Jñāneśvar

Jñāneśvar, by tradition, was born in 1275 near Paithan, in Maharashtra, the second of four children of a Brahmin who had become a renunciant and then, at his teacher’s command, returned to family life. Because of this, the orthodox Brahmins of the region treated the children as outcasts. His elder brother Nivṛttināth, initiated into the Nāth yogic tradition, became his teacher; his younger brother Sopāndev and sister Muktābāī were also saints.

At about fifteen, according to tradition, he dictated the Jñāneśvarī, also called Bhāvārthadīpikā, a Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā in some nine thousand verses, completed in 1290 at Nevasa. It brought the Gītā’s teaching to people who knew no Sanskrit, in poetry that is a founding work of Marathi literature. He also wrote the Amṛtānubhava, a short philosophical poem, and many abhaṅgas.

Tradition holds that in 1296, at the age of twenty-one, he entered a final samādhi, in a chamber at Alandi, near Pune, which was then sealed. His shrine at Alandi is the starting point of the great annual pilgrimage to Pandharpur.

Jñāneśvar’s poetry is admired for its images drawn from ordinary life, of mothers and children, rivers, lamps and seasons, through which the Gītā’s philosophy is made concrete, and the Jñāneśvarī is still recited and expounded in Maharashtra.