Abhangas

An abhanga is a Marathi devotional song of the Warkari tradition, sung to Vitthal, whom devotees also call Vithoba, the god who stands on a brick at Pandharpur with his hands on his hips. The Warkari are pilgrims who walk to Pandharpur each year, and they sing abhangas on the road, at twilight and at dawn. The thirty-two abhangas on this page are by fifteen saints, and they are arranged by saint, because in this tradition the song cannot be separated from the one who sang it. Each abhanga's page gives the Marathi text, a transliteration and the meaning beneath it, so a reader can follow a song in either language, and the songs can be read in any order.

Every year the Warkari walk to Pandharpur for Ashadhi Ekadashi, the eleventh day of the bright half of Ashadha, which falls in June or July. Two processions are the best known: the palanquin carrying the padukas, the sandals, of Dnyaneshwar, which sets out from Alandi, and the palanquin of Tukaram, which sets out from Dehu. Each is called a palkhi, and the walkers go behind it for about three weeks, singing abhangas to the beat of cymbals and the mridanga drum. Along the road they call out together the name of Vitthal with that of Pundalik, and they carry saffron flags and wear a necklace of tulsi beads, the mark of a Warkari. A devotee who cannot walk is welcome to sing the same abhangas at home, for the road, as these songs teach, is first of all inward. On the eleventh day the walkers bathe in the Chandrabhaga river at Pandharpur and queue for the darshan, the sight, of Vitthal, and many sing a last abhanga before the image.

Pandharpur is the centre of every abhanga. Eknath sings of it as a daughter's beloved maternal home, with Vitthal and Rakhumai as her parents and Pundalik as her brother, and in another abhanga he says that the body itself is Pandharpur, the indwelling Self is Vitthal, and devotion flows as the river Bhima. Sena sings of the road: there is no pilgrimage in the three worlds to compare with the joy of going to Pandharpur.

The tradition remembers its saints as the builders of a temple. Bahinabai, who lived from about 1628 to 1700 and was a disciple of Tukaram, wrote an abhanga in which Dnyaneshwar laid the foundation, Namdev extended it, Eknath raised a pillar and Tukaram became its golden crest. The page follows that order. Dnyaneshwar's Haripath, twenty-eight abhangas composed at Alandi on the banks of the Indrayani around 1290, is the daily liturgy of the tradition, and the pilgrims of the annual Pandharpur Wari sing it at every twilight and dawn. His Pasaydan, the closing prayer of the Dnyaneshwari, asks God's grace for the welfare and friendship of all beings.

Tukaram is the largest group on this page, with eleven abhangas. He sings longing for God like the chakor bird for the moon, prays for smallness, and defines a true saint as one who takes the distressed as his own. His farewell abhanga is sung, as tradition holds, as he departed for Vaikuntha.

Many of the Warkari saints were people who worked with their hands, and their songs use the tools they knew. Savata Mali finds Vitthal in the onions, garlic, chillies and well-rope of his own vegetable garden, and work becomes worship. Narhari Sonar casts the body as a goldsmith's workshop, discernment as the hammer, and Rama's name as the pure gold refined within. Gora Kumbhar, Sena, Chokhamela and Chokhamela's son Karmamela are on the same page. Chokhamela says that the sugarcane is crooked yet its juice is straight, and that birth never bends the heart's devotion.

Five of the saints are women. Janabai binds the thief of Pandharpur with the rope of love and locks Vitthal in the prison of her heart. Muktabai pleads with her brother Dnyaneshwar to open the hut door, and teaches that a true saint endures the world's taunts with compassion. Kanhopatra prays in total surrender, and Bahinabai and Soyarabai complete the group.

An abhanga is a Marathi devotional song. Warkari means "one who makes the pilgrimage", and the Warkari tradition is the community of Vitthal's devotees in Maharashtra. Vitthal, or Vithoba, is the god of Pandharpur, and Rakhumai is the goddess beside him. Pundalik is the devotee of Pandharpur whom Eknath's abhanga names as a brother in the family of Vitthal and Rakhumai. A bharud is a Marathi poem of riddling images, and a sant is a saint. The Wari is the pilgrimage on foot to Pandharpur.