The Rise of a Folk God: Vitthal of Pandarpur
Ramachandra Chintaman Dhere
New Delhi: Permanent Black 2012
The spread of the Vijayanagara Empire throughout Peninsular India brought in its wake social changes which are now being investigated by historians. The gradual transformation of forest dwellers and tribal social groups into social formations allied to or integrated within the Hindu conceptual universe remains the most prominent feature of the social landscape of the last precolonial polity/empire of South India. There are transcriptional evidence to demonstrate that in parts of South India when social groups were enumerated in inscriptions an implied hierarchy was already in place and when we look back at the history of the communities we find that they were rather late entrants into peasant society. One area of research which has opened by in recent years is the study of society and social change as is reflected in songs, ballads, hymns and devotional compositions. The book under review analyses the cult of Vitthal in its setting in the Warkari tradition of Maharashtra. A recent Ph D thesis entitled The Songs of Purandaradasa in the Social,Historical and Religious Context of the Vijayanagara Empire submitted to Pondicherry University by Divya Sandesh looks at the patronage extended to the cult of Vitthala by the Rayas of Vijayanagara as a strategy to integrate marginal social groups like the Dhangars within the framework of the Vijayanagara state.
The work attempts a reconstruction of the religious tradition and practices surrounding the emergence of Vitthala as Vaishanava deity during the early medieval period. Part of the work was undertaken earlier by the Jesuit priest and scholar Father G A Delury whose Cult of Vithoba still remains one of the most important studies on this theme. Dhere wrote this book in Marathi and it has been ably translated by Dr Anne Feldhaus. He is at pains to uncover the "identity"of Vitthala about whom even Purandaradasa is said to have remarked in one of his songs: Show me who you really are or I will tell the world the truth about you. It is clear that the identity of Vitthala or Vitthoba was a contested one even during the medieval period. Though he is considered to be form of Vishnu, the fact is that Vitthala like Venkatesvara is not one of the avatars of Vishnu or is he even included in the list of 24 upaavataras. Dhere traces the Vaishnavisation of Vitthala to the Wakari movement, the quintessential pilgrimage and circulation of bhaktas in Maharashtra. This movement seems to have begun in the eleventh century when the Yadavas of Devagiri were the dominant political force in the Deccan region and got absorbed into the larger pan-Indian Bhakthi tradition as a consequence of the interaction between the Deccan and the Tamil tradition as ably shown by Dr Divya Sandesh in the thesis already cited.
The author has used a particular kind of religious text known as the Panduranga Mahatmya in order to explore the spiritual and religious aspects of the Vitthala cult. This genre of texts is particularly difficult for historians to accept as source material because of the difficulty we have in arriving at a date for their composition.
The same difficulty is faced by those historians who use ephemeral sources like abhangs and kirtans of saint composers like Purandaradasa whose compositions were collected and collated only towards the end of the nineteenth century. During the four centuries when songs and hagiography circulated in an oral medium there would have been considerable contamination by the incorporation of later elements and of course certain fundamental changes in the text itself due to the sectarian or political interests of the redactor. However, most historians assume that the texts they are dealing with retain their pristime quality, an assumption which is challenged by the work of Lord and Father Walter Ong. During the Vijayanagara period we find the spread of the cult of Vitthala to parts of Peninsular India where Vitthala was virtually unknown. One argument which has been put forwards by the historian cited earlier Dr Divya Sandesh, is to link the spread of the cult to the political needs and compulsions of the Vijayanagara state itself. She has shown that saint singers like Purandaradasa who traveled extensively in the Empire from Pandarpur in the North to Srirangam in the South created a sacred landscape in which the Vijayangara Empire became more or less coeval with the sacrality of deities like Vitthala and Narasimha whose worship was very popular during the period.
A question which Chintamani Dhere does not ask but is worth asking is: Did Vijayanagara promote the worship of Vitthala at the fabulous temple constructed at Hampi in order to appropriate the sanctity of Pandarpur after it had been conquered by the Adil Shahis Sultanate. This is a historical issue and we cannot fault Dhere for not attempting an answer. All in all this is a serious book and addresses the issue of popular religious cult and practices centering around the worship of theis pastoral deity in a detailed manner.
Ramachandra Chintaman Dhere
New Delhi: Permanent Black 2012
The spread of the Vijayanagara Empire throughout Peninsular India brought in its wake social changes which are now being investigated by historians. The gradual transformation of forest dwellers and tribal social groups into social formations allied to or integrated within the Hindu conceptual universe remains the most prominent feature of the social landscape of the last precolonial polity/empire of South India. There are transcriptional evidence to demonstrate that in parts of South India when social groups were enumerated in inscriptions an implied hierarchy was already in place and when we look back at the history of the communities we find that they were rather late entrants into peasant society. One area of research which has opened by in recent years is the study of society and social change as is reflected in songs, ballads, hymns and devotional compositions. The book under review analyses the cult of Vitthal in its setting in the Warkari tradition of Maharashtra. A recent Ph D thesis entitled The Songs of Purandaradasa in the Social,Historical and Religious Context of the Vijayanagara Empire submitted to Pondicherry University by Divya Sandesh looks at the patronage extended to the cult of Vitthala by the Rayas of Vijayanagara as a strategy to integrate marginal social groups like the Dhangars within the framework of the Vijayanagara state.
The work attempts a reconstruction of the religious tradition and practices surrounding the emergence of Vitthala as Vaishanava deity during the early medieval period. Part of the work was undertaken earlier by the Jesuit priest and scholar Father G A Delury whose Cult of Vithoba still remains one of the most important studies on this theme. Dhere wrote this book in Marathi and it has been ably translated by Dr Anne Feldhaus. He is at pains to uncover the "identity"of Vitthala about whom even Purandaradasa is said to have remarked in one of his songs: Show me who you really are or I will tell the world the truth about you. It is clear that the identity of Vitthala or Vitthoba was a contested one even during the medieval period. Though he is considered to be form of Vishnu, the fact is that Vitthala like Venkatesvara is not one of the avatars of Vishnu or is he even included in the list of 24 upaavataras. Dhere traces the Vaishnavisation of Vitthala to the Wakari movement, the quintessential pilgrimage and circulation of bhaktas in Maharashtra. This movement seems to have begun in the eleventh century when the Yadavas of Devagiri were the dominant political force in the Deccan region and got absorbed into the larger pan-Indian Bhakthi tradition as a consequence of the interaction between the Deccan and the Tamil tradition as ably shown by Dr Divya Sandesh in the thesis already cited.
The author has used a particular kind of religious text known as the Panduranga Mahatmya in order to explore the spiritual and religious aspects of the Vitthala cult. This genre of texts is particularly difficult for historians to accept as source material because of the difficulty we have in arriving at a date for their composition.
The same difficulty is faced by those historians who use ephemeral sources like abhangs and kirtans of saint composers like Purandaradasa whose compositions were collected and collated only towards the end of the nineteenth century. During the four centuries when songs and hagiography circulated in an oral medium there would have been considerable contamination by the incorporation of later elements and of course certain fundamental changes in the text itself due to the sectarian or political interests of the redactor. However, most historians assume that the texts they are dealing with retain their pristime quality, an assumption which is challenged by the work of Lord and Father Walter Ong. During the Vijayanagara period we find the spread of the cult of Vitthala to parts of Peninsular India where Vitthala was virtually unknown. One argument which has been put forwards by the historian cited earlier Dr Divya Sandesh, is to link the spread of the cult to the political needs and compulsions of the Vijayanagara state itself. She has shown that saint singers like Purandaradasa who traveled extensively in the Empire from Pandarpur in the North to Srirangam in the South created a sacred landscape in which the Vijayangara Empire became more or less coeval with the sacrality of deities like Vitthala and Narasimha whose worship was very popular during the period.
A question which Chintamani Dhere does not ask but is worth asking is: Did Vijayanagara promote the worship of Vitthala at the fabulous temple constructed at Hampi in order to appropriate the sanctity of Pandarpur after it had been conquered by the Adil Shahis Sultanate. This is a historical issue and we cannot fault Dhere for not attempting an answer. All in all this is a serious book and addresses the issue of popular religious cult and practices centering around the worship of theis pastoral deity in a detailed manner.
