Vithoba

Presiding deity of the temple with the
same name in the city of Pandharpur in
the state of Maharashtra; other epithets
for Vithoba include Vitthala and
Pandurang. Vithoba was originally a
local deity—according to some theories,
a deified hero—who has been assimilated
into the larger Hindu pantheon as a
form of the god Vishnu. According to
the temple’s charter myth, Vishnu
comes to Pandharpur drawn by the filial
devotion of a young boy named
Pundalika. When Vishnu arrives
Pundalika is massaging his father’s feet,
and when Vishnu asks for the hospitality
due to any guest, Pundalika stops only
long enough to throw a brick over his
shoulder, to give the god a place to stand
out of the mud. Impressed that
Pundalika’s devotion to his parents
supersedes even his devotion to God,
Vishnu becomes rooted to that spot and
has remained there ever since; Vithoba’s
image shows him with his hands on his
hips (still waiting, perhaps, for
Pundalika). Aside from this story,
Vithoba has surprisingly little mythic
history, although he has become an
important regional deity.
Vithoba is most famous for the activities of his devotees (bhakta), the
Varkari Panth religious community,
who make pilgrimages to Pandharpur
twice a year. Pandharpur sits in the
Bhima River valley on the edge of the
Maharashtra-Karnataka border, and
pilgrims come from all directions.
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 which is led by
a palanquin (palkhi) 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. Each of these palkhis travels a prescribed route, and pilgrims time their
departure and their travel to arrive in
Pandharpur 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. Pilgrims compare their journey
to that of a small stream merging with
other streams, gradually forming a
mighty river converging on Pandharpur.
During their journey pilgrims sing
the devotional songs composed by
these poet-saints, among them
Jnaneshvar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram,
Chokamela, Gora, Janabai, and Bahina
Bai. In this way, the pilgrims are emulating the saints before them, both by
treading in their physical footsteps and
by singing their songs of devotion.
Although the pilgrimage ends with the
entry to Pandharpur and the worship of
Vithoba, the most important part is the
journey itself. For more information on
Vithoba and the Varkari sect, see G. A.
Deleury, The Cult Of Vithoba, 1960; I. B.
Karve, “On the Road,” Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. 22 No. 1, 1962; and
Digambar Balkrishna. Mokashi, Palkhi:
An Indian Pilgrimage, 1987.