Saints, the Bhakti Movement & Marathi Literature — Practice

Question 1

Where are the palkhis of Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram carried from during the Ashadhi wari?

Accepted Answer

Dnyaneshwar's palkhi starts from Alandi and Tukaram's from Dehu, both near Pune, and they travel to Pandharpur for Ashadhi Ekadashi.

Question 2

When was Marathi recognised as a classical language?

Accepted Answer

On 3 October 2024, together with Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali.

Question 3

Which Maharashtra saint's hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib?

Accepted Answer

Sant Namdev's, who carried the bhakti tradition to Punjab.

Question 4

What is Lilacharitra, and why is it important?

Accepted Answer

A life of Chakradhar Swami, founder of the Mahanubhav sect, written by Mhaimbhat around 1278. It is counted as the first biography and one of the first prose works in Marathi.

Question 5

Name two works of Samarth Ramdas.

Accepted Answer

The Dasbodh, a manual of conduct, and the Manache Shlok, verses addressed to the mind.

Question 6

Match: Yayati, Natsamrat, Kosla, Baluta.

Accepted Answer

V. S. Khandekar; Kusumagraj; Bhalchandra Nemade; Daya Pawar.

Question 7

How did the Varkari saints challenge social hierarchy? (~150 words)

Accepted Answer

The Varkari saints challenged hierarchy through who they were, what they wrote and how they worshipped. They came from many castes: Namdev was a tailor, Gora Kumbhar a potter, Sawata Mali a gardener, Chokhamela a Mahar and Janabai a domestic worker, so their standing as saints was itself a claim that devotion outranked birth. They wrote in Marathi: Dnyaneshwar's commentary on the Gita and Tukaram's abhangs carried religious teaching to people shut out of Sanskrit learning. The wari to Pandharpur suspended caste distinctions for the journey. The challenge had limits: the saints sought equality before God rather than the end of caste in society, and Chokhamela's own verses record exclusion from the temple. Even so, the movement prepared the ground for Phule and later reformers.

Question 8

Discuss the contribution of Dalit literature to Marathi. (~250 words)

Accepted Answer

Dalit literature in Marathi grew from Dr Ambedkar's movement and gave the language a new subject, a new voice and new forms. Anna Bhau Sathe, in the novel Fakira and in many lok-natyas and powadas, wrote of the lives of the poor and the lower castes in the idiom of the people. Baburao Bagul's stories of the 1960s described urban poverty and caste humiliation without the softening of earlier fiction. The Dalit Panthers, founded in 1972 by Namdeo Dhasal, J. V. Pawar and others, joined literature to protest, and Dhasal's poetry used the language of Bombay's streets to shocking effect. The autobiography became the movement's defining form: Daya Pawar's Baluta of 1978, Laxman Mane's Upara and Sharankumar Limbale's Akkarmashi described caste from the inside and were translated into many languages. The contribution was threefold. It widened the subject of Marathi literature to the whole of society, it challenged the upper-caste standard of literary taste, and it made literature a means of social argument, continuing a line that runs back to the Varkari saints and Phule.

Question 9

Compare the Varkari tradition with the tradition of Samarth Ramdas. (~150 words)

Accepted Answer

Both traditions were devotional and wrote in Marathi, but their emphasis differed. The Varkari tradition, centred on Vitthal of Pandharpur, stressed love, humility and the equality of devotees, and its saints came from many castes. Its practice was the collective wari and the singing of abhangs. Samarth Ramdas, centred on Rama and Hanuman, stressed discipline, strength and active duty in the world. His Dasbodh is a manual of conduct, his maths were organised, and he set up Hanuman temples across the region. The first tradition built community across caste; the second built discipline and organisation. Together they shaped a Maharashtrian religious culture that joined devotion with public action.

Practice — Saints, the Bhakti Movement & Marathi Literature

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