Devotion, Pandhari and its hidden cost
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
पंढरीस घडे अतित्यायें मृत्य । तो जाय पतित अधःपाता ॥1॥
दुराचारें मोक्ष सुखाचे वसति । भोळी बाळमूतिन पांडुरंग ॥ध्रु.॥
केला न सहावे तीर्थउपवास । कथेविण दोषसाधन तें ॥2॥
कालियापें भेद मानितां निवडे । श्रोत्रियांसी जोडे आंतेजेता॥3॥
माहेरीं सलज्ज ते जाणा सिंदळी । कािळमा काजळी पावविते ॥4॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
If a guest dies at Pandhari, the one responsible falls to perdition. Even wrongdoers find liberation and comfort there, for Panduranga is an innocent, childlike form. Fasting and pilgrimages done without hearing God's story become instruments of sin. Those who make distinctions based on caste find the excluded joining the learned. Says Tuka, the woman who is modest at her parents' home but immoral elsewhere brings only blackness.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
If a guest dies at Pandhari, the one who let it happen falls to ruin. Even wrongdoers find liberation and ease there, for Panduranga is an innocent, childlike form. Fasts and pilgrimages done without listening to God's story turn into instruments of sin. Where people split others by caste, the very ones they shut out end up joined to the learned. A woman modest at her father's house but loose elsewhere brings only blackness. Know this.
What it means
Tukaram praises Pandhari while warning that its grace carries real duties. He says God's place is so merciful that even wrongdoers are saved there, because Panduranga is innocent and childlike; but that mercy is not a license to neglect, and to let a guest die there is to fall to ruin. He then turns the standard religion inside out: fasting and pilgrimage without truly hearing God's story become sources of sin, and those excluded by caste pride are the ones God draws in beside the learned. His closing image of a woman decent only at home is aimed at hidden hypocrisy: piety that is genuine in one place and false in another leaves only stain. He does not thin these sharp claims into polite advice.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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