The Varkari Tradition: Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram

The Varkari sampradaya is a bhakti devotional tradition centred on the deity Vitthal (Vithoba) at Pandharpur in present-day Maharashtra, whose adherents (varkaris) undertake an annual pilgrimage (wari) on foot, singing abhangs composed by a lineage of poet-saints spanning roughly the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. This tradition is notable for its social inclusivity, drawing devotees across caste lines and including several poet-saints from traditionally marginalised communities, even as caste hierarchy persisted in the broader society around it.

Sant Dnyaneshwar (1275-1296), who reportedly composed his major work and died by his own choice (sanjeevan samadhi) before the age of twenty-two, wrote the 'Dnyaneshwari', a Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gita composed in an accessible vernacular register specifically to make Sanskrit philosophical and devotional knowledge available beyond the Brahmanical elite who alone had access to Sanskrit learning. This act of vernacular translation was itself a significant social and religious intervention, asserting that spiritual knowledge need not remain the exclusive preserve of a Sanskrit-literate priestly class.

Sant Tukaram (1608-1649), writing three centuries later, composed thousands of abhangs in direct, often startlingly frank colloquial Marathi, addressing Vitthal with a combination of devotion, complaint, humour, and philosophical reflection on his own poverty and social humiliation as a member of the Kunbi (cultivator) caste. Tukaram's abhangs frequently critique caste pride and religious hypocrisy directly, and his personal struggles, documented partly in his own verse, gave the Varkari tradition an enduring reputation for social critique embedded within devotional practice.

The abhang form itself—typically composed in the ovi or abhang metre, meant for communal singing accompanied by cymbals (taal) and the mridang drum during kirtan performance—represents a fusion of poetic and musical-devotional practice inseparable from its performative and communal context; reading an abhang purely as printed text on a page loses much of its intended experiential dimension.

The Varkari tradition's continuing vitality is visible in the contemporary Pandharpur wari, which draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually and remains a subject of ethnographic, literary, and religious studies interest, illustrating how a medieval bhakti literary tradition persists as living practice rather than a purely historical artefact for modern Maharashtra.