Going Home to Pandharpur

The abhanga closes with Dnyaneshwar's signature. Baparakhumadevivaru Viththalaci bheti. Dear Vitthal, the lord of Rakhumadevi, is the one whose meeting this is. And he has arranged the whole thing for the sake of his own. Apulya savansathi karuni thela. The meeting was prepared. The daughter's whole walk to the maher, the embrace at the door, the fruit of every good deed, the gladness filling the three worlds, was not her achievement. It was Vitthal's arrangement. For his own.

If you have been laboring under the idea that the spiritual life is something you do, this closing verse is the final release. The meeting has been set up. The pilgrimage you are on was not invented by you. It was arranged by the one you are walking toward, for the sake of those who are already his. Apulya savansathi. For his own. Not for the worthy. Not for the heroic. For his own.

The verse ends the song the way a Warkari song must end. The daughter does not take credit. She names the arranger. She says: this is Vitthal's doing, from beginning to end. The pilgrimage is his mudra, his gesture. She is only the body through which it moves. And with that naming, the abhanga rests.

The Living Words

Baparakhumadevivaru Viththalaci bheti. Dear Vitthal, the lord of Rakhumadevi, his meeting. This is Dnyaneshwar's signature mudra, the line that closes almost every one of his abhangas and marks the verse as his. Bap here is a Marathi affectionate particle, not a theological claim of fatherhood. The Phase 1 translation reading of this tradition has been firm: bap in this compound functions as an emphatic tenderness, the way one says dear or my own in English when naming someone close. It does not make Vitthal the speaker's father or the husband of his own daughter. It softens the name, the way an affectionate Marathi speaker softens any beloved name.

Rakhumadevivaru is Rakhumadevi-vara, the husband of Rakhumadevi, who is the Marathi folk name of Rukmini, the Lord's consort. The compound identifies Vitthal by his relation to the goddess who stands beside him in the Pandharpur temple. Viththalaci bheti is Vitthal's meeting, the meeting-with-Vitthal, the reunion that is the whole subject of the abhanga.

Apulya savansathi karuni thela. He has done and set it up for the sake of his own. Apulya is the possessive: his own, belonging to him. Savansathi is savan-sathi, a Marathi expression that can be parsed as for-the-sake, for-the-company, on-behalf-of. In context it means: for the sake of those who are his own people. Karuni thela is the completed participle plus the verb to stand or be placed: he has done it and set it, he has arranged it and left it ready. The whole meeting is pre-prepared, already standing ready to happen.

The verb tense is the theological punchline. The meeting is not future. It is already arranged. The walker is walking toward something already set up.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

The signature line of a Dnyaneshwar abhanga is never a flourish. It is the theology in a handful of Marathi syllables. And the signature here is doing the most crucial work of the whole song. It is telling you whose pilgrimage this actually is.

Read the closing couplet again. Dear Vitthal, lord of Rakhumadevi, has arranged this meeting. For the sake of his own, he has made the whole thing ready.

Who is the subject of the verb? Not the walker. Not the daughter. Not Dnyaneshwar. Vitthal. Vitthal is the one who has arranged. Vitthal is the one who has made the whole thing ready. The pilgrimage that the opening verses described as a daughter's glad going toward her mother's house is now revealed, in the last line, as a meeting Vitthal set up for his own people.

This is the Warkari resolution of an apparent paradox. The opening of the abhanga is full of the speaker's own agency. I will turn samsara sweet. I will fill the three worlds. I will go. I will meet. I will receive. I will give. Six first-person futures in the space of three verses. And then, at the very end, the whole thing is reattributed. The arranging was his. The preparation was his. The meeting is his. The walker's going is the answer to the Lord's prior going-out-of-the-way to set up the reunion.

This is why the phrase apulya savansathi is the theological heart of the closing. For the sake of his own. Not for the sake of the worthy. Not for the sake of the heroic pilgrim. For the sake of those who already belong to him. The meeting is pre-arranged for those who are already his. Your pilgrimage to Pandharpur is not striving to become his. It is accepting that you already are.

Dwell on this for a moment. If the meeting was arranged in advance, on his initiative, for those who already belong to him, then everything you thought was your effort is a response to an invitation already issued. The walk, the fast, the chant, the breath you are using to sing this abhanga, none of it is payment. None of it qualifies you. The qualifying, if there is any, happened in Vitthal's heart long before you began, on the day he decided to stand on the brick and wait for his own to come.

And who are his own? The Warkari tradition refuses every narrowing answer to this question. His own are not the high-caste. Chokhamela was Mahar, forbidden by his birth from the temple, and Vitthal called him his own anyway. His own are not the learned. Tukaram's manuscripts were thrown in the river by those who said a shopkeeper had no right to sing scripture, and Vitthal called him his own anyway. His own are not the male. Muktabai and Janabai and Kanhopatra and Bahinabai walked into the Warkari canon in their own voices, and the Lord of Pandharpur called them his own. His own are not the successful. Namdev lost his first Guru to death, wandered, failed at many things, and came home to Vitthal, and Vitthal called him his own.

Apulya savansathi. For the sake of his own. This is a doctrine of divine initiative, and it is radical. The meeting is not a reward for the devotee's achievement. It is a convenience he has set up for the sake of those already in his heart. Your walk is not what makes you his. His having already made you his is what sets your feet on the road.

The Gita says this in its great promise. Krishna tells Arjuna to abandon all dharmas and take refuge in him alone; he will free you from all sins, do not grieve. The doctrine of prapatti, of surrender, is the Gita's version of apulya savansathi. The Lord has already promised. Your taking refuge is the acceptance of a promise already made. The surrender is the recognition of the prior claim.

Now hear what this does to the feminine voice of the whole abhanga. The woman who has been speaking, the daughter going home to her maher, has been speaking in first-person futures the whole time. I will go. I will meet. I will receive. I will give. And at the end, Dnyaneshwar in his signature pulls the camera back and shows you the frame. The woman's voice has been the voice of someone already arranged for. The bheti, the meeting, was set up before she packed her bundle. Her glad going is how the pre-arranged meeting comes to pass in time. She is not the author of the pilgrimage. She is the embodiment of it. And her joy, her ananda spilling into the three worlds in verse one, is the overflow of a reunion the Lord has already prepared in his own heart.

And note, finally, what bap is doing in the signature. Baparakhumadevivaru Viththala. Dear Vitthal, lord of Rakhumadevi. Bap here is affectionate intimacy, not fatherhood. The tradition has been careful about this. In the village Marathi of Dnyaneshwar's time, bap could function as an emphatic affectionate particle, the way one says dada or bai in modern Marathi, or dear in English, before a beloved name. Reading it as a claim that Vitthal is the father figure here would unmake the whole abhanga, which is built on the image of the daughter going to her mother's house. The bap does not reassign the family roles. It softens the naming of the beloved. It says: this Vitthal, this dear Vitthal, the one who is Rakhumadevi's, has done the arranging.

And with that naming, the abhanga rests. The song began with a daughter's promise to turn samsara sweet. The song ends with the recognition that the whole sweetening was set up by the one at the other end of the walk. Your pilgrimage is his arrangement. Your going is his drawing. Your arrival at the maher is his having prepared the maher for those who are already his.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Dnyaneshwar's signature, the Baparakhumadevivaru Viththala mudra, closes almost every one of his abhangas, and it trained the Warkari tradition in a particular way of ending a song. The signature never claims the singer's achievement. It names the Lord as the source of whatever the song described. Tradition holds that this humility-in-naming was one of Dnyaneshwar's deepest gifts to Marathi bhakti. Every saint after him, in closing their verses, had this template available. The song ends with the Lord's name, and the Lord is acknowledged as the one whose grace the song has only been reporting.

The pattern is ancient and specific to Pandharpur. Pundalik, whose devotion to his parents brought Vitthal to the banks of the Bhima, is the archetype of apulya savansathi, the one-the-Lord-calls-his-own. Tradition tells that Vitthal came to Pundalik's door and found him tending his aging parents. Pundalik asked the Lord to wait, placing a brick for him to stand on, and continued his service. The Lord stood on the brick, and has stood there ever since. The whole Pandharpur theology is built on this image. The Lord does not summon his own. He goes to where his own are, and waits. Dnyaneshwar's apulya savansathi karuni thela is the song form of this founding gesture. The Lord has set up the meeting. He has placed himself on the brick.

Namdev, who walked to Pandharpur from his tailor's shop and made it his home, sang the same doctrine throughout his corpus. The Lord, Namdev insisted, is not hiding. The Lord is waiting. The devotee's job is to recognize the waiting, not to hunt the hidden. His abhangas on Vitthal's patience with him, across many spiritual missteps and corrections, are another form of apulya savansathi. The Lord arranged the meeting in advance, and endured every one of the devotee's delays without moving from the brick.

Eknath, the Brahmin saint of Paithan, took this doctrine and made it the ethics of his life. If the Lord has already claimed his own, the sign of this in the world is that the high and the low stand in the same temple. Eknath, famously, ate with an untouchable family in his own home and defended his decision by pointing to Vitthal on the brick: the Lord does not sort his own by caste. The apulya savansathi cut through every social arrangement Eknath had inherited. The Lord's prior claiming was the ground for the saint's social breach. This reading of Dnyaneshwar's closing formula became Eknath's practice.

Tukaram, three centuries after Dnyaneshwar, lived on the edge of this doctrine. His abhangas, which open with the confession that the grace came but the service did not (the verses just before this one in the Guru Parampara set), are only intelligible on the ground that apulya savansathi is true. The shopkeeper of Dehu, who lost his shop and his family and the ledgers, was the Lord's own before he had earned anything. The whole of Tukaram's corpus is the slow unpacking of this prior claiming. When he finally boarded the chariot-of-flowers at Dehu, as the tradition remembers, the arranging had been done long before he arrived.

Muktabai, Dnyaneshwar's younger sister, sang in a register that assumed apulya savansathi as given. She addressed Vitthal with the familiarity of someone who knew she was already his. The taatiche abhang, the open-the-door songs she sang to her brother, drew their authority from this certainty. She did not argue with Dnyaneshwar that he should come out of his grief. She reminded him that the Lord had claimed them both, and that his hiding in the hut was inconsistent with the claim. Muktabai's songs are the sisterly form of the doctrine this closing verse sings.

And the great Kurukshetra reunion of Krishna and the gopis, recorded in the tenth canto of the Bhagavata, sits behind this whole closing verse as its Puranic archetype. When the gopis travel to Kurukshetra and meet Krishna again after many years of separation, it is not that they have earned the reunion by their austerity. Krishna's whole being is said to be filled with them. The meeting was inside him all along. The gopis' journey is the outward form of Krishna's inner holding. Apulya savansathi karuni thela. For the sake of his own, he has made the whole thing ready. The Bhagavata's Kurukshetra and Dnyaneshwar's Pandharpur are the same event, narrated in Sanskrit and Marathi respectively, with the same theological spine.