Eknath

(1533–1599) Poet and saint in the
Varkari Panth, a religious community
that worships the Hindu god Vithoba, at
his temple at Pandharpur in the modern state of Maharashtra. Eknath was a
brahmin who lived most of his life in the
city of Paithan, which was an important
trading and political center. Today, there
is a shrine to Eknath in Paithan. In keeping with his birth as a brahmin, Eknath
was highly learned in traditional
Sanskritic lore. His best-known work is a
translation into Marathi of the eleventh
chapter of the Bhagavata Purana, a
sectarian religious text that is the most
important for the worship of the god
Krishna. Yet Eknath also seems to have
been intensely conscious of the spiritual
capacities of the lower castes and the
way in which social boundaries could be
219
Eknath
leveled by devotion. In short poems
known as bharuds he speaks in a variety
of voices, including those of untouchables, Muslims, and women. Traditional
accounts of his life describe him as
treating untouchable devotees (bhakta)
as his equals, and even eating
and drinking with them. Such flagrant
transgression of social boundaries
brought trouble from more orthodox
brahmins—who are portrayed as the villains in these traditional accounts—but
on each occasion Eknath managed to
escape being outcasted by them, often
through divine intervention. For further
information see G. A. Deleury, The Cult
of Vithoba, 1960; Justin E. Abbott, The
Life of Eknath, 1981; and Eleanor Zelliot,
“Chokamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti
Modes of Legitimacy for Modern
Change,” in Journal of Asian and African
Studies, 1980, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 1980. See
also Sanskrit.