Loving reproach, the exposed show
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
लटिका चि केला । सोंग पसारा दाविला ॥1॥
अवघा बुडालासी ॠणें । बहुतांचे देणें घेणें ॥ध्रु.॥
लावियेलीं चाळा। बहू दावूनि पुतळा ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे हात । आह्मी अवरिली मात ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
It was all a pretense; the whole display was just a show. You are drowned in debts, with borrowings and lendings on every side. You dangled temptations and showed off Your image to lure people in. Says Tuka, we have caught on; we have put a stop to this game.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
It was all a fake; the whole spread was just a show. You are drowning in debts, with borrowing and lending on every side. You dangled temptations and showed off Your image to lure people in. Tuka says: we have caught on; we have put a stop to this game.
What it means
Tukaram talks to God as if catching out a clever trickster. He calls the visible world a staged display, a show with nothing solid behind it, a business buried in debts of giving and taking on every side. God is pictured as luring people in by dangling temptations and parading His form. But the closing line is the turn: the devotee says he has seen through it and stopped the game. The reproach is really a claim of arrival. Once you recognize the display as display, its pull over you ends, and that recognition is itself the freedom Tukaram is announcing.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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