Devotion, one God and the sifting of grain
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
नमितों या देवा । माझी एके ठायीं सेवा ॥1॥
गुणअवगुण निवाडा । ह्मैस ह्मैस रेडा रेडा ॥ध्रु.॥
जनीं जनादनन। साक्ष त्यासी लोटांगण ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे खडे । निवडू दळणीं घडघडे ॥3॥ ॥8॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
I bow to this one God. My devotion belongs to a single place. Let merit and fault be sorted out: a buffalo is a buffalo, and a bull is a bull. Janardana dwells among the people; to Him I offer full prostration as witness. Says Tuka, while grinding at the mill, the stones rumble and the pebbles are sorted from the grain.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
I bow to this one God. My devotion belongs to a single place. Let merit and fault be sorted out: a buffalo is a buffalo, a bull is a bull. Janardana dwells among the people; to Him I make full prostration as my witness. Tuka says: while grinding at the mill, the stones rumble and the pebbles are sorted from the grain.
What it means
Tukaram fixes his worship on one God and refuses to scatter it. He asks that worth and worthlessness be told apart honestly, the way a beast is named for what it plainly is. Because God, Janardana, lives within all people, his full prostration to that indwelling presence is itself his witness that he serves the one and not the many. The closing image is from daily labor: as grain is ground at the mill, the rumbling stones throw out the stones and grit and keep the grain. So too, he suggests, the work of devotion separates the true from the false within a person.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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