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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 12th 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।।
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.
