, but also to any woman who was menstruating; this “taboo” extended to many other kinds of ritual ceremonies and contexts as well, and such gendered rules of purity tend to be greatest in number for higher-caste women than for those of lower castes. For example, at one point in the Līḷācaritra, Umaisa, a Brahmin follower, is menstruating, and so hesitates to touch Chakradhar’s feet, her usual mode of greeting him.³⁷ Chakradhar rejects the idea that Umaisa is in an “impure” state and touches her himself, to Umaisa’s great shock. He further declares, in a mix of philosophical logic and good humor, that if the flow of human effluvia were to force devotees to avoid Chakradhar, then every devotee who defecated each morning would be required to avoid Chakradhar for that day, and so he’d have no followers at all.

Chakradhar’s rejection of gender distinction is equally strident. Arguably his first and most central follower was a woman, Baisa; the majority of his followers thereafter were women; and several of them were widows as well, carrying with them the stigma of “impurity,” which clearly Chakradhar rejected. In one very direct and poignant episode, Chakradhar’s occasional follower Sarang Pandit (who would later betray him before the tribunal), arrived to find many women had gathered around Chakradhar to listen to his teaching. Sarang Pandit was annoyed that he would have to wait for their lesson to conclude, and he complained to himself that this group of “plumpies” (guluguliyā) would delay his own worship of Chakradhar, and felt that they should “all be sent to Telangana to pound rice” (i.e., thresh rice).³⁸ Realizing the odiousness of his thoughts, Sarang Pandit went to bathe in the river and purify his mind. When he returned, Chakradhar (who must have heard Sarang Pandit mutter to himself) chastised his devotee, saying, “Why should women not come for instruction to fulfill their desire for dharma? Why do you act like such an oaf (toṃga)? You have a soul (jiva); do they not also have souls? Does one God protect you and another God protect them?” The force of this passage is clear, and while it expresses Chakradhar’s condemnation of his devotee’s sexism it simultaneously reveals the sexist assumptions of the age, which Chakradhar seeks to countermand. It is interesting here to see Sarang Pandit’s own struggle with this issue, for he voluntarily admits the fault of his thoughts. Much of the Līḷācaritra will express these sorts of struggles, as an innovative social movement presses against the mores of its age.

Despite what seems a radical rejection of such social orthodoxies, we do see Chakradhar and the Mahanubhavs holding to other conventions of social interaction. Chakradhar seems aware that his community of devotees might run afoul of social convention to their endangerment, so another theme woven through many stories in the Līḷācaritra concerns proper behavior in society. Chakradhar teaches his followers to be polite, which has a more direct relationship to the seeking of alms, especially by Brahmins, amid the wider population. He scolds Bhatobas, whom the Līḷācaritra portrays as particularly arrogant and bombastic, for speaking rudely to people, as when he yells at a group of scholars who have followed Chakradhar to a monastery and insist on singing songs to him. When Bhatobas speaks to them impolitely, Chakradhar scolds him, saying, “A Mahatma must speak sweetly. If not, then who will give things to us? And if no one gives things to us, then from where will we receive what we need?”³⁹ Similarly, Bhatobas enters a village to beg but finds there are no Brahmins. He then approaches a group of Kunbis seated in the town square and rudely asks them for uncooked grains. Bhatobas wants the grains uncooked so that he might avoid the pollution that he, a Brahmin, would risk by taking cooked food from a lower-caste Kunbi.⁴⁰ Chakradhar does not comment on this clear casteism, but rather berates Bhatobas for his rude speech.⁴¹ At another point, Bhatobas is discourteous to a group of Guravs, using informal language to address them.⁴² Chakradhar demonstrates for Bhatobas how to speak nicely to other castes, consistently calling the Guravs “Lords” or rana and making solicitous inquiries about their families—a fascinating example of thirteenth-century “small talk.”⁴³ This leads to better results in begging, the lila tells us, as the Guravs give food, perhaps because they are a generally prosperous and high-caste community, and they also direct Bhatobas to the homes of generous Brahmins, their close associates in the temple economy of the Yadava century.

One senses that this rather utilitarian logic—be nice to people so they will give you alms—is Chakradhar’s attempt to teach the highly practical Bhatobas a lesson. Not all stories of social decency are so instrumental, and Chakradhar’s egalitarianism is apparent throughout the Līḷācaritra, even if this point is made directly only episodically in the text. This is perhaps a reflection of the Brahminic point of view that dominates this text—a point of view that does not valorize Brahmins but is nonetheless told from the vantage of Brahmins. For example, we hear of relatively few core followers of Chakradhar who were not Brahmin, and hence none that might carry forward a memory and subsequent narrative of a different sort than that which the early Mahanubhav Brahmin followers have provided in the Līḷācaritra. We are left to imagine what stories exist in the shadows of this dominant Brahminic recollection of the life of Chakradhar.

One exception to this general rule comes in the story of Dako, described as a “Chambhar Gond,” thus an “Untouchable” and a blacksmith, as well as a regular, long-standing worshipper of Chakradhar, that is, a Mahanubhav. On a particular day when Chakradhar was in Bhingar, Dako arrived with a five-color blanket he had made for Chakradhar as a gift. He stood outside the building in which Chakradhar was being honored by the Brahmins of the nearby village. Dako would not approach the building, but called out to Baisa to tell Chakradhar that he had come. When the worship was over, Chakradhar came out and asked Dako why he had waited outside, implying that he should have entered the building—an odd question that must have been rhetorical, as it is hard to imagine Chakradhar did not know the answer. Dako gave no response but the listener to the story would know that the Brahmins would not have allowed him inside the building. After the gift of the blanket to Chakradhar, Dako and Chakradhar dined together outside the building. The lila then describes that this blanket is the very one that Chakradhar used thereafter, three times a day, throughout his life. When he departed, the blanket was taken to Gundam Raul, who used it until his death. This small detail, about a beloved blanket, hints at what we cannot see behind the narrative of the Līḷācaritra. Did Chakradhar keep this blanket because of its five colors or its exceptional comfort? Or did he keep it to remind his followers of all the others who revered him, who simply existed outside the confines of their small community? The story also implies that Chakradhar, through his life, in action and word, articulated a critique of caste and gender, and this is one of the most important messages conveyed by the Līḷācaritra.

While the basis of the “system” that governs caste hierarchy may be, at the most essential level, a question of endogamy and all that goes with it—property possession, maintenance of bloodline, consolidation of social power, repression of women and their sexuality, and so on—the way in which caste difference is often expressed is in terms of “purity.” As I have shown, the transgressions of caste and gender difference we see in the Līḷācaritra are primarily along these lines of purity rather than a contravening of endogamy—most of Chakradhar’s followers were elderly, widowed, or had already renounced their family ties. I know of only one tale of exogamy in the Līḷācaritra, and it is largely a kind of “fable,” which I will relate in this chapter.⁴⁴ However, there are ample incidents regarding “purity” in the text, and almost all involve commensality of one kind or another, either between devotees of different castes within the ranks of the Mahanubhavs or between Brahmin Mahanubhavs and low-caste members of society. The reason commensality, far more than endogamy, is the feature of the “caste system” highlighted for critique in this text is because the Mahanubhavs, and Chakradhar, are wandering mendicants who rely on requesting food from strangers as they travel the countryside, and they are celibate.

There is yet a deeper significance here attached to food and sociality. As Brahmins, they are already entitled to being fed by strangers as a means for the person offering food to them to accrue merit. This is an old stereotype—the Brahmin grown fat on the many feasts offered to him by a caste-bound ritual culture—and we see a hint of that with the story of the Brahmin who intended to feed a thousand Brahmins himself to gain merit.⁴⁵ Changadev’s miraculous ability to consume a thousand meals is both a humorous play on this stereotype and a subversion of it. However, this type of ritualistic reception of offerings of food is significantly different than the kind of begging and mendicancy Chakradhar prescribes for his followers. He tells his followers that they must beg as ascetics, as people who have renounced caste and all else in the social world. In other words, they are not begging as Brahmins but as renunciates; they must abandon the pleasure of food and the pleasure of caste status that was related to the pleasure of food. Chakradhar tells them that they must take whatever food is offered, mix it all up, avoid any pleasing foods, and never return to the same place twice to ensure that their caste status as Brahmins remained hidden and that no bond formed that might lead to special treatment.⁴⁶ Chakradhar advises his followers in many lilas about how to properly beg, instructing in one: “You should beg from all four castes as the Dharma Śāstra instructs. Do not be selective among the houses you visit, and do not the visit the home of someone you know.”⁴⁷ It is in the context of this kind of begging—not as Brahmins but as ascetics—that issues of caste and caste relations with the outside world are highlighted through discussions of what it is to “act like a Brahmin,” that is, to display brahmanatva, “Brahminness.” It seems that this fine distinction—between being fed lavishly as a Brahmin and being fed scraps as an ascetic—is a difficult matter for the early Brahmin Mahanubhavs to grasp.

As the circle of Chakradhar’s followers grew, and his fame expanded within the Yadava realm, the urgency of dictating proper ways to interact with the general social order, as Mahanubhav ascetics, became more acute, and food occupied a central role in such interactions. And so we see that the latter portion of the Līḷācaritra (Uttarārdha) contains several explicit engagements with the nature of “being Brahminic,” of practicing brahmanatva, where this issue arises in the context of seeking food alms. For example, Chakradhar’s followers, like Chakradhar himself, show a proclivity for asking for alms at the homes of Brahmins (hence the admonition about going to the homes of all four castes [varna]), even while Chakradhar will also accept food from anyone of any caste. Nathoba is scolded for donning his “sacred thread,” the mark of his Brahminhood, when he begs so that he is given better food.⁴⁸ In another story, when Sadhe returns from seeking alms at the homes of Brahmins,⁴⁹ Chakradhar teases her, telling her that the home she believed belonged to Brahmins actually belonged to a “grocer” or vāṇī, a Vaishya varna. When Chakradhar asks what she will do, having eaten the food of a lower caste, she says that she’ll drink the water of Chakradhar’s footbath to purify her stomach. Chakradhar then assures her that it was indeed a Brahmin’s house to which she went, but tells her, “You should understand the deeper meaning of my sarcasm.” This deeper meaning, we can guess, is a critique of her casteism and her attachment to Brahminic privilege and social norms.

At two points in the Līḷācaritra Chakradhar tests his followers, particularly those attached to their caste status and the special treatment they receive as Brahmins. While in Barshi, Chakradhar quizzes Sadhe: “Oh Sadhe, with whom should one go out asking for alms, with Ausa…or with Bhatobas?”⁵⁰ Sadhe replies, “I will not go with Ausa [because] she is a yogini [thus pays no attention to social distinction] and she begs from all four castes. I will go asking for alms with Bhatobas.” Bhatobas, as we noted, has a tendency to seek out only Brahmins when he enters a new village or to seek alms that are uncooked in order to avoid pollution; he does not, apparently, go to the homes of low-caste people. When they return from seeking alms, Bhatobas complains that Sadhe asked for buttermilk from the homes to which they went—buttermilk is a common “digestive” that people, especially Brahmins in Maharashtra, consume after a meal. Chakradhar responds to Bhatobas, saying, “Should a great soul give up their religious discipline (dharma) for a trifling thing like a little buttermilk?” In this statement, Chakradhar appears to soften his position, hoping not to strain the devotion of his followers because of rules about begging, perhaps. Chakradhar tells Sadhe that she can have at least one of four things she craves when she begs—a vegetable, spices, buttermilk, or salt—and that she shouldn’t be too worried about which she gets. As he says, “Don’t trouble yourself [with certain foods]. The tranquil soul will become troubled [if it worries about what it will get when begging] and will go seek out sense pleasures. [A troubled soul] will go to the ends of the land; [a troubled soul] will accept all kinds of immorality (sarvādharmatva) and Brahminness (brahmanatva)…. If a small sin means a greater evil can be avoided, then let it be avoided.”⁵¹ Chakradhar, here, explains that the focus of their practice is not a particular kind of begging or a superficial austerity, but a general diminishment of the attachment to the social self. He feels his Brahmin followers especially are attached to this sense of self around their high-caste status, their brahmanatva. Chakradhar would rather see his followers fail in small ways than big ways, even while their caste conceits, and entitlements, present a profound problem in the context of Mahanubhav mendicancy.

Chakradhar describes this desire to engage with sense pleasures, and the tendency to go “to the ends of the earth” to be satisfied, as “immoral” or “irreligious,” using the negative of the word dharma, that is adharma.⁵² He also identifies this desire to seek sensual pleasure, particularly around caste pride, as “Brahminic” or brahmanatva. Given the extensive discourse around dharma in this period, and the association between Brahmin caste and producing normative dharma prescriptions, this is an important and powerful description, to equate “immoral” and “nondharmic” with “Brahminness,” with what Brahmins do as Brahmins. It is a highly counterintuitive claim for the zeitgeist of the age. Chakradhar appears to hope that if his followers’ caste pride is assuaged in some small way—a bit of buttermilk here, some salt there—then they will remain on their ascetic paths, which will mean the reduction or elimination of casteism in other aspects of life. But Chakradhar does seem to fear that too much asceticism is itself a threat to his own teachings, for it will revive the “Brahminic” latencies of his followers. Chakradhar preaches asceticism, but he also preaches equilibrium and measure. He is a careful manager of his spiritual flock; he knows their limits as well as their potential. Chakradhar balances the eradication of caste and gender difference with the fact that these differences are deeply ingrained in society and human habitus in this period and place.

At a later point in another lila, Bhatobas quotes Chakradhar’s phrase about “immorality” and “Brahminness” and asks for clarification: can someone return from this state of “Brahminness” (and “immorality”) to the right path?⁵³ Chakradhar tells Bhatobas a story of a soldier—a tale apt for Bhatobas who, as we know, was a soldier by profession before he encountered Chakradhar. The story recalls a soldier who runs away from battle, but when he finds there is nowhere without war, changes his mind, and returns to fight and die as a soldier.⁵⁴ Similarly, a person troubled by the desire to be “Brahminic” and “immoral” can return from indulging those vices, when they realize that they cannot escape their fate, that is, the rule of karma that governs their “salvation.”

Mirroring the story of Sadhe, we have a similar story occur later in the Līḷācaritra, only this time Ausa is the subject of Chakradhar’s lesson.⁵⁵ Chakradhar asks her, “Who is purer, Ano or Markand?” Ausa replies, “Ano is not the purer one [because] he goes begging to all the four castes. Markand is purer.” Chakradhar replies, as he often does with Ausa, rather harshly: “Tend cows [that’s all you’re good for]!⁵⁶ Ano is polluted because he gave up all of his Brahminic (brahmanya) ways, his sacred thread and tuft? This makes Markand, someone who always lies,⁵⁷ better [than Ano]?” Ausa replies, “Swami Jaganatha, I’m ignorant of all this.” She has considered Chakradhar’s question as one about normative ideas of purity and hence believes Ano is not “pure” in this sense. Neither is she, if the earlier lila is to be understood here, for we know Ausa herself is a “renunciate” who begs from all four castes. Chakradhar’s instruction here enacts an inversion of socioreligious norms of purity, finding that the notion of “impurity” is a feature of “Brahminic” ways, again a reference to the desire to be treated in a special way as a Brahmin or high-caste person. It also is interesting to see that Chakradhar insults Ausa again by calling her a Dhora, a cow-tender, an “Untouchable” caste in the region—yet another way that quotidian language encodes prejudice and insult by reference to caste. And this strikes a fascinating contrast between explicit and implicit meanings: explicitly Chakradhar has scolded Ausa for choosing the normative world of ritual purity over her ascetic ideals in her answer, and yet his choice of insult—to deride Ausa as a Dhora—would implicitly reinforce the very social distinction he had explicitly rejected. While Chakradhar means this not as an insult to Dhoras but as a good-natured chiding of Ausa, the phrase cannot have its effect without reference to the very social structure of caste inequity. This double bind, inherent in the use of colloquial Marathi to articulate a rejection of colloquial culture, will be a feature of the Jñāneśvarī, explored in chapter 7. The passage is also puzzling because Ausa is impure in the eyes of Brahminic society because she begs at all four castes, and so in this way she is like a Dhora. Chakradhar’s argument is a complicated one.

The larger point, however, seems to be that Ano, because he has entirely rejected his Brahminic ways, is the “purer” of the two, even though he contravenes conventional ideas of purity. This inversion of caste and purity, based not on birth but on action, is a common theme in South Asia over the millennia. The Buddha famously is said to have stated that birth does not determine whether one is a “Brahmin” or a “low caste” but rather action decides one’s merit.⁵⁸

One larger significance of these stories about Chakradhar’s exhortation of his Brahmin followers to mitigate their “Brahminism” as they beg for alms is to reiterate the relations of power these stories reveal, which mirrors the relations of power demonstrated in the system of donations to Brahmins reinforced by the non-Brahmin Yadava state. Here, too, while Brahmins receive special privileges, they receive them at the goodwill of the general population. The Brahminic ecumene and its clientelist relationship to the Yadava court is mirrored in the similar relationship that Brahmins who seek alms have with the general public that supplies those alms as a perceived act of merit. Chakradhar’s insistence that Bhatobas speak politely to all people is directly tied to the way in which they rely on the generosity of others, which is to say, on the public. It is, I would argue, Chakradhar’s acquiescence to the social norms that prevail, but this is an acquiescence not for the sake of Brahmins (he does not seem to care if Brahmins are well fed in society), but rather a polite way to defer to the closely held beliefs of the general public. There is here, of course, the obverse view: that Chakradhar is afraid of how the public might turn upon his followers if they are too neglectful of social mores. Chakradhar’s purported persecution will be premised on contravening social mores—around caste and gender as well (I will argue) as language. The “fear of the public” that I outlined in chapter 2 bears some force here, as Chakradhar guides his followers between the paths of social normativity and a radical reconfiguration of social norms within his community of believers. As a spiritual innovator, he must take risks and mitigate risks simultaneously as he crafts a new path for himself and his followers in the Yadava century.

This idea recurs throughout devotional literature in South Asia, and Chakradhar echoes this sentiment in another lila where Mahadaisa insists on going to Varanasi with Dados.⁵⁹ Chakradhar tries to convince her not to go, for her reasons are entirely related to her Brahminic pride and social normativity: a pilgrimage to Varanasi is the height of Brahminic accomplishment, and it will raise her stature among her caste fellows. To dissuade her, Chakradhar uses two stories of caste exogamy. In one he relates the story of a Brahmin girl who falls in love with a low-caste Koli boy and must give up everything for her love of him. Chakradhar asks Mahadaisa, “For her desire of sensuous pleasure, she gave up caste, family, and daily attachments. For a life of the love of God can’t you sacrifice a bit?” But this does not convince Mahadaisa (and, indeed, the story is ambivalent),⁶⁰ so Chakradhar tries another story, this one about a Brahmin man who falls in love with a Mahar woman.⁶¹ The Brahmins of the village ostracize him—not allowing him to access the village well, not inviting him to feasts, making him eat on broken plates (a common treatment of “Untouchable” castes by upper castes in general in this period). Chakradhar says, “Like this, the people who are supposedly knowledgeable [i.e., Brahmins] are like idiots, and thus they achieved nothing [by their actions].” He explains these stories by saying, “Ignorance is better than [such] ‘knowledge’; the person who is a Chandal by caste is better than the person who is a Chandal by actions.” This passage might remind us of the famous saying of the Buddha cited previously, only in the Buddhist context we have a positive connotation: a Brahmin is a “good” person by actions not by birth, and this of course implies that being Brahmin is good. Here, however, we have the opposite: being a Chandal is a bad thing, and even a high-caste person can be like a Chandal if he or she isn’t a good person. These are two stories of counternormativity that work against the other social interests of the stories’ protagonists—being excised from one’s family, being rejected by one’s community. The force of public hegemony is ever present, and there is a cultural politics that Chakradhar attempts to impart to his followers.

We may also notice that by “knowledge” Chakradhar apparently means things like learning, social mores, and various “norms” for society, particularly associated with Brahminic learning—we may infer that he has in mind the Dharma Śāstra–inflected worldview that dominated the Brahminic ecumene of the region and age. Given the emphasis on Varanasi and doing something “Brahminic” in traveling there, we can guess that Chakradhar is indicting Brahminic social orthodoxy, not to mention the way this story invokes a regular network of literary exchange, an extended network of the Brahminic ecumene, between Paithan and Varanasi. Chakradhar then is critiquing the entire edifice of Brahminic “knowledge” that compels both Mahadaisa’s behavior and the harsh treatment meted out to the characters in his two allegories, and yet he uses a metaphor that reinforces the fact that being a Chandal or an “Untouchable” is a negative thing. My point here is that Chakradhar is not declaring to his followers: if you follow me, if you reject caste the way I do, then you will have a happy life. Instead, he is telling them the opposite, that they will not be happy, that they will be “out-caste,” but they will be liberated through their devotion to Chakradhar. Mahadaisa, in this story, is not yet fully ready for this path.

Toward the end of the Līḷācaritra, as the Mahanubhav order is consolidating its practices for a future without Chakradhar in Maharashtra, we see these themes recur in an exchange between Pathak (a Brahmin devotee), Bhatobas, and Chakradhar about the correct way to beg.⁶²

Immediately following the lila in which these issues of caste and the desires of Chakradhar’s Brahmin followers are discussed, we have a lila that appears to extend, by metaphor, Chakradhar’s insistence that his followers try, with all their might, to minimize their caste prejudice. Yet it is a lila that appears to rely on caste stereotypes itself to convey its message. Chakradhar describes the simplicity of a Shudra who knows happiness because he does not have “knowledge.”⁶³

One day Chakradhar said, “There was once a Shudra. He washed his hands and feet at the river. He viewed Shiva’s liṅga and then went home. He would sit near [his] bed and bend down, taking out a wooden stool [from underneath the bed]. Then [his wife] would cook warm millet. He’d take the warm millet on his plate. She would make seasoning in oil in a ladle and put it on his millet. He’d have lentils on his plate. Then he’d mix them and press many holes in them. Then have a ladle full of eggplant in a sauce. And he’d eat. Afterward he’d drink buttermilk from an earthen pot. He’d wash his mouth, then wash his hands and on a well-shaped mattress he’d lie down. He’d chew a dried, blackened betel leaf as small as a tiny berry. This was his after-dinner digestive. His two runny-nosed daughters would roll around on his stomach and he’d say, ‘I’m very happy.’”

However, one prominent exception can be cited. Halting at the Yogeshwar Shaiva Temple near Paithan, three Matangs (again “Untouchables”) come as close as they can to see the temple’s spire, which is the nearest they can come to the image of God resting inside directly below the pinnacle.⁶⁴ Two continue on their way, satisfied with this distant, prescribed vantage, but the third Matang says he will not leave until he has “seen (darshan) God”: he knows he cannot see the one inside the temple, but he would like to see the living one come outside the temple, that is, Chakradhar. The Matang approaches Ausa (who, we may recall, has rejected all caste distinctions) and asks her to tell Chakradhar that a “soldier” (pāīka) has come to see him; he does not call himself a “Matang.”⁶⁵ The fact that this character calls himself a soldier is important, for it displays a self-declaration of identity as something other than derivative of caste, even while the text of the Līḷācaritra calls him a Matang and not a soldier. It also suggests that, as in the early colonial period, “Untouchables” were often soldiers. Ausa follows the man’s instructions and tells Chakradhar that a soldier awaits him outside the temple. Chakradhar hands Ausa a sweet (prasad) that he has brought from inside the temple to give to the Matang. She gives him the sweet, but he still refuses to leave. Chakradhar then comes out, and the Matang bows to him and returns the sweet, before leaving. Chakradhar takes the sweet, now touched, and likely partially eaten, by the “Untouchable” and distributes it to his Brahmin followers as prasad, as a gift from God, from Chakradhar. His followers appear to balk at the thought of touching the sweet, much less consume it, but Chakradhar scolds them, “Which of you would not reach out for rice and clarified butter? Who wouldn’t reach out for fine garments among you? You’d take filthy water from me and call it ‘a great offering (mahāprasād).’ This is prasad. Why would you not take it?” He has produced a paradox for his followers that strikes directly at their sense of the limits of commensality and caste. Of course his followers take and consume the prasad.

Chakradhar upbraids his followers not only for their casteism but also for their general desire for only the very best in alms: rice and clarified butter or fine garments, a subject raised throughout the Līḷācaritra, as noted earlier. Yet this parable conveys not direct contact with a Matang or other low caste but contact mediated through the purifying force of Chakradhar himself—a story reminiscent of the opening story of the Chambhar. While Chakradhar traps his followers in a paradox—they don’t want to touch the food touched by an “Untouchable,” but they won’t refuse food offered by God/Chakradhar—he also releases them from the constraints of the paradox: the food is blessed by Chakradhar, thus purified, for purity is a quality above the mundane.⁶⁶ Caste prejudice is defied here, but caste norms are maintained in a sense. Chakradhar manages to do both things at once: challenge social orthodoxy and also acquiesce to it in some small measure. In the end, however, the lesson cannot be lost on his followers or on us: caste distinction is unjust in the context of salvation.

We see that Chakradhar asks his followers to challenge as well as maintain caste norms in ways that seek to minimize offense toward the general public in many stories. For example, in one story Chakradhar is invited to the home of a Brahmin, Tikavanayak, a relation of Mahadaisa, for a feast to mark the end of a period of mourning following a death in the family.⁶⁷ When it is time to serve Chakradhar and his followers, Tikavanayak says he will serve the Brahmins first, and does not give a plate to Chakradhar because he is uncertain of Chakradhar’s caste.⁶⁸ Mahadaisa, outraged, gives Chakradhar her plate of food. When Chakradhar has finished, she brings it into the kitchen, but Tikavanayak protests, saying that it should go outside. He says, “This is not the right way to do things…should we not find out what Chakradhar’s caste is?” Mahadaisa tells him angrily, “Why do you need to know Chakradhar’s caste? Chakradhar is God. What else could he be?” But Tikavanayak persists: “Yes, sure, sure. Chakradhar is God. But what is his caste?” The next morning, Tikavanayak tells Chakradhar what had transpired the night before. Chakradhar addresses Mahadaisa then and says, “Oh Woman! What Tikavanayak says is the way it is. Is a person a Brahmin, or a Kshatriya, or a Vaishya, or a Shudra, or whatever, how does one know?”

This story displays an accommodation to “polite” society, and it also recalls Chakradhar’s ambiguous caste status, discussed in chapter 3. Chakradhar is socially “unknown,” which is likely a result of his origins outside the region, for, as many scholars have argued, caste, like other social distinctions, is highly contextualized with localized power structures—of family, village, town, city, and state.⁶⁹ Chakradhar is out of his element, so to speak, and so his markers of quotidian social ontology cannot be determined. Indeed, Chakradhar’s social indeterminacy is an undercurrent throughout the Līḷācaritra. Rather than simply declare his caste, which he might have done given that the Līḷācaritra tells us the caste of every other major character in that text, Chakradhar instead responds by reinforcing social norms and reaffirming the social interactions of everyday life. In the quotidian world—outside the unique environment of the small circle of Mahanubhavs—such moments of social interaction are not to be violated. Just as it was deemed rude by Chakradhar for Bhatobas to speak down to Guravs, so it is rude here for Mahadaisa not to accept and respect the caste discrimination inherent in Tikavanayak’s actions. Chakradhar’s reformation of society is highly restricted—limited to his narrow band of followers. His radical reconfiguration of social norms has a natural limit within the sphere of his initiates. Yet this accommodation contains an immanent critique as well, for Chakradhar’s question is rhetorical: how does anyone really define such a socially dependent designation as varna or jati? Chakradhar’s statement at once reinforces social normativity and yet calls into question the very fact of social subjectivity.

The “caste question” in these contexts is almost always a question of the place, role, and particular problems of the “Brahmin” and of Brahminism as the text construes it. Though the Līḷācaritra also registers the vicissitudes of caste society and its many injustices, the focus of these stories is on the way to mediate the ills that accompany being a Brahmin—for being a Brahmin is a social affliction for the early Mahanubhav renunciates. The liberation of the soul of each of Chakradhar’s followers is thus linked to their ability to transform themselves from people harboring significant caste prejudice to people who have, by and large, overcome such prejudice. This is important to note: the salvation Chakradhar offers his followers involves an engagement with the nefarious conditions of caste and gender inequality in society. Salvation may be attained without these social considerations actualized, but, given how important such moments of observing and challenging social inequity figure in the Līḷācaritra, it seems that Chakradhar taught an ethical sociology along with his theology. Yet Chakradhar, conversely, does not call on his followers to change that society in total. Instead, his revolution and radicalism is limited and restrained but set along an unmistakable trajectory.⁷⁰

Given this relatively nonradical approach to equality in quotidian society, it may be hard to see what, exactly, was the social challenge posed by the Mahanubhavs within the Yadava realm or the Brahminic ecumene in general. It is clear that the Brahminic ecumene is the context from which the Līḷācaritra is composed, and upon which the text reflects, but it also is clear from the text that Chakradhar took exceptional care to maintain social convention, to not offend needlessly, and to respect social custom in many cases. Gundam Raul, for example, evinces far more transgression of social norms and at times displays outrageous antisocial behavior, such that he is described as “mad” at several points in his biography;⁷¹ he utterly disregards the “caste system” or any rules of ritual purity or commensality and as such would seem to pose a much greater threat to the Brahminic status quo than Chakradhar, who carefully calibrates his actions in conventional social situations. Yet Gundam Raul, to my knowledge, is never described as persecuted by forces of the Yadava state or the Brahminic ecumene, unlike Chakradhar. It would seem that a “madman” poses no threat, but Chakradhar, with his highly refined sense of social decorum, does present a serious hazard to those invested in the Brahminic ecumene. It is perhaps in the contours of very specific caste animosities that we can see the terrain in which the early Mahanubhavs posed this particular challenge.

We can assume that caste politics was endemic in the social world of the thirteenth century, as it is today.⁷² Certainly caste politics in premodern India could not take the form of caste-based voting blocks and democratic activism, but it would be hard to imagine a more central feature of social life in India than caste/gender norms, and undoubtedly the caste question motivated alignments of power in the thirteenth century. I have already pointed out the tensions and also rationales involved in the support of a Brahminic ecumene by a non-Brahmin ruling family. As with many other things, the perspective on such caste cultural politics presented in the Līḷācaritra emphasizes not a general view of society but the specific rivalries involving Brahmins with other Brahmins and between Brahmins and others. Given the high status of Brahmins in the Yadava century, this is a good place to look in order to find some of the cultural fissures that may have been endemic to literary vernacularization in Marathi. In this case, we can identify two rivalries between Brahmins and other caste groups that received state sponsorship by the Yadavas. These other patronized groups are Kayasthas and Guravs, and a contention between Brahmins and these groups appears particularly marked in the Līḷācaritra and other early Mahanubhav writing. The reason for this, and the relative nature of these rivalries, implies a great deal about the cultural politics preceding and surrounding the literary vernacular turn in Marathi and the spiritual “economies” that innovators like Chakradhar and his followers appeared to threaten. These are the economies that linked temples, monasteries, and literary endeavors, all subjects of royal patronage.

Caste politics in India takes many forms, and often Brahmins are described as archetypical perpetrators of caste injustice, as they are allotted the lion’s share of responsibility for the construction of a socioreligious orthodoxy in classical and medieval India through such texts as the Manu Smriti and other Dharma Śāstra materials.⁷³ However, the sociology and ethnology of caste, particularly since the colonial era and into the present, shows that most incidences of caste rivalry and violence are between caste groups, that is, jatis, that are close to one another in terms of either theoretical designations along the spectrum of varna, or socioeconomic designations along the lines of class, or are in close proximity in the context of village economies or other locales governed by the rules of labor-exchange such as the jajmani and baluta systems.⁷⁴ In other words, most caste violence is not between the “highest” and the “lowest” of some given typology, say Brahmins and “Untouchables,” in a defined region (village, territory, linguistic region, etc.), but rather fault lines are most strained between those who border one another in such a typology and hence tread upon one another’s social and economic “territories” more frequently, particularly those of property and economic obligation.⁷⁵ The story of the Koli and Gauli expresses this idea, for example, where two low-caste, non-Brahmin men of different jatis preserve the rules of commensality even while they freely interact socially in other ways. My point here is that the cultural politics of caste in most cases is systemic, not “top-down,” and Brahmins alone do not buoy these caste politics, as much as they might participate in them. At the same time, to call the contexts of these multiple caste fissures a feature of “Brahminic society” is not to attribute agency to Brahmins, but to metonymically name a social order emblematic of a concern with hierarchy, purity, endogamy, commensality, ritual status, and honor in ways that are crafted through the texts and practices associated with Brahmin producers.

The fact that most caste politics occurs between jati groups in close proximity to one another along various vectors (“purity,” property, economy, etc.) is one reason that the Līḷācaritra hardly deals with encounters between its Brahmin principal characters and either Shudras or “Untouchables.” We can imagine that between the latter there are many unrecorded social and economic struggles. But our records for this period—as chapter 1 expressed—are all remnants of the Brahminic ecumene in one form or another. That said, the Līḷācaritra appears to focus narrowly on rivalries between Brahmins and two other non-Brahmin but high-caste groups who were regularly in contact with them within the economies of the Brahminic ecumene: the Kayasthas, non-Brahmin literary professionals, and Guravs, non-Brahmin temple priests, caretakers, and ritual specialists. Brahmins, as we know, are well represented, if not dominant, in the “literary economy” of the Yadava century around Sanskrit, and also in the “temple economy,” where they have long been in control of temples throughout India, especially in Maharashtra. Guravs, then, as non-Brahmin temple priests, represent a particular competition within the sphere of the temple economy, and Kayasthas, as a non-Brahmin literary group, represent competition within the sphere of the literary economy. This is not to say that these rivalries might not also lead to cooperation or that other modes of contest were not present. Yet the Līḷācaritra appears to highlight rivalries between Brahmins and these two groups. Furthermore, we have already seen the management of distinct roles in temples for Brahmins and Guravs in the Yadava inscriptional record, and so we must assume that such rivalries are not simply the idiosyncrasy of the Līḷācaritra. This all suggests that something about the cultural politics of these caste groups had an impact on the formation of literary vernacularization.

Designating a class of literary professionals under the title of Kayastha is common throughout central, western, and northern India from at least the sixth century CE, if not earlier.⁷⁶ In Maharashtra, by the fifteenth century onward, debates about their social rank and function, particularly within the Brahminic ecumene, were the site of significant disagreement.⁷⁷ From the eleventh century, and throughout the Yadava period, the title Kayastha was commonly used to denote the scribes of inscriptions in particular.⁷⁸ It was unclear even at that point, however, and remained unclear for centuries to come, where exactly Kayasthas fit into the various typologies of caste, even while it seems that, in the period of the Līḷācaritra, Kayasthas formed a jati or caste group distinct from either of the groups from which they are said to have been drawn, that is, Brahmins or Kshatriyas, in the varna typology. A Brahminic theory of the origin of Kayasthas suggests that they are the offspring of exogamy, of a Brahmin man and Shudra woman.⁷⁹ However, the likely origin of the Kayasthas is of a class of people drawn from high castes who were distinguished by their literary service, as scribes and inscribers. The typology of the Dharma Śāstra is highly idealistic in terms of the replication of an endogamous group; Kayasthas represent a kind of intermediary position, tied not to varna but to their central role in the production of literary materials, both in physical terms—as scribes—and in intellectual terms—as authors. Given this status as producers of literary and inscriptional materials, it is no surprise that the Līḷācaritra and other early Mahanubhav texts that are presented from the point of view of Brahmins in the Yadava century would register an endemic social conflict between Brahmins and Kayasthas.

It appears that, in the thirteenth century, Kayasthas may have been considered either as equal to Brahmins or simply within the Brahminic ecumene, this despite the fact that modern-day Kayasthas in Maharashtra understand themselves to have arisen from the Kshatriya varna and are thus an intermediary caste between Brahmins and Kshatriyas.⁸⁰ In the Yadava era Kayasthas are regularly mentioned in inscriptions as the lekhaka or kāraṇika, or “writer,” though they are not regularly in receipt of donations, as are Brahmins and Guravs. However, in some cases, individuals and associations of Kayasthas have made donations, as they are recorded to have done in Pandharpur around 1277, which suggests their deep involvement in the merit economy of Yadava reign.⁸¹ We can assume that during the Yadava century, Kayasthas—as individual literary professionals and as either a guild or a caste block—were more prominent within the state structure than within the Brahminic ecumene, that is, they were closer to the core of power at the royal court, yet further from the stabilizing structures of temple, monastery, and educational institution. In this sense, the social vicissitudes of the Kayastha are more deeply entwined with a given royal court and so less likely to flourish over successive political upheavals. This may account for the close connection we find between Kayasthas and Kshatriya varna status across South Asia as well as the way in which Kayasthas filled an intermediary space within the varna echelon between Brahmin and Kshatriya. As professionals tasked with discursive mediation, it only makes sense that we would find them “in the middle,” as it were.

Kayasthas appeared to consider themselves on par with Brahmins and Brahminic practice in the Yadava period. For example, we can observe the figure of Haridev Pandit, a Kayastha introduced early in the Līḷācaritra, who is an admirer of Chakradhar, though not quite a true follower.⁸² He engages in a debate with Chakradhar about the Bhagavad Gītā and ancient lore literature (purana), thus emphasizing his Sanskrit learning. Like other Kayasthas encountered in Mahanubhav literature, Haridev also takes the title Pandit, referencing his expertise on the Puranas (a paurānikā), which is usually associated with Brahmins, further indicating the link between these two caste groups with the literary sphere of the Brahminic ecumene. This proximity of Brahmins and Kayasthas appears to have resulted not in harmonious coexistence but in significant caste prejudice. For example, in the Smṛtisthaḷa a story is recorded of an encounter between Umaisa and a follower named Kothaloba, a Kayastha.⁸³ When Kothaloba takes a sip of water from Umaisa’s cup, she gets angry at the pollution she perceives and calls him a Shudra, which is intended as an insult. The fact that two figures within the Mahanubhav sect express animosity suggests that such enmity may have been even greater in more general public contexts.

Although the early Mahanubhav literature suggests this rivalry between Kayasthas and Brahmins, it is not an overdetermined subject for these early texts. This may be because the early Mahanubhavs, though they were mostly Brahmin, were not, by and large, members of the “scribal” profession, with the possible exception of Mhaibhat and Kesobas.⁸⁴ In other words, the spheres of culture inhabited by the early Brahmin Mahanubhavs did not significantly intersect with the spheres of the Kayasthas; when they do intersect, though, we can detect a rivalry under the surface.

This conflict between Brahmins and Kayasthas perhaps reveals a struggle over the “economy of literacy,” which is not quite the literary field as it is also a field dominated by technocratic literacy rather than “creative” work, such as poetic composition. This was a highly significant locus of power within the Yadava century and the Brahminic ecumene in that period, as we have seen in part 1. But its relatively minor representation in the early Mahanubhav literature implies not only the general lack of significant contact or conflict between the Brahmin Mahanubhavs and Kayasthas over literary issues, that is, the professional literary world of the Yadava court and the Brahminic ecumene it financed, but it also suggests that the Mahanubhavs did not occupy anything like a “literary” sphere. The literary economy, at the center of which Kayasthas existed, did not intersect with the world of Chakradhar to a great degree. This is important to note, if, as I have argued, the Līḷācaritra portrays the historical conditions that precede the literarization of Marathi rather than those that accompany this moment. This would suggest that the Mahanubhavs did not register as a threat or a presence within the literary sphere at all. This appears to happen later in Mahanubhav history, a subject the conclusion to this book will touch upon briefly, but the early Mahanubhav works, in any case, do not position the Mahanubhav community in contact with, or conflict with, agents and actors within the literary sphere attached to the Yadava court over issues pertaining to literature or writing.

Chakradhar’s own position on literacy and writing is difficult to discern. In one interesting episode from his life we see the nexus of literacy, the Brahminic ecumene, and social value. The story concerns the succession of power in a monastery after the death of the monastery’s leader, a story mentioned in chapter 1.⁸⁵ In this lila we learn that the monastery’s chief had two servants. One servant tended to the leader’s personal needs (much as the early Mahanubhavs tended to the needs of Chakradhar) and the other servant tended to the monastery’s collection of books. This meant that the former servant could not read or at least not as well as the latter could. On the death of the chief, the servant who has tended to the books inherits the monastery based on a simple argument: the monastery belonged to the person who could read the monastery’s books. Chakradhar encounters the servant who looked after the monastery’s chief and who therefore did not have the level of literacy of his rival. Chakradhar directs the dejected man to challenge the other former servant to a public debate in which they will read the monastery’s books. It is unclear whether or not Chakradhar coaches him, but Chakradhar assures the man that in the debate he will be able to read. A sabha is formed (usually this would mean a tribunal of Brahmins and other high-caste elites) to adjudicate the debate. The sabha members and the monastery’s other adherents observe that this servant who was considered illiterate can now read. They then grant the rights to the monastery to him.

This lila expresses the social value of literacy—in the form both of the treasure of books but also the ability to read them and explain them. However, what is curious here is the way Chakradhar appears to privilege a different kind of service, the practice of selfless service to one’s master over the practice of service to books and the field of literacy. Though Chakradhar intervenes in such a way as to preserve the high value of literacy, he also subverts that value by presumably helping the formerly unlettered servant, who was devoted to his master rather than to his master’s books, and therefore implicitly undermining the rule that the monk with the greater literary facility ought to inherit the monastery. Yet the fact that it registers a process of succession that we might assume was normative at the time, and that clearly privileges the literary work of the monastery, is a signal of the great value of literacy in the age. Despite this, through Chakradhar, we have a relative devaluation of literacy and a greater emphasis on service. I think the parable here functions to downplay the value of literacy, not only for Chakradhar’s followers, but with the culture of the era as well, to note that literacy excludes among social groups. Or to put it another way, this story puts literacy in the service of social justice. This issue will arise again when Chakradhar undergoes his trial, and we will extend our discussion of the social value of literacy among the early Mahanubhavs in the next chapter. But, to find the greatest social fault lines apparent in the Līḷācaritra, we have to look to another rivalry demonstrated in this text.

The Līḷācaritra reveals a more contentious caste opposition between Brahmins and Guravs, non-Brahmin temple priests and proprietors, than it does about issues of literacy. In contemporary Maharashtra, the caste status of Guravs is uncertain. They have sought to be recognized as Brahmins in some cases, while generally being considered non-Brahmin, both by other castes and sometimes by members of their own caste.⁸⁶ Some Guravs wear the sacred thread usually associated with Brahmins, and they perform many, if not all, of the same rituals Brahmins perform, especially within Shaiva temples. As opposed to the varna status of Kayasthas, it is even harder to determine the varna status of Guravs in and around the period of the Yadava century. Throughout the Līḷācaritra and in inscriptional evidence from the Yadava state, we can see that Guravs were distinguished from Brahmins, but they shared responsibilities at temples and gifts of state to temples, especially Shaiva temples, but also, in particular, Goddess and Hanuman temples.⁸⁷ Guravs have often also appeared as spiritual teachers—indeed, Guravs themselves trace the etymology of their jati title to the Sanskrit word guru, while the more likely, though not entirely unrelated, genealogy for Guravs can be derived from the Kannada word gorava or “Shaiva mendicant.”⁸⁸ In Chakradhar’s time, Guravs considered themselves high-caste and hardly secondary to any other caste; indeed they may have thought of themselves not just as equal to Brahmins but as Brahmins. In any case, it is clear that a rivalry existed in the temple economy of the Yadava century between Guravs and Brahmins, which the Līḷācaritra records.

If Kayasthas represented a threat to the dominance of Brahmins within the literary field, then Guravs represent a threat to the dominance of Brahmins in the temple economy of the Yadava century. More importantly, perhaps, given that temples are loci for other things as well—social groups, economic activity, points of information exchange—the friction between Brahmins and Guravs also indicates a rivalry over space that approximates a “public” common context.⁸⁹ We have seen temple inscriptions that dedicate funds and land to Guravs for the maintenance of temples; indeed, next to Brahmins, Guravs are the chief recipients of state and other grants recorded in the Yadava inscriptions.⁹⁰ The Līḷācaritra suggests that Guravs may also have been the beneficiaries of agrahara donations and enriched by many of the same conventions of alms-giving that Brahmins enjoyed,⁹¹ evidence that they were considered high-caste in the Yadava century.⁹²

Instances of enmity between Guravs and Brahmins are found in the Līḷācaritra. As noted, Bhatobas is often rude to Guravs, speaking down to them in most contexts. Chakradhar, on the other hand, insists on calling them “lords” or rana. This may be more than an attempt to compensate for his followers’ rudeness; rather, it may have been a regular convention of colloquial Marathi at the time to refer to Guravs as rana. Another early follower of Chakradhar, Dakhala (who is apparently a Brahmin), rudely disrupts the worship of a Gurav at a temple situated at the origin of the Godavari River by pouring out all the water collected by the Gurav responsible for the temple.⁹³ The Gurav demands compensation from Chakradhar for his follower’s behavior, and Chakradhar obliges. Dakhala, in the midst of this reparation by Chakradhar, carries on insulting the Gurav man by saying, “What is so special about your water? You’re a Gurav. You’re not of the lineage of the Rishi Gautama. You’re nothing to me.” The reference to one of the seven mythological holy men, or saptaṛṣi, invokes a common Brahminic lineage in India, and also refers to one myth of the origin of the Godavari tied to Rishi Gautama.⁹⁴ Dakhala appears to be upbraiding the temple’s Gurav for daring to speak to a Brahmin man, that is Dakhala himself, in such a manner. Yet clearly Chakradhar recognizes the sovereignty that the Gurav holds over his temple grounds. This territoriality is apparent in another lila when Baisa inquires of Chakradhar whether Lord Krishna is the deity of Guravs, as the Guravs claim him to be, or a deity of the Brahmins (vedavākta, the “ones who speak the Vedas”), as she has understood.⁹⁵ Chakradhar resolves the problem by pointing out that he is Krishna and the God of all, so Baisa’s question about social distinction is immaterial. The question, however, reveals the cultural politics of caste and temple economies that engenders it, rooted in a rivalry between Brahmins and Guravs in this period.

The hostility between Guravs and Brahmins is further played out in a long lila that surrounds the theft of a coconut.⁹⁶ Chakradhar and his followers are guests in the cave-home of a Gurav when the Gurav accuses them of stealing from his cave a coconut that contained some money.⁹⁷ Chakradhar asks Bhatobas to take the matter to the local judicial council, but not before Sadhe abuses the Gurav, calling him “greedy,” to which Chakradhar gives the command he had given to Bhatobas: to be polite to Guravs is the way of the Mahanubhavs (suggesting that few Mahanubhavs were Guravs). The council, composed of Brahmins, decrees that the Gurav is wrong in accusing Chakradhar and his followers of such a crime, and they demand that the Gurav, as a penance for false accusation, cover his body with mud and cow dung and grovel at Chakradhar’s feet, which he does. Later, Chakradhar informs the Gurav that his friend (also a Gurav) took his coconut. These insults to the Gurav—verbally from Sadhe, physically from the Brahmin council, and narratively, as he is the fool of this story, betrayed by his own friend—further illustrate the tension between Guravs and Brahmins.

An image of the rivalry expressed between Brahmins and Guravs may be captured through the figure of Dados, one of the most consistent characters to appear in the Līḷācaritra. Dados is central to the narratives of the Līḷācaritra, even while he is not, at least entirely, a Mahanubhav; he remains a very close figure to Chakradhar, but also a figure of rivalry and bitterness. Dados is introduced as a temple caretaker early in the Līḷācaritra, and I suspect that this description implies his Gurav status.⁹⁸ He quickly becomes fascinated by Chakradhar and shadows him throughout the text, caring for him on occasion. The term used to describe Dados as “having become the caretaker of the Vateshwar Temple” is the word kaṭhīyā, which means not only “temple caretaker” but also is often used to describe non-Brahmin temple priests, especially Guravs.⁹⁹ While the jati designation of Gurav is never explicitly given to Dados, it does seem that other devotees of Chakradhar did not consider him a Brahmin, as we will see. In my opinion, it is highly probable that Dados was a Gurav.¹⁰⁰

In the course of the text, Dados’s own fame as a spiritual figure appears to grow, in part through what he has learned from Chakradhar. Dados inadvertently brings several of his own followers to Chakradhar, including, importantly, Mahadaisa and Bhatobas, as well as Abaisa, Umaisa, Alhaisa, Indrabhat, Baisa, Padmanabhi, and others.¹⁰¹ These devotees of Dados are all Brahmin, and they all eventually leave Dados to follow Chakradhar.¹⁰² However, it is interesting to note that caste seemed no bar to these Brahmin devotees when they were followers of Dados. Yet one senses in the various episodes involving Dados that he is angry not only that his followers have left him for Chakradhar, but that they have left him for a Brahmin guru. Toward the end of the Līḷācaritra, Dados appears openly hostile and jealous of Chakradhar and is perhaps a party to Chakradhar’s persecution, even while he is not invited to join the jury (probably because he is not a Brahmin), as was Chakradhar’s other close associate, the Brahmin Sarang Pandit.¹⁰³ However, by the time of the Smṛtisthaḷa, after Chakradhar’s departure from Maharashtra, Dados will have become a Mahanubhav and will die a member of their fold and in their company.¹⁰⁴

If Dados is a Gurav, this helps us understand a number of conflicts that surround him in the Līḷācaritra. In one episode, Lakhubaisa, a Brahmin devotee, is sweeping, and dust from her actions falls on Dados.¹⁰⁵ Bhatobas, still at this time a follower of Dados, complains to Lakhubaisa about the dust. Lakhubaisa responds, “First, think of who you are, then of who your Dados is.” This statement makes Bhatobas furious, and he says, “What am I?! What is my Dados?! I’d give my head to save a hair on his!” Lukhubaisa coolly responds, “Give up your head then.” Chakradhar then intervenes and says, metaphorically, that just as one must like the son of a king, even if the son is born from a queen who is not liked, so Lakhubaisa must like Dados.

The episode is somewhat enigmatic, but one possible reading is that Lakhubaisa is reminding Bhatobas of his caste superiority over Dados. She does not like to see a Brahmin like Bhatobas complaining to her, another Brahmin, about an affront to a lower-caste person like Dados. It seems that Bhatobas understands this, and thus his retort with all its self-righteousness. Chakradhar’s interjection is likewise enigmatic, but seems to imply that though one may be born into the world in an inferior status, the same deity (i.e., in this case, Chakradhar) reigns over all creatures. Here, again, we see Chakradhar’s ability to accommodate social difference and disagreement yet also to reject it. If we understand Dados to be a Gurav, then Lakhubaisa’s comments make more sense. And given the fact that Bhatobas will one day become a devotee of Chakradhar, and will evince a strong dislike of Guravs, it may be that we see here a reason for this prejudice—it is a remnant of his spiritual “divorce” from Dados.

Dados is not only a victim of such antagonism, but he also perpetrates his own. At a temple near Ramnath, Mahadaisa, who has earlier renounced Dados as her guru and accepted initiation from Chakradhar,¹⁰⁶ takes some water from the temple and washes the dust from Chakradhar’s feet, a daily ritual shared among the Mahanubhavs.¹⁰⁷ Later, as is customary, she drinks the water as a blessing (prasad). Dados then accosts his former disciple, suggesting to her that, given her proclivity for purity, she should take a bath in order to purify herself, for the water from the temple was the water of a Gurav. She responds that this is the water purified by the dust from Chakradhar’s feet, so there is no need for a bath, and besides, if it had been water touched by a Gurav then Chakradhar would have protested as well (another indication that Chakradhar is understood to be a Brahmin, though perhaps a low estimation of his clear egalitarianism). Dados may be responding as a Gurav and thus metaphorically recalling his own association with Mahadaisa—the Gurav’s water, purified by Chakradhar’s dust, is a metaphor for Mahadaisa’s own spiritual progression toward Chakradhar and regression away from Dados. Dados is clearly hurt and offended, perhaps not merely for losing a beloved devotee, either. This passage seems to imply that he believed, or at least suspected, that Mahadaisa left his company because she would constantly have carried with her the fear of “pollution” from him as a “lesser” person in some way.

Whether or not Dados was a Gurav, the rivalry between Guravs and Brahmins appears more prominently in the Līḷācaritra than the contest between Brahmins and Kayasthas. I think this fact highlights the particular sphere of circulation of the Mahanubhavs. Though they come to occupy the center stage of Marathi literary vernacularization, the particular rivalry with Guravs here suggests that a kind of “temple economy” linked to a “guru economy” of wandering spiritual teachers was the sphere that the Mahanubhavs threatened, more so than the Sanskritic literary economy of the time. As we have seen, the three major gifts to the Pandharpur Temple that “bookended” Yadava sovereign reign (in 1189, again around 1273, and finally in 1311) are,¹⁰⁸ to my mind, the only inscriptions that record a gift of state to anything like a “bhakti public,” in this case, to the devotees of Vitthal and by the devotees of Vitthal, the bhaktajana, rather than for specific individuals or a collection of individuals associated with a temple, monastery, school, or other institutions. The Pandharpur Temple, like many other temples (especially in South India), was a site that linked multiple spheres of society and political economy. During the Yadava century, this temple represented a connection between the state and the public, as it was a node for social organization within the sphere of “religion” sponsored by state gifts as well as private donations.¹⁰⁹ I believe that the relative severity of conflict between Guravs and Brahmins, registered, in part, in inscriptions, and clearly in the Līḷācaritra, suggests that temples were the places where new spiritualists recruited followers and that new religious cultures circulated within the geocultural spaces linking major temple areas in the Deccan. Thus state and nonstate evidence suggests that the temple was a key location in the evolution of a new public culture in the thirteenth century. That Marathi literature would be so conditioned by the cultural sphere of Pandharpur, and devotees of Vitthal, in centuries to come, is therefore no surprise. Marathi literature, conveying new modes of salvation for a Marathi public, was not in conflict with rarefied realms of literary production—in Sanskrit or otherwise—but rather it emerged in relation to, and perhaps as an alternative to, the social locus of worship in the temple. In other words, the Līḷācaritra, like the Matang who refused to leave before he saw “God,” represents a way to “see God” outside of a temple, accessible to everyone of any caste or either sex.

It may be that one of the key innovations of Chakradhar and the early Mahanubhavs was to decenter the prominence of the temple, much as Basava did in the century before in Karnataka.¹¹⁰ Therefore, the social order that the Mahanubhavs challenged was not primarily a literary one; the “vernacularization” they represented was not about literature but about place, the temple and networks that surround temples, and about the economy that formed around the entrepreneurial spiritual teachers of the age. They were radical egalitarians in their community yet sought good relations with the outside world. And a new literature grew not from a new literary intervention but from an intervention that displaced the centrality of the temple—under the control of a Brahmin or a Gurav—by emphasizing the importance of the localized holy figure, like Chakradhar or even Dados, who taught out in the open in public.

Vernacularization is displayed here as the conversion of the center of power from the temple to the center of power in quotidian public culture of the thirteenth century, in the public discourse of Marathi, which becomes the sphere of the new spiritualist. Chakradhar did not make literary interventions in the world but public, social ones. This further reinforces the idea that it was not the production of literature that was the key feature of vernacularization, but a new political order centered on conventions of everyday life, and it is this shift that set the conditions for a new literature to emerge, fleshed out with a conversation about social inequity. We will see a full shift of focus from “temple” to “text” with the Jñāneśvarī, as the effect of a previous decentralization in public culture, which is recorded here in the Mahanubhav works.

As Cynthia Talbot has pointed out, in Andhra of around the same time, the Hindu temple was a node that connected several cultural worlds, public and religious, economic and political, among others. Thus the culture of “temple Hinduism” is much more than the temple itself. I would extend this argument to see that the rivalry between Brahmins and Guravs reveals a consistent struggle over some key aspects of public culture in thirteenth-century Maharashtra. If this was the nature of the rivalry noticed here, we can see, in the next chapter, another rivalry play out, one that may have been more detrimental to Chakradhar and the early Mahanubhavs, which sets up an opposition between them and the larger sphere of control within the Brahminic ecumene.

Chakradhar challenged Brahminic authority within his sect, but he did not necessarily encourage such a challenge outside his group of followers. An outright rebellion against social norms, as one finds among the “radical” ascetics of India (Kalamukhas, etc.),¹¹¹ or in the figure of Basava, would hardly have had the same effect as a more conservative, restricted, one might say “strategic” calibration of social critique, set more by example than by imposition. Thus, inside the world of the Mahanubhavs, caste and gender were subject to a radical new ethics, but, outside it, Chakradhar urged his followers to accommodate prevailing social practices. The creation of a literature was a natural extension of the Brahminic value of literacy at its core. However, the effects of that literarization would be to allow the restricted critique of caste and gender, inherent in much of the history of vernacularization in South Asia, to enter into literature in Marathi as a dominant theme. This combination of forces, a restricted critique of social inequality that accommodated everyday life and a challenge to the physical epicenter of the oral Marathi public sphere—the temple as emblematic—is the heart of the vernacularization that the Jñāneśvarī inherits.

However, we might now ask: why did the Mahanubhavs compose in Marathi? What purpose did this serve? How did the particular social ethics of the Mahanubhavs, within the field of the Yadava social world, induce the early Mahanubhavs to create the first work of Marathi literature, especially as their founder, Chakradhar, seemed rather uninterested in the literary world? In answering this question, we get a clearer image of the nature of the challenge and threat the Mahanubhavs posed to prevailing social norms in their age. We will see that the challenge was contained not so much in questions about a new literary medium as in the underlying social change such a shift in the field of the literary sphere would cause, creating lines of intersection between elite spheres of society and the quotidian masses that would threaten the heart of Brahminic orthodoxy in the Yadava century.