Exhortation, the village of corpses
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
स्मशान ते भूमि प्रेतरूप जन । सेवाभक्तिहीन ग्रामवासी ॥१॥
भरतील पोट श्वानाचिया परी । वस्ति दिली घरीं यमदूतां ॥ध्रु.॥
अपूज्य लिंग तेथें अतित न घे थारा । ऐसी वस्ती चोरां कंटकांची ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे नाहीं ठावी स्थिति मती । यमाची निश्चिती कुळवाडी ॥३॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
That land is a cremation ground, its people corpse-formed, where no service or devotion is found among the inhabitants. They fill their bellies like dogs and have given Yama's messengers lodging in the house. The sacred image there is unhonored; no pilgrim takes shelter. Such a place is a den of thieves and thorns. Tuka says: those who have neither steadiness nor intelligence are the tenant-farmers of Yama.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
A village where no one serves or loves God is a cremation ground, and its people are walking corpses. They fill their bellies like dogs, and they have given the messengers of Death a room in the house. The sacred image goes unhonored there, no wandering pilgrim finds shelter, and the place becomes a den of thieves and thorns. Tuka says: those with no steadiness and no sense are simply Death's tenant-farmers.
What it means
Tukaram measures a place not by its prosperity but by whether God is loved in it. Where devotion is absent, the living are as good as dead and the village is a burning-ground; people eat and survive like animals, and by their forgetting they have housed Death itself. He is not so much cursing these neighbors as showing them what their life amounts to: those who drift without steadiness or sense are, in his blunt image, tenant-farmers working land that belongs to Death. The harshness is a mirror held up to wake the sleeper.
Appeals and Exhortations
Direct calls to action: wake up, seek God, do not waste this human birth.
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