Satire, the slanderer in human dress
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
एक ते गाढव मनुष्याचे वेष । हालविती पुस पुढें दाढी ॥1॥
निंदा हें भोजन जेवण तयांसी । जोडी घरीं रासी पातकांच्या ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे सुखें बैसोनियां खाती । कुंभपाकीं होती नर्कवासी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Some are donkeys in human form, wagging their whiskers and stroking their beards. Slander is their daily meal; they heap up stores of sin at home. Says Tuka, they sit and eat contentedly, but they will dwell in the boiling hell of Kumbhapaka.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Some are donkeys dressed as men, wagging their tails and stroking their beards. Slander is their meal; that is what they eat. At home they pile up heaps of sins. Tuka says: they sit and eat in comfort now, but they will fall into the boiling hell of Kumbhapaka.
What it means
Tuka strikes hard at people who make slander their daily food. Outwardly they look like men, grooming the beard, carrying themselves with dignity, but he calls them donkeys in disguise, because their real diet is the tearing-down of others. Each act of slander, he says, stacks up like stored grain into a hoard of sins inside the house. The comfort they enjoy now is borrowed against a reckoning: the boiling hell named Kumbhapaka. The warning lands not as contempt for any one person but as a hard look at the habit of feeding on other people's faults.
Social Criticism
Rebuke of hypocrisy, caste pride, false teachers, greed, and religious pretence.
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