Worldly life, trades steeped in sin
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कांहीं दुसरा विचार । न लगे करावा चि फार ॥1॥
सेटएा ना चौधरी । पांडेपण वाहे शिरीं ॥ध्रु.॥
पाप न लगे धुंडावें॥ पाहिजे तरि तेथें जावें ॥2॥
जकातीचा धंदा । तेथें पाप वसे सदा ॥3॥
गाई ह्मसी हेड । तुप विकी महा द्वाड ॥4॥
तुका ह्मणे पाहीं । तेथें पुण्या रीघ नाहीं ॥5॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
No great deliberation is needed for this. Becoming a merchant, a headman, or a revenue officer, one carries the weight of worldly position on one's head. Sin needs no searching; it is right there if you go looking. The tax-collection trade is where sin dwells permanently. One who sells adulterated ghee from a cow's milk is deeply wicked. Says Tuka, look closely: there is no room for virtue in such pursuits.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
There is no need to think long about this. The big merchant, the headman, the revenue clerk: each one carries the weight of his office on his head. You do not have to go searching for sin. It is right there, the moment you step in. The tax-collecting trade is a place where sin lives all the time. The man who waters down ghee from the cow's milk and sells it is deeply crooked. Tuka says: look and see. There is no doorway for virtue in any of that.
What it means
Tukaram looks plainly at certain worldly occupations and judges them by the sin built into them. The merchant, the village headman, the revenue officer all carry the load of their position, and the tax trade in particular is a place where wrongdoing is constant rather than occasional. He gives a sharp example, the dealer who adulterates ghee and sells it as pure, as a stand-in for trades that run on cheating. His point is not that work itself is evil but that some occupations leave no opening for virtue to enter. The poem invites an honest look at how one earns, and at whether the daily means itself is clean.
Worldly Life
The perplexities of action, karma, and navigating life in the world.
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