Contents · 3 sections · 2 min
Jñāneśvar in Three Ideas
the essentialsThe Gītā in the people's tongue
The Jñāneśvarī opened the Sanskrit Gītā to anyone who spoke Marathi — “I will make the meaning sweeter than nectar”.
Pasāyadān
A prayer for the whole world — “may the wicked lose their crookedness, may all beings befriend each other”.
Amṛtānubhava
The Experience of Immortality — a non-dual philosophy in which the world is the joyful play of Śiva and Śakti.
Jñāneśvar (also Dnyaneshwar, Jñānadev; c. 1275–1296) was a Marathi saint, poet and philosopher, revered as the founder of the Vārkarī devotional tradition of Maharashtra and of Marathi literature itself. Before he died at about twenty-one, he wrote the Jñāneśvarī (1290), a commentary on the The Bhagavad Gītā in some 9,000 Marathi verses (ovīs), and the Amṛtānubhava (“Experience of Immortality”), a short philosophical poem of non-dualism. Devotees call him Māulī, “mother”.
Life
His father, Viṭṭhalpant, a Brahmin, had renounced the world to become a monk, but on his guru’s orders returned to household life. For this, the Brahmins of Āpegāv declared the family outcastes, and refused their four children — Nivṛttināth, Jñāneśvar, Sopāndev and their sister Muktābāī — the sacred-thread ceremony. Tradition says the parents drowned themselves in the Ganges as penance, hoping the children would be accepted. The children went to Paithan to ask the Brahmins for purification; to prove that the same divine Self dwells in all creatures, Jñāneśvar touched a buffalo, which began to recite the Vedas.
Initiated by his elder brother Nivṛttināth into the Nāth tradition of yoga, Jñāneśvar composed the Jñāneśvarī at Nevāsā, dictating it to a disciple. With the saint Nāmdev he travelled on pilgrimage. In 1296, at twenty-one, he entered living samādhi — sealing himself in a chamber at Ālandī, near Pune, in deep meditation. His siblings died soon after.
Works
The Jñāneśvarī (or Bhāvārthadīpikā) is far more than a commentary: it is a poetic expansion of the Gītā, full of images from daily life — the farmer, the mother, the moon, the lotus — that made the Gītā’s teaching accessible to ordinary Marathi speakers. Jñāneśvar promises: “I will speak in Marathi so sweetly that it will surpass nectar.” It ends with the Pasāyadān (“the gift of grace”), a prayer for the whole world:
May the wicked give up their crookedness, may their love of good increase, may all beings form bonds of friendship… May the darkness of sin vanish, may the world see the sun of dharma, may every being receive whatever it desires.
The Amṛtānubhava presents a non-dual philosophy close to Kashmir Śaivism: Śiva and Śakti are one, their union the world, and the world the joyful play of consciousness, not illusion.
Legacy
Jñāneśvar is the first great saint of the Vārkarī tradition centred on Viṭṭhal of Pandharpur. Every year his sandals (pādukās) are carried in a palanquin from Ālandī to Pandharpur in the great Vārī pilgrimage, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of singing pilgrims.
Curiosities
did you know?- His family was outcasted because his father had returned from renunciation to household life; the children were refused the sacred thread.
- Legend: to humble a proud Brahmin, he made a buffalo recite the Vedas; to receive the arrogant yogi Cāṅgadev, who came riding a tiger with a snake for a whip, he and his siblings rode a wall that moved.
- Every year his palanquin leads the Vārī pilgrimage from Ālandī to Pandharpur.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Can a commentary be greater literature than its original?
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