The vanity of wealth, you take nothing
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
लंकेमाजी घरें किती तीं आइका । सांगतसें संख्या जैसीतैसी ॥1॥
पांच लक्ष घरें पाषाणांचीं जेथें । सात लक्ष तेथें विटेबंदी ॥ध्रु.॥
कोटि घरें जेथें कांशा आणि तांब्याचीं । शुद्ध कांचनाचीं सप्त कोटी ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे ज्याची संपदा एवढी । सांगातें कवडी गेली नाहीं ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Hear how many houses there were in Lanka; I will tell you the count as it truly was. Five hundred thousand houses of stone, seven hundred thousand built of brick. Ten million houses of brass and copper, and seventy million of pure gold. Says Tuka, he whose wealth was so vast could not take even a single cowrie shell with him.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Hear how many houses there were in Lanka. I will tell you the count, just as it was. Five hundred thousand houses of stone. Seven hundred thousand built of brick. Ten million houses of brass and copper. Seventy million of pure gold. Tuka says: he whose wealth was this vast could not take a single cowrie shell with him.
What it means
Tukaram piles up Ravana's riches house by house, stone to brick to brass to gold, until the numbers turn unreal. He builds the heap only to knock it flat in the last line: the lord of all that gold could not carry off one cowrie shell, the smallest coin there is. The frame the poem leaves unspoken is your own grasping. Every fortune you stack up stays behind when you go, so measure what you are storing against what you can actually keep.
Sacred Stories
Abhangas drawing on mythological narratives to illuminate spiritual truths.
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