Varkari

Religious community of devotees
(bhakta) of the god Vishnu, in his manifestation as Vithoba. Varkari worship
has centered on Vithoba’s temple at
Pandharpur in the southern part of the
state of Maharashtra. The community’s
history begins with a series of extraordinary devotional (bhakti) poet-saints,
dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth century: Jnaneshvar, Namdev,
Eknath, Tukaram, Chokamela, Gora,
Janabai, Bahina Bai, and many others.
One of the ways that these saints
expressed their devotion was in pilgrimage to Pandharpur, and this pilgrimage
is still the major ritual act in the Varkari
community. Twice a year Varkaris come
on pilgrimage to Pandharpur and time
their travel so that all the pilgrims arrive
on the same day—the eleventh day
(ekadashi) in the bright half of Ashadh
(June–July) in the summer, and the
eleventh day in the bright half of
Kartik (October–November) in the fall.
Individual pilgrims travel in small
groups called dindis, often made up of
people from the same neighborhood or
locality. The dindis are organized into
larger groups known as palkhis, each of
which is associated with one of the
Varkari poet-saints and is led by a
palanquin (palkhi, an enclosed singleperson litter borne on the shoulders of
bearers by means of poles) bearing the
sandals of that saint. Each palkhi
departs from a place associated with its
particular saint—for example, the
palkhi of Jnaneshvar leaves from the
town of Alandi in which he lived—and
thus he and all the other saints are still
symbolically journeying to Pandharpur
twice a year. During their journey pilgrims sing the devotional songs composed by these poet-saints. In this way,
the pilgrims are emulating the saints
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Varkari
before them, both by treading in their
physical footsteps and by singing their
songs of devotion. Although the pilgrimage concludes with the entry to
Pandharpur and the worship of
Vithoba, the most important part is the
journey itself. For more information
see G. A. Deleury, The Cult of Vithoba,
1960; I. B. Karve, “On the Road,” in the
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1,
1962; and Digambar Balkrishna Mokashi,
Palkhi, 1987.