Eknath
Encyclopedia
Eknath was a prominent Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 scholar and religious poet. He is called a "sant" (saint) in the Marathi
Marathi people
The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...

 tradition as are most other religious poets. In the development of Marathi literature, Sant Eknath is seen as a bridge between the towering predecessors Dnyaneshwar and Naamdev and the equally noble successors Tukaram and Ramdas.

Origins

Eknath was born sometime around 1530 AD in an illustrious Brahmin family of Pratisthan (Paithan today). They were said to be the Kulkarni
Kulkarni
Kulkarni Marathi- Kannada- is a common family name in the Maharashtra and Karnataka states of India.The name Kulkarni is believed to be a combination of two words . Kula means the root of the family, and Karanika means one who maintains records or accounts...

s of the village, but their name is not known. Sant Bhanudas, who brought back the sacred image of Lord Pandurang, from Vijaynagar to Pandharpur, was Eknath’s great grandfather.

Eknath was born under the star sign of ‘Mula’ in the sagittarius constellation, traditionally considered a bad omen for the parents of the child. The omen was borne out for Eknath’s father Suryanarayan and mother Rukmini died shortly after his birth and Eknath was brought up by his grandparents, Chakrapani and Saraswatibai. As an orphan, Eknath had to the suffer taunts of other children. He began avoiding their company and found refuge as a child in prayer and other devotional practices.

Tutelage by Janardanswami

When about twelve years old, Eknath heard about Janardanswamy. This great scholar lived in Devgiri renamed as Daulatabad by the Muslim rulers of the time. Eager to become his disciple, Eknath trudged all the way to Devgiri. Janardaswamy was amazed by this extra-ordinarily gifted boy and readily accepted him as his disciple. He taught Eknath Vedanta, Nyaya, Meemansa, Yoga etc. and most importantly, Sant Dnyaneshwar’s works. Janardanswamy was a devotee of Lord Dattatreya, and this meant that Eknath's social and religious outlook consisted of tolerance and kindness toward all fellow beings.

The Guru asked Eknath to go on a pilgrimage. He himself accompanied Eknath upto Nasik-Tryambakeshwar. Here, Eknath wrote his famous treatise on the Chatushloki Bhagavat. In this Marathi commentary, he explained the significance of four sacred shlokas of the Bhagavat in 1036 specially metered verses known as ovee
Ovee
An ovee is a type of meterical stanza in Marathi poetry. An ovee is generally made of four lines. Each line can contain 8–15 syllables, while the fourth line of each ovee is a short one, generally half or 1/3 of the length of first three lines....



After completing his pilgrimage, consisting of various holy places of west and north India, Eknath returned to Paithan. His grandparents were extremely delighted to see him again and implored him to marry. Eknath and his wife Girija were truly made for each other and established an ideal examples of ethical living. In time, the couple was blessed with two daughters, Godavari and Ganga and a son Hari.

Revival of the Dnyaneshwari

Eknath was responsible for the rediscovery of the great work of Dnyaneshwar, the first bard of Marathi literature, the epic poem the Dnyaneshwari, which had been forgotten like many Hindu epics after the grinding Muslim invasions. About 230 years before the birth of Eknath, Dnyaneshwar had written an important commentary in Marathi in verse form on the geat sacred text in Sanscrit Bhagawad Geeta
Bhagavad Gita
The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...

. It was called the Bhawarth-Deepika and it had come to be known as the Dnyaneshwari
Dnyaneshwari
The Dnyaneshwari is the commentary on Bhagavad Gita written by Marathi saint and poet Dnyaneshwar during the 13th century at age 16...

.
During the intervening period between Dnyaneshwar and Eknath, Maharashtra, like the rest of the country, had been ravaged by Muslim invasions. Defeat after defeat had left the people demoralized. The people did not have their epics, their ballads, their poems to turn to, these had all been forgotten in a generation or two. Eknath saw that the need of the hour was a revival of Marathi literature, of the great epics, an education in the old values and if the once popular Marathi-worded Dnyaneshwari could be brought again to the people, they could be uplifted, morally and spiritually.
Eknath devoted himself to bringing about the epic poem's revival. His first task was to locate the "samadhi" of Dnyaneshwar (a place where he took his own life) to show to the people that Dnyaneshwar was not a mythological being, but a real man, one of their own. He then devoted a few, hard years in compiling an undistorted version of the Dnyaneshwari.

His Writings

Almost all of Eknath's writings were in verse form in Marathi. Eknath wrote a scholarly and lucid commentary, Eknathi Bhagawat, on the Eleventh Canto of the Sanscrit sacred text, the Bhagavata Purana
Bhagavata purana
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the "Maha" Puranic texts of Hindu literature, with its primary focus on bhakti to the incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Krishna...

. The commentary involved 18,800 owees. He wrote the first 25,000 owees of his another major work, the Bhawartha-Ramayana. A disciple called Gavba added 15,000 owees to complete this work. Eknath wrote Rukmini Swayamwar comprising 1,711 owees; it was based on 144 verses from the Bhagawat Purana. His work, Hastamalak, comprised 764 owees, and it was based on a 14-shlok Sanskrit hymn with the same name by Shankaracharya
Shankaracharya
Shankaracharya, is a commonly used title of heads of mathas in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. The title derives from Adi Shankara, a 9th century CE reformer of Hinduism. He is honored as Jagadguru, a title that was used earlier only to Lord Krishna...

.

His other works were the Shukashtak (447 owees), the Swatma-Sukha (510 owees), the Ananda-Lahari (154 owees), the Chiranjeewa-Pad (42 owees), the Geeta-Sar, and the Prahlad-Wijaya. He introduced a new form of Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 the religious song called Bharood, writing 300 of them. He also wrote 300 religious songs in the Abhang form. He was also a preacher, and gave many public discourses.
Eknath initiated in Maharashtra a movement called Wasudewa Sanstha. It involved house-to-house visitations by individuals known as Wasudewa, who, standing in front of peoples' houses, spread religious messages through bhajans (ballads).

His Teachings

Eknath was one of the earliest reformers of untouchability in Maharashtra, working as he was in the late middle ages. In times when Brahmins even avoided the shadow and the voice of an untouchable, he publicly showed courtesy toward untouchables and frequented them. Once he saved the life of a Mahar
Mahar
Mahar is an important social group within the Indian state of Maharashtra and surrounding states. A grouping of related endogamous castes, the Mahar are the largest scheduled caste group in Maharashtra, in which they comprise ten percent of the population .On...

 child, rescuing it from drowning in the overflowing waters of the Godavari. The Brahmins of the village got angry at Eknath imparting his touch to the body of a backward. In an act meant to mollify them, he famously took a bath in the same river to wash away the impurity, hoping they would see the inhumanity of their taboos. His poems appeal their readers to treat each fellow being with kindness and humanity, as a brother, as a sister. This appeal also included birds and animals and plants. One of his most loved poems says, every soul you meet is your God.
Eknath’s teachings may be summarized as "Vichar, Uchchar and Achar" i.e., purity in thought, speech and action. His works, verses and preachings kindled hope among the people at a time when they needed it most.

Samadhi

Certain religious poets had dealt with the question of their own death by resorting to a "samadhi". Here the poet took his own life by immersing himself in a body of water, such as a lake or a river. Following the example of his idol, Dnyaneshwar, Eknath embraced "jalsamadhi" (water samadhi) in the sacred Godavari on Krishna Shasthi day of Phalguna in the year 1599AD.

External links

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