Vitthal and Rakhumai. The deity who, in Janabai's verses, comes down from the brick at Pandharpur to grind flour with the maidservant. Photo: Shreeram Ghaisas, Sion Vitthal Mandir, Mumbai. CC BY 2.0.
Janabai (c. 1258 to c. 1350) was a maidservant in the household of the Varkari poet-saint Namdev, in what is now Maharashtra. She had no formal Sanskrit learning, no initiation by a famous guru, and no temple of her own. What she had was a Vithoba, the Krishna-form worshipped at Pandharpur, who, in her abhangas, comes down to grind flour with her, eats from her plate, and sleeps on her arm. She left roughly three hundred surviving songs in Marathi.
They are the record of someone for whom God did the dishes.
If you have five minutes tonight, read abhanga 268, then 261. The geography is small: Pandharpur on the Bhima river (also called Chandrabhaga), the village Gangakhed two hundred and seventy kilometres east on the Godavari, Alandi where Jnaneshwar entered samadhi.
Reader's guide
Four doors into Janabai
The chapters are still here, but the living material no longer waits behind the chapter numbers.
Each an original scholarly chapter with inline footnote citations to independent web research and standard published scholarship. Read in order, or jump to the chapter that opens onto the door you came in through.
