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The author of Dnyaneshwari, Sant Dnyaneshwar is fondly called by all his devotees and followers in Maharashtra as “Mauli” (Marathi synonym for loving mother). This is a unique example in spirituality manifested more than 700 years ago, when a youth underwent Sanjivan (live) Samadhi at the blooming age of 22. He is honoured as motherly figure and adored with reverence by all the subsequent generations in which, scores of liberated Sants and millions of faithful devotees have taken birth. Such example is rare in the history of religions and spiritualism in the world. 

Till the time of Dnyaneshwar i.e. up to 12^th century, all spiritual and philosophical knowledge was confined to the books written in Sanskrit and was available for study only to higher strata of the society. Lower caste people and Women did not have access to it. Shri Dnyaneshwar thought of making that knowledge available to everyone. Right from his childhood, Dnyaneshwar and his family were being humiliated and harassed by the established shastris and pundits, who were ignorantly proud of their social supremacy. However, under the guidance of his Guru and elder brother Nivruttinath, Dnyaneshwar ignored all that humiliation and in the short span of his life, bestowed upon common people of Maharashtra, major literary works in simple vernacular Marathi; namely- Bhavartha-Deepika i.e. Dnyaneshwari, Amrutanubhava, Changdeo-pasashti, Haripatha and Abhangas. Through these works, he rooted devotional and yogic philosophy in the soil of Maharashtra that could be understood and followed even by ordinary villagers and women, who did not know Sanskrit. All Maharashtrians have been enjoying fruits of that revolutionary work for more than seven hundred years, and this enlightenment will continue forever for every person who knows Marathi. Greatness of Dnyaneshwar as a Sant can be measured from this fact.

Gurudeo Shri R. D. Ranade, who was Professor of philosophy and Vice-Chancellor of Allahabad University for some time, was a great devotee and critic of spiritual literature of Dnyaneshwar and four other eminent mystic Sants of Maharashtra.  Gurudeo himself was a self-realized Sant from the tradition of Nath Sampradaya. He wrote about Dnyaneshwar in following words.

”Dnyaneshwar was not merely one of the greatest saints of Maharashtra, but also certainly one of the greatest interpreters of Bhagwad Geeta that ever lived….The most distinguishing feature of this interpretation of Bhagwad Geeta - Dnyaneshwari, is his unique contribution of philosophy, poetry and mysticism. Its philosophy is of a higher order no doubt, but its poetry is of a still higher order. And when the mysticism is combined with philosophical insight and poetical imagination, one can easily see how Dnyaneshwari stands, supreme.”

About the style of Dnyaneshwari, Gurudeo Ranade has written as follows.

“As regards style of Dnyaneshwari, there rarely has been even in other languages another work which shows the same flights of imagination that Dnyanadeva shows in his Dnyaneshwari. The employment of analogy at every step in the exposition of any philosophical problem was the most characteristic method in Dnyanadeva’s time. Wide world-experience is evinced by Dnyanadeva at every step; it is really wonderful how at the young age of fifteen or nineteen, such a work should have been composed. Whence could the author have acquired such a vast experience of the world?”

Gurudeo Ranade had studied all the available works on philosophy in all major languages of the world of his time and then sometime in 1933 certified Dnyaneshwari as unique contribution in philosophy and mysticism.

Let me now site a quote from Father Felix Machado’s book “Jnaneshvari-Path to Liberation published in 1998. Father Machado is presently Arch Bishop at Vasai in Maharashtra. He writes:

“The Jnaneshvari has been an unsurpassed literary piece in the Marathi language both from the point of view of high literary excellence and of an elevating philosophy of life. Jnaneshvar opened the hidden treasure and made it easy of access not only to the learned but also to the peasants and farmers and thus brought self respect and dignity to the common people. He couched the commentary in Marathi making the language acceptable in the field of scholarship and also lovable. The uniqueness of the Jnaneshvari is that it is more than a mere reproduction of the Sanskrit Bhagwad Gita into Marathi. Jnaneshvar’s command on both Sanskrit and Marathi enabled him to blend soul of the two languages into a flexible and poetic style which meets the needs of both, the man of learning and layman.”

Having seen old and recent views on the style and importance of Dnyaneshwari, let us now enter into its heart.

The first and very important ovi (couplet) commencing the composition of Dnyaneshwari invokes Aumkar (Pranava) as form of Atman, for realization of which, Lord Krishna had imparted spiritual knowledge to Arjuna in the form of Bhagwad Geeta, even in the midst of battlefield. The Ovi in Marathi and its literal meaning in English is as under:   


 ॐ नमो जी आद्या । वेदप्रतिपाद्या । जय जय स्वसंवेद्या । आत्मरूपा ।।१।।       

 Ÿ› Z_mo Or AmÚm & doXà{VnmÚm &

                                              O` O` ñdg§doÚm & AmË_ê$nm && 1.1&&

1-1. O › (Aum-Pranava) I bow to you, I hail and adore you as prime originator and source of the Cosmos. You are subject of all the Vedas and Upanishads. Victory to you- in the form of Atman, you make yourself known to and experienced by self-realized souls by way of constant pulsation and resonance in their mind, intellect and body.

Atman is described here as self perceptible form of primordial Brahman. In the next post, I will comment on some of the expressions in this ovi in more details. Like that, we will study important ovis from all the eighteen adhyayas of Dnyaneshwari one after the other.