Maharashtra as a Holy Land: A Sectarian Tradition Author(s): Anne Feldhaus Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 49, No. 3 (1986), pp. 532-548 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/617829 Accessed: 23/12/2009 01:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. School of Oriental and African Studiesand Cambridge University Pressare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toBulletin of the School of Oriental and African S tudies, University ofLondon. http://www.jstor.org
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8/13/2019 Maharashtra as a Religious Land Feldhaus
Author(s): Anne FeldhausSource: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 49,No. 3 (1986), pp. 532-548Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/617829
Accessed: 23/12/2009 01:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
The first manifestation of the regional cultures of India as we know them
today was, in most cases, the literature produced by the medieval bhakti
(devotional) movements.1 Composed in the regional languages, the bhaktiliterature provides evidence of early forms of these languages. Further, by its
very existence, it marks the genesis of pride in the languages, of acceptance ofthem as appropriatevehicles for literary expression. Often addressed to localor regional deities (who are sometimes identified as local manifestations of godsworshipped throughout India), this literature clearly served to articulate and
focus regional devotion to such deities. In addition, it is also possible that thebhakti literature provides evidence of the process by which people began tothink of the regions as regions (i.e., their genesis as cognitive regions), began to
identify themselves as belongingto the regions, and began to take pride, not
just in the languages or deities of the regions, but in the regions themselves.2This is the process which led ultimately, in very recent times, to the formationof the states of modern India.
For Maharashtra. he Marathilanguage region of western India, ' the growthof regional consciousness' (McDonald, 1968) has been seen by some historiansas essentially a phenomenon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
(McDonald, 1968; Cohn, 1967). But the historian M. G. Ranade, one of thelate nineteenth/early twentieth-century Maharashtriansheld to be responsiblefor this modernregionalconsciousness,found much earlier roots for his MAarathi'nationalism': the seventeenth-century Maratha hero Sivaji; the 'Maha-rashtra dharma' preached by Sivaji's guru Ramdas; and, ultimately, the
religious spirit fostered from the thirteenth century on by the Varkari poet-saints (Ranade, 1900). These Varkarl poet-saints were devotees of the godVithoba of Pandharpur, and authors of the medieval Marathibhakti literaturebest loved and best known in Maharashtra oday. The regular pilgrimageof theVarkaristo Pandharpur provides one of the clearest symbolic expressionsof the
unity of Maharashtra,bringing together as it does pilgrims of many differentcastes from all parts of the Marathi-speaking region (Deleury, 1960; Karve,1962; Turner, 1973; Turner, 1974, 193-4).
In the present paper, I plan to trace a tradition of Maharashtrianregionalconsciousness earlier than that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries anddistinct from those of Ramdas and the Varkaris. The tradition I plan to discussis that found in the Old Marathi literature of the Mahanubhavas. Like the
Varkaris, the Mahanubhavas are a Maharashtrianbhakti sect founded in thethirteenth century which has survived to the present day.3 Unlike the Varkaris,the Mahanubhavas never became a widely popular movement. They have
hardlybeen heard of in
many partsof Maharashtra
today,and their
thoughtsabout Maharashtracannot be said to have had political consequences. But the
1The major exception is the Tamil region, whose literature includes some much earlier thanthat of the bhakti movements of the region. See Zvelebil (1973).
2 An early, clear statement of this possibility is found in Stein (1967, 46):' I would certainly
argue that the " sense " of region and the manipulation of symbols, behaviors, and movements inmost cases goes back to the twelfth century in the activity of bhakti sects where regionalism wasa genuine issue.' The literature on the connexions between religion (including bhakti)and regional-ism in other parts of India includes Spencer (1970), Sopher (1968), Stein (1977), Eschmann et al.(1978), and Hardy (1983, 256-61).
3For a general description of the Mahanubhavas and their beliefs, see Raeside (1976).
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large body of Old Marathi literature they produced (Raeside, 1960) providesvaluable evidence about the social and religious life of medieval Maharashtra,as well as about some of the religiousmeaningsof the region. The present paper
is based on the thirteenth and fourteenth-centuryMahanubhavahagiographicalliterature; on the late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century text of thefounder's aphorisms, and its later commentaries; and on the religious-geo-graphical literature (texts describing and glorifying holy places) produced bymembers of the sect between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Initially, the literature of a bhaktimovement might seem one of the least
promising sources of evidence about religious attachment to a region, for oneof the favourite themes of bhakti iterature is that God is everywhere, and thathence there is no special sanctity attached to any particular place. For instance,Devara Dasimayya, a tenth-century Virasaiva saint from Karnataka,
proclaimed:To the utterly at-one with Siva ...his front yardis the true Benaras (Ramanujan (tr.), 1973, 105).
Lalla, in fourteenth-century Kashmir, wrote, 'I, Lalla, went out far in searchof Shiva, the omnipresent Lord; having wandered, I found him in my own
body, sitting in his house' (Raghavan, 1966, 144).4 And among the Varkarisof Maharashtra,the seventeenth-century poet Tukaramwas perhaps the mostforceful in his denigration of pilgrimage places and their stone gods:
Tirthas have but rocks and water;God's really found in good people.(Tukaram, 1950, no. 114).
In keeping with this theme of bhaktiliterature, as well as with an earliertradition of ascetic renunciation, the first generation of Mahanubhavas were
encouraged by their founder, Cakradhar,not only to shun holy places, but toavoid attachment to any place at all. In the sect's early literature, Cakradhar s
reported to have prescribed for his followers a life of constant, solitarywandering.
The very first sutra of the relevant section of the Sutrapatha, the late
thirteenth or early fourteenth-century collection of Cakradhar's sayings(Feldhaus, 1983), enjoins, ' Renounce your attachment to your own land;renounce your attachment to your own village; renounce especially yourattachment to your relatives' (XII.1). Instead, says another sutra,
'Stay in
places where you know no one and no one knows you' (XII.22). Other satrascommand Cakradhar's ollowers to avoid important places, staying away fromcities and towns (XIII.20) and places of pilgrimage (XIII.19). Two satras(XII.25 and XIII.134) name particular pilgrimage places to avoid: MIatpur(Mahfr), Kolhapur, and Purusottamaksetra (Purl ?). Cakradhar's ollowers areadvised to keep, instead, to 'miserable little villages' (XII.36), to stay 'on
hillsides and off the road ' (XII.35), and to sleep under a tree or in an abandonedtemple outside a village (XIII.66).
The most frequently repeated command, in this connexion, is to stay ' atthe foot of a tree at the end of the land' (XII.26, XII.72, XIII.219; cf.XIII.43). Elaboratingthis command,one sttra specifiesthat the tree shouldnotbear flowers or fruits (XIII.206), another sutra recommends a thorn bush
4 Cited in Sopher (1980b). I am indebted to Professor Sopher's article for pointing out thetension in the Indian tradition between two 'messages of place ', one attaching importance tospecific places of pilgrimage and the other tending to transcend the importance of place.
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(XII.73), and a third reminds the ascetic, whose life of wandering aims at
eliminating not just attachments but habits (savaya), 'Do not get used to anyone tree; do not get used to any one place ' (XII.37). The point, it seems, is
to be nowhere in particular-and not to be there very long.In striking contrast to this theme of detachment fromany place in particular,
siatraXII.24 commands,'
Stay in Maharashtra , and the subsequent Mahanu-
bhava tradition gives the region Maharashtraa positive religious value. It isthis other theme in the Mahanubhavatradition, that of the religiousimportanceof Maharashtra,which I intend to trace in the present paper. Two questionswill order the discussion: what is Maharashtra,and why is it important to
stay there ?
The conceptof Maharashtra
Karmabhumi, which the Sitrapdtha (X.210) defines as the 500 yojanasbetween the Himalayas and Setubandhu-that is, the Indian subcontinent-is sometimes interpreted in later Mahanubhavatradition as the human body(Kolte, 1975, 57-8). But Mahanubhava literature consistently understandsMaharashtra o be a place.5 What is difficultis to tell exactly what place it was,that is, what actual region Cakradharor the compilersof his sayings referredtoas ' Maharashtra.
Although the Sutrapathadoes not give a complete answer, it does give someclues. The sutra enjoining, 'Stay in Maharashtra , follows immediately uponone which begins,
'Do not go to the Kannada country or the Telugu country '
(XII.23). This sutra names the lands to the south and south-east of Maharashtra,and by naming these regions for the languages spoken in them, implicitly givesa linguistic definitionto Maharashtraas well. Maharashtra, hat is, is the regionin which Marathi is spoken and Kannada and Telugu are not spoken. A simi-
larly linguistic definition is implicit in the commentators' interpretation of the
recurring phrase 'the end of the land' (desdca sevata) as an area in whichMarathiand another language intermingle (Kolte (ed.), 1982, 92; AcdraSthalaMahdbhasya,i, 133-4).6
5 One exception is a passage in Visvanathbas Bidkar's Sutrapatha commentary Acdraba.mda(Kolte (ed.), 1982, 82-3). The passage presents an outline of the constituents of Maharashtra:
How many divisions are there to Maharashtra ? One Maharashtrais insentient; the otheris sentient. The insentient has five divisions: the land, villages, solitary places, sleeping places,and eating places. And the sentient is of two kinds: one stationary and the other moving.Among the stationary are the permanent-trees-and the impermanent-the deep-shadingfoliage(?). Next, the divisions of the moving-that means those who go on foot. Those menare Maharashtra who make everyone from tiny insects through humans free from fear [i.e.,who practice ahimsd]. They are of two kinds. There is only one man (?) from enlightenmentand discipleship to persuasion of sabda[-jidna-stages in the path to liberation]; or there aremany who each have one virtue more than another: all these types together are one kind, andthe other kind is anyone with a good heart. These two divisions, sentient and insentient,together are called Maharashtra.6 As will be seen in the modern definitions cited in n. 8, below, it is not uncommon to give a
linguistic, cultural, or even geometric definition of the south-eastern border of Maharashtra,whilegiving physical boundaries for the north and west. But it is nevertheless curious that, in its
implied linguistic definition of Maharashtra,the Sutrapdthamentions only Maharashtra'ssouthernand not its northern neighbours. Cakradharhimself is said to have been an immigrant to Maha-rashtra not from the southern lands where Kannada and Telugu are spoken, but from the north,from Gujarat. In the Llldcaritra, the early Marathi biography of Cakradhar,he is said to havebeen a Gujarati royal minister's son, who came to Maharashtraon a pilgrimage and did not returnhome. But nothing is said of his having to learn Marathi, which he spoke, or stop using Gujarati.Possibly his family were Maharashtrians resident in Gujarat; but his father's initial refusal toallow him to go on the pilgrimage suggests that they were not: according to S. G. Tulpule'sedition (1972, ch. 7), Cakradhar'sfather said, ' That's a foreign land; one shouldn't go there.'According to V. B. Kolte's edition (1978, '
Pirvardha'
20), Cakradhar'sfather's objections werethat there was a state of war between the Gujara and Yadava kingdoms, and that the family wereKsatriyas (rdje)and so should send a Brihman on the pilgrimage instead of going themselves.
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Another sutraspecifiesnot just a linguistic regionbut a physical-geographicone where Cakradhar's ollowers are to stay: sutra XIII.83 commands,
'Stay
on the banks of the Ganga ' (gaq.gatr7n. asije), i.e., in the valley of the Godavarl
river.7 However, neither here nor in any other sutra does the Sutrapdthaspecify whether or not the Godavarivalley is to be understood as coterminouswith ' Maharashtra'.
It seemsthat ancient uses of the name' Maharashtra referto a muchsmaller
territory than that referred to in modern uses of the term.8 R. G. Bhandarkar
(1957, 10) points out that ' Maharashtra' seems 'at one time' to have beenrestricted in referenceto ' the country watered by the upperGodavariand that
lying between that river and the Krishna,' as distinguished from Aparanta(northernKofikan), Vidarbha,and the valleys of the Tapi and Narmada rivers.And H. Raychaudhuri (1960, 36) concludes,
It is obvious that early Hindu geographers used the name Maharashtrain a very restricted sense. The only region in the present Marathacountrywhich does not seem to be expressly excluded by these authorities is thedesh or open country behind the Ghats, stretching from the Pravara or
perhapsthe Junnar-Ahmadnagarhills to the neighbourhoodof the Krishna.
However, as both Bhandarkar's and Raychaudhuri's sources predate the
Sutrapdthaby several centuries, they cannot provide strong evidence of thereferenceof ' MIaharashtrain the Sutrapdtha,nor can they answer the specificquestion whether, for the Sutrapdtha, he Godavarivalley is coterminous with
Maharashtra. A source more nearly contemporaryto the Sutrapatha s the midthirteenth-century Kdmasutra commentary (VI.5.29) cited by Sircar (1971,
94); this text 'locates Maharastrabetween the Narmada and Karnata ', thatis, in a larger area than that indicated by Bhandarkar and Raychaudhuri.But again, this does not give a conclusive answerto the questionof the meaningof ' Maharashtra in the Su.trapdtha.
Commentaries on the Sutrapdthado give answers, but their answers dis-
agree; and, as one of the commentaries currently in print is undated, and theother dates from the mid seventeenth century, it is impossible to tell how
closely they reflect the usage of the Sutrapdtha tself. The undated commentary
(AcdraM.likd MahdbhSsya,166) states in a rather off-handmanner that sutra
7 It seems likely that the term 'gaigttira ', as used in Mahanubhava literature, refers not
literally to the whole length of the Godavari valley, but only to the upper part-presumably, thatpart lying in the Marathi-speaking rather than the Telugu-speaking territory. If this is so, thecommand to stay on the banks of the Godavari (sutraXIII.83) is consistent with the command toavoid the (Kannada and) Telugu country (sutra XII.23).
8 The modern state of Maharashtra dates from only 1960. Modern definitions of 'Maha-rashtra '
pre-dating the state include Grant Duff's (' Maharashtrais that space which is boundedon the north by the Sautpoora mountains; and extends from Naundode on the west, along thosemountains, to the Wyne Gunga, east of Nagpoor. The western bank of that river forms a part ofthe eastern boundary until it falls into the Wurda. From the junction of these rivers it may betraced up to the east bank of the Wurda to Manikdroog,and thence westward to Mahoor. From
this last place a waving line may be extended to Goa, whilst on the west it is bounded by theocean.') and Elphinstone's (the land ' between the range of mountains which stretches along thesouth of the Narbada parallel to the Vindhya chain, and a line drawn from Goa, on the sea coast,through Bidar to Chandaon the Warda. That river is its boundary on the east as the sea is on the
west.'), both cited in Raychaudhuri (1960, 36); and M. G. Ranade's (1900, 9: ' The country...forms a sort of a triangle of which the Sahyadri range and the sea, from Daman to Karwar, formthe base; the Satpura range forms the perpendicular side, reaching to the east beyond Nagpuras far as the watershed of the Godavari and its tributaries extend, and the hypotenuse which joinsthese two ranges has been determined not so much by natural features as by the test of language.').Sircar (1971, 82, 93-4) cites a Sanskrit text from perhaps the early eighteenth century, accordingto which '
Mahara.tra ... extended from Tryambaka to Karnata, and comprised Ujjayini,Marjaratirthaand Kolapura-nivasini [Kolhapur].'
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XIII.83, in commanding Cakradhar's ollowers to stay in the Godavari valley,is referringto Maharashtra; 9 but the othercommentary(Kolte (ed.), 1982, 18),in a different context, lists the Godavarivalley as only one of five sub-regions(khanda-mandalas)which together make up Maharashtra:
(a) the Marathi-speakingregion south of Phaltan; (b) the region north of
that, up to Baleghat; (c) the Godavarivalley; (d) the region of [ ? fromtheGodavarivalley to ?]Meghamkarghat; and (e) Varhad (i.e. Vidarbha).
Another Mahanubhava text which explicitly defines Maharashtra isKrsnamuni Kavi Dimbh's Rddhipuramadhtmya.This early seventeenth-century(Raeside, 1960, 494) text gives two definitions of Maharashtrawhich are quitedifferent from each other. In one passage (1967,verse 306), Krsnamuni identifiesMaharashtra as the area 'from Tryambak to Kalesvar at Mathani, and from
the Krtamala to the Tabraparni.'10 The mention of Tryambak, at the sourceof the Godavari river, and of 'Kalesvar at Mathani '-probably the Kalesvarat the confluence of the Godavari and the Pranhita, near modern Manthani,KarimnagarDistrict, Andhra Pradesh (at the farthest eastern borderof modernMaharashtrawith modern Andhra Pradesh)-makes the upperGodavarivalleythe northern limit of Maharashtra. But the rest of the definition extendsMaharashtrafar to the south. The Krtamala-now the Vaigai (Schwartzberg(ed.), 1978, 328)-and the Tabraparni (=Tamraparni) rivers are both farbeyond the Kannada and Telugu lands which the Sutrapdthaexplicitly dis-tinguished from Maharashtra.
By Krsnamuni's other definition (1967, vv. 103-4), Maharashtraextendsless far south, but farther north. By this definition, Maharashtra s the regionsouth of the Vindhya mountains,1' north of the Krsni river, and west of the'jhddt mandala' to the Kofkan. The 'jhadi mandala' is, literally,
' the treefulregion,' the forested region comprising the present-day districts of Canda andBhandara (Date, Karve, et al. 1934/1353). By this definition, then, too,Maharashtraextends a good bit beyond the Godavari valley, though not intoany territory explicitly excluded by the Sutrapatha. But, again, this definitiondoes not give firm evidence about the Sutrapdtha'suse of the term ' Maha-rashtra', since the Sutrapa.thawas composed a full three centuries earlier than
Krsnamuni'stext.From Mahanubhavaliterature more closely contemporary with the Sutra-
patha, it appears that early Mahanubhavasthought of the Godavarivalley asa region distinct from and in some sense opposed to Vidarbha.12 AlthoughCakradhar'sactivities were centred in the Godavari valley, his guru, GundamIRul, lived in Vidarbha (Varhad),and Cakradhar'sdisciples went to Vidarbhato stay with Gundam Raul after Cakradhar'sdeath. In one episode related inthe late thirteenth-/early fourteenth-century Mahanubhava hagiographies,Gundam Raul and one of the immigrant disciples have an amusing misunder-
9This commentary is primarily concerned, at this point, to contrast the Godavari valley(which it calls madhyadesa 'the middle of the land ') with ' the end of the land ' (desacdevata).
In order to reconcile sutra XIII.83's command to stay in the Godavari valley with the Sutra-pdtha's more frequent command to stay ' at the end of the land ', this commentary says that it ismen who are to go to the end of the land, while women are to stay in the Godavari valley.
10The base manuscript of Pathan's edition has kdjalesvarafor kdlesvara,which is the readingof the other four manuscripts used for the edition. I am grateful to Professor S. G. Tulpule forfirst reading this text with me.
11One of the five manuscripts used for Pathan's edition names the Sahyadris here instead ofthe Vindhyas.
12 cf. M. S. Mate's identification of these as the two 'nuclear areas ' in which Marathi culturearose (1975, 79).
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standing because of differences between their Godavari valley and Varhadidialects of Marathi. Gundam Raul's petulance about his food in this episode is
typical of his behaviour toward his servant-devotees:
One day Mahadaisemasked the Gosavi, 'Lord, Gosavi, I'll give you adh7darer[to eat] today. Don't go out to play, Gosavi.'
The Gosavi accepted her offer. He was delighted, and said,'
Oh, dropdead She'll give me a dhidarem, tell you ' He didn't go out at all to play.'Oh,' he said, 'she'll give me a dhidarem,I tell you. I should eat it...I shouldn't eat it, I tell you.'
Then Mahadaisemprepared a dh7daremand put it onto a plate. She
prepared a seat. The Gosavi sat in the seat, and Mahadaisemoffered himthe dh.darem. She poured ghee into a metal cup.
Then the Gosavi looked at the dhTdarem.And he said, ' Hey, this isn'ta dhldarem,I tell you. This is an dahtd,I tell you. Comeon Bring me adhUdarem Bring me one, I tell you
' And he acted angry.' Lord,' said Mahadaisem,'in the Galngavalley, whereI come from, they
call it a dhldarem. Here in your Varhadthey call it an dhTtd.'' Oh, bringme a dhldarem,'he said. ' Bring me one Bring me one, I tell
you ' And he acted angry.Mahadaisembegan to think, and suddenly she had an idea. So she put
some fine wheat flour into milk. She mixed it up. She sponged some gheeonto the earthen griddle. She poured [the batter] onto it in a phallic shape.
(Accordingto
some,she
pouredit in the
shapeof a
conch.)On
topshe
sprinkled powdered cardamom, black pepper, and cloves. When one sidewas done, she turned it over and took it off. She put it onto his plate.
It looked different to him, and he said, 'This is what I want. Now it's
right, I tell you. Oh, it's good, I tell you.' So Mahadaisem,delighted, servedhim more.
In this way, the Gosavi accepted the meal (Kolte (ed.), 1972; Feldhaus
In two other episodes in this same text, residents of Varhad express theiridentificationof Gundam Raul as belongingto their region,and their resentment
of the immigrantdevotees. On one occasion, when GundamRaul has destroyedthe arrangements or the Navaratrafestival, the residents of his town, Rddhipur,hold the immigrants responsible for his misbehaviour (Kolte (ed.), 1972;Feldhaus (tr.), 1984, ch. 102). And, on another occasion,when the devotees areabout to take Gundam Raul to the Godavari valley (=Sivana, sTvanadesa),Varhadi bards come to dissuade him from leaving:
The devotees were taking the Gosavi to the Gangavalley when they metsome bards on a plain to the west of a village. [The bards]prostratedthem-
selves; then they said, 'No, Lord, our Varhad deity must not go to theSivana country. If these people from Sivana take you away, Lord, Varhad
will be orphaned. The Raiil is ourMother. The Riail is our Father. Withoutthe Raiil, everything is desolate. We're subject to calamities and afflictions,Lord. Please turn back, Gosavi.'
So the Gosavi agreedto their request. Then the Gosavi said, ' Oh, turn itaround Turn it around ' and made the palanquinturn back (Kolte (ed.),1972; Feldhaus (tr.), 1984, ch. 235).
Two other passages in early Mahanubhava texts contrast Varhad/Vidarbhaand the Godavari valley in more cryptic fashion. SutrapdthaXI.132, 'An old
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woman on the banks of the Gafnga, nd a prostitute in Varh.d ', is interpreted byseveral commentariesto mean that the people of the Godavarivalley are stingyand those of Varhad generous (Deshpande (ed.), 1961, 203; Prakarnavasa,184; Vicdra Milikd Mahabhdsya,206).13 For an ascetic mendicant, that is,Varhadis easier, but not necessarily better, since the ascetic's life does not aimat ease. In Smrtisthala,a text from the early fourteenth (Tulpule, 1979, 320) orthe early fifteenth century (Raeside, 1960, 499), Cakradhar'ssuccessorNagdevmakes a statement which seems to have a similarpoint: ' Varhad is our mater-nal home, and the Godavarivalley our in-laws' house ' (Deshpande (ed.), 1960,ch. 246). This aphorismtakes the point of view of a woman in a virilocal societylike India's: while she may-and typically does-have a lifelong sentimentalattachment to the home in which she grew up, and while she may make manypleasant visits there, it is in her in-laws' house that she really lives out her life.
Thus, the point is once again that, although ascetics may like Vidarbha more,they should spend most of their lives in the Godavari valley.14
Some of the passages contrasting the Godavari valley with Vidarbha maythus be interpreted, along with SutrapathaXIII.83, as expressing a preferencefor the Godavarivalley from the point of view of the ascetic life. But none ofthe passages identifies the Godavari valley exclusively as Maharashtra. Itseems more likely that, at the time of the Sutrapdtha,' Maharashtra includedboth the Godavari valley and Vidarbha, understood as contrasting parts of a
largerwhole. How much else this whole includedis not clear.
Thereligious mportanceof MaharashtraWhatever Cakradhar meant by Maharashtra, why did he command his
followers to stay there ? And how is this command to be reconciled with thecommandto be in no place in particular-' at the foot of a tree at the end of theland ' ? Oneimportant answeris that such geographicalrestrictionis a necessaryconsequence of Cakradhar's-and his first successor, Nagdev's-use of andinsistence on Marathi, the language of Maharashtra. Smrtisthala,for instance,reports that Nagdev responded angrily to two fellow disciples who asked hima question in Sanskrit:
I don't understand your 'asmdt' and 'kasmdt' [Sanskrit pronouns].Sri Cakradhar aught me in Marathi. That's what you should use to questionme (Deshpande (ed.), 1960, ch. 66).
As with other medieval Indian bhaktimovements, the Mahanubhavas'use of thevernacular makes their teachings much more broadly accessible-to all classesand to both sexes-than the Sanskrit tradition, while at the same time restrict-
ing them to a more limited geographicalarea. Thus Cakradhar'scommand tostay in Maharashtramust be seen as, at least in part, a case of legislating theobvious, once the importance of Marathi is established.
The Sutrapdtha,however, does not give this, or, directly, any other reason
for the commandto stay in Maharashtra. But the sutra precedingthe commandto stay there does give a reason for its command to avoid the Kannada andTelugu lands: 'Do not go to the Kannada country or the Telugu country.
13 Vicdra Mdlikd Mah&bhdsyagives two other interpretations besides the one cited here.See also Kolte (ed.) (1978,
'Ajnata Lila '
159).14 Professor S. G. Tulpule suggests (personal communication, September 29, 1983) that the
reason for the Mahanubhavas' pleasant associations with Vidarbha and their unpleasant associa-tions with the Godivari valley is that Cakradhar met his guru, Gundam Raul, in Vidarbha, andwas killed in the Godavari valley. Cf. Kesiraj (1962, vv. 268-84).
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Those regions are full of sense pleasure. There ascetics are honoured' (XII.23).Thus, the Kannada and Telugu lands present a twofold danger to the asceticlife: not only the temptations of sense pleasure, but also the more subtle
temptation of complacence; for there those who avoid sense pleasureare givenhonour. Since this rationale for avoiding the Kannada and Telugu lands isfollowed immediatelyby the sutraenjoining, 'Stay in Maharashtra', he implica-tion is that Maharashtra s a place where sense pleasures are few and asceticsnot particularly honoured. The preferencefor Maharashtraover the Kannadaand Telugu country would thus be analogous to that for the Godavari valleyover Vidarbha.
If this is indeed the reason for the Sutrapdtha'scommand to stay in Maha-
rashtra, that command is consistent with the command to stay' at the foot of
a tree at the end of the land '. Maharashtra s not recommended or any positive
qualities, but because-like the side of the road, the foot of a tree, the end of theland, and so on-it is a good place to practise asceticism.
Subsequent Mahanubhava literature does not value Maharashtra for its
insignificance,inconvenience, or lack of comforts, but ascribespositive qualitiesto the region. The two published Sitrapdtha commentaries which explain thecommand to stay in Maharashtrado mention the danger, in other lands, of
being honoured and provided with sense pleasures (Kolte (ed.), 1982, 82-4;Acdra Sthala Mahabhasya,I, 126-9); 15 but the commentaries' overwhelmingemphasis is on the physical and psychological benefits of living in Maharashtra,and the moral superiority of Maharashtra o other places. Both of these com-
mentaries are actually sub-commentarieson a text whose relevant passage is asfollows:
' Maharashtra means ' great (mahanta) and (rdstra)'. 'Land' (rdstra)means ' country ' (desa), but [this one is] blissful and beneficial. Otherlands are sorrowfuland harmful. ' Great' (mahanta)means '
large ' (thora).Somecountries arelargein land; 16 some countriesarelargein [numbersof ?size of ?] men; 17 some countries are large in grandeur(aisvarya); 18 somecountries are large in power;19 some countries are large in crookedness
(witchcraft ? kautf&lya)nd lust.20In some countries one gets diseases and faults. One becomes sullied.
One gets the itch. In some countries one is troubled by deities (adhidaivTkatdpa); in some countries one is troubled by the elements (adhibhautikatapa); in some countries one gives oneself trouble (adhydtmTkadpa).
In some countries the people poison foreigners (desantariya). In somecountries they put foreignersto the sword. They sacrificethem to a deity.In some countriesthey take foreignersprisoner; they sell them; they makeslaves of them. In some countries they give them honour; they do homageto them; they subject them to sense pleasure.
In some countries the people are rajasic; in some countries they aretdmasic. The soil of some countries is rdjasic; some countries' is tdmasic.
Thefood and water, fruits, leaf vegetables, trees, temples,houses,orchards(?),and all the [holy] places (sthanemr)f some countries are rajasic-everything,
15The command is not explained in Niruktasesa (Deshpande (ed.), 1961, 4), Prakarnavasa(p. 17), or VicdraAcdra Prakarndcd Vacana SambamdhaArtha (p. 73).
16The sub-commentary Acdra Sthala Mahdbhasyagives Marvada as an example.17 Accra Sthala Mahdbhdsyagives Gujarat and Panjab as examples.18Acdra Sthala Mahabhdsya gives
' Arabasthan ' (= Arabia) as an example.19Acdra Sthala Mahdbhdsya's example is the Kofikan.20Acdra Sthala Mahdbhdsyagives Gaud Bengal as an example of a land great in kautalya,
and the Kannada and Telugu countries as examples of lands great in lust.
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living and non-living, is rajasic. In some countries, everything is tdmasic.One's body and mind are harmed just from proximity to such things; sohow much worse must it be to make use of them ?
Maharashtrais sdttvic. The living and non-living things in it are alsosattvic. No bodily or mental harm comes from being there. Being in Maha-rashtra cures bodily and mental afflictions which have arisen in other coun-tries. Its food and water are curative. Its herbs are curative. Its wind,rainstorms, and showers are also sdttvic and cure all afflictions.
'Great' means faultless and virtuous. Some countries are faultless butnot virtuous. Maharashtra is faultless and virtuous. It is faultless andvirtuous itself, and it makes others also faultless and virtuous. It is faultlessbecause it does not do harm; it is virtuous because it does good. When oneis there one does not think of doing wrong, and if one does think of it one
doesn't get to do it. Maharashtradoes no wrong itself, and allows no oneelse to do wrong. Maharashtrais [where] dharmagets accomplished.
To make his point, the commentator uses the traditional methods of ety-mology and of classification by means of the three gunas (sattva, 'purity',being the best; tamas, ' darkness ', the worst; and rajas,
'passion ', in
between). He also uses a good bit of hyperbole. But the basic message is simple:one should stay in Maharashtrabecause it is good for one's health and one'smorals.
Another kind of importancefor Maharashtra,one more specifically religious,is
implicitin Mahanubhava
pilgrimage practices.These find a
sacralityin
Maharashtra ike that which Christians find in 'the Holy Land' and Krsnaitesin Braj. Starting in the time of Nagdev (Deshpande (ed.), 1960, ch. 115),Mahanubhavas have made of Maharashtraa vast network of pilgrimageplaces,each sanctified by the formerpresence of Cakradhar,GundamRaul, or anotherof the human incarnations of God.21The greatest numbers of these holy placesare in Vidarbha and along the Godavari river, with several others in between,and a scatteringelsewhere inside and outside of the present state of Maharashtra.Precise information is not available, but my impression is that, for Mahanu-bhava monks and nuns, the aimless wandering enjoined by the Sutrapdthahas by now been replaced in part by peregrinationfrom one to another of these
holy places. (A majority of Mahanubhavamonks and nuns now spend most oftheir time living in monasteries-although the monastic life is not recommended,or even referredto, in the Sutrapdtha.) Lay Mahanubhavasalso (whose way oflife is likewise not recognized by the Sutrap.tha) make pilgrimages to theseplaces. A good deal of Mahanubhava iterature is devoted to the descriptionandglorification of such places,22 n terms of the deeds (l.lds) the incarnations didin them and the power (sakti) they deposited in them, and sometimes also interms of the pre-Mahanubhavamythological traditions of the places. For these
21
Mahanubhavas hold that there is a single supreme God, whom they call Paramesvara.Paramesvara has had a number of incarnations. Of these, five are considered the most important:(1) Dattatreya and (2) Krsna, who are gods for other Hindus; (3) Cakradhar,the Mahanubhavas'founder; (4) Cakradhar'sguru, Gundam Raul; and (5) Gundam Raul's guru (and a previousincarnation of Cakradhar),CfangdevRaul. For a discussion of the structure of this pantheon, seeFeldhaus (1983b). The vast majority of the Mahanubhava pilgrimage places are associated witheither Cakradharor Gundam Raul, or both. For a more detailed examination of Mahanubhavaideas about their pilgrimage places, and in particular of the types of significance attached to thechief such place, Rddhipur, see Feldhaus (forthcoming).
22 This literature includes Tirtham.likd, a text in verse listing places visited by the incarna-tions; Sthtnapothi, a prose text giving detailed descriptions of the places; and a number ofverse texts entitled ' X-mdhdtmya' or ' X-varnana ', glorifying one or another of the places.
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texts, and for the pilgrimage tradition which they reflect, Maharashtra is not
merely beneficial, but holy. It is the playground of God.Maharashtra's holiness as the locus of the activities of the Mahanubhava
incarnations is a purely sectarian holiness, one which, although of the greatestimportance among Mahanubhavas,cannot be expected to carry much weightoutside the sect.23 But one of the Mahanubhavapilgrimage authors, the earlyseventeenth-century Krsnamuni Kavi Dimbh, describes the holiness of Maha-rashtra in terms drawn from and relevant to the wider Indian tradition. For
instance, in a passage in his Rddhipuramahatmya,Krsnamuni explains the
greatness of Maharashtraas follows:
307. Brahma said to Narada,' I'll tell you clearly why it is called Maharashtra(" the great land ").
308. The Mahatma Sri Datta, at whose lotus feet are all holy places, lives in
the Saihyadris; and so, in the family of rsis famous from the purcnas,it is called Maharashtra.
309. There are twelve jyotirlingas; six of them are in Maharashtra. Nine of thetwelve mahalingasare there.
310. Phalasthal destroys the sin of killing a woman; Atmatirtha destroys thesin of killing a Brahman; Sarvatirtha provides liberation to one's ances-tors; Vijnanesvar gives the state of liberation.
311. And on both banks of the Ganga (Godavari)is a crowd of all holy places.This is why Maharashtra s at the crown of all lands.'
The ' crowd 'ofholy places
in the last verse of thispassage
could be the nu-merousMahanubhavaholy places along the Godavari; but there are also manynon-Mahanubhavaholy places there, and these may be included in the ' crowd'.
Similarly, since Dattatreya is one of the Mahanubhava incarnations, placestouched by his ' lotus feet' (v. 308) are holy for Mahanubhavas; but such
places are also holy for non-Mahanubhavas,since Datta is a god for orthodoxHindus as well. The places Krsnamuni names in verse 310 are Mahanubhavaholy places, but the reasons he gives for their importance are drawn fromBrahmanical orthodoxy. And, most strikingly, in verse 309 Krsnamunipointsout that Maharashtrianplaces predominatein one of the most important sets ofnon-Mahanubhavapilgrimage places located throughout India and visited bypilgrims from all over India: the twelve jyotirlingas, ' lihgas of light '.
Earlier in his work, Krsn. muni provides a more detailed discussion of thejyotirlingas, as well as of the mahaliigas (' great liingas ). First, he has the sageDevala list for his questioner Asita the twelve jyotirlingas of all of India(vv. 123-6): Tryambak, Ghusamesvar (==Ghrsnesvar) n Yelaur (=Ellora),Somanath in Saurastra, Vaidyanath in Paral., Naganath in Amvadhe orAmardaka, Bhismesvar (=Bhimasankar) in Dakini, Visvanath in Kasi,Kedar(nath) (near) Badri(nath), Kalesvar at Mathani, Mahakal in Ujjain,Ramesvar 'at Setubandhu in the South ', and the jyotirlinga at Mandhata (onthe Narmada).24 Of these, the six that verse 309 refers to as being in Maha-
23 Some of the Mahanubhavapilgrimage places are reputed to have special power to cure ghostpossession; these places are of importance outside the sect as well as within it. See Stanley(forthcoming).
24 I have taken ' .dmvadhe dgandthaamardaka apovana ' in verse 124 to referto a single place,as ' Amardaka ' is identified by Kolte (1978, 807) as an older name of Aumdhe, a village in Par-bhani District, Maharashtra. The BhdratiyaSamskrtikosa(Joshi (ed.), 1965, 685) identifies thisvillage as the location of the Darukavana (= Tapovana ?) in which the Sivapurdna placesNaganath. This list then differs from the Sivapurdna list cited and explicated in the BhdratiyaSamskrtikosaonly in substituting ' Kalesvar in Mathani ' for Mallikarjun on Srisaila mountain(in present-day Andhra Pradesh). Mallikarjun, it will be noted, appears as the first of the ' greatlingas ' listed in the next three verses of the .Rddhipuramdhdtmya,elow.
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rashtra must be Tryambak,Ghusamesvar,Vaidyanath, Naganath, Bhismesvar,and Kalesvar. The others are located outside of Maharashtra.25
Devala then proceeds to give another list of twelve lingas, calling these not
lingas of light (jyotirliitgas)but ' great liigas' (mahaliigas):
Another twelve lingas have been established on earth by lordly sages.I will tell you about them; listen carefully in your heart. Know these to bethe twelve great lilgas:1. Mallikarjun;2. Mahabalesvar;3. Bhimasankar[=Bhismesvar in Dakini of the previous list];4. Gangasagar;5. Madhyamesvaron the bank of the Gafga (Godavari) [in modern Nasik
District];6. Ghatasiddhanath [also on the Godavari, in modern AhmadnagarDistrict];three famous liingas n Pratisthan (Paithan ):
7. Dhoresvar,8. Pimpalesvari, and9. Siddhanath; also
10. Vijnanesvar, established by Sri Datta;11. Ambanath in Alarkavati (Amaravati); and12. Hatakesvar in Rddhipur.
Ten of these, rather than the nine claimed by verse 309, would belong toMaharashtraby either of Krsnamuni's definitions of Maharashtra(see map 2).Gangasagar is in distant Bengal, and Mallikarjun at Srlsaila in less distantAndhra Pradesh.
The set of mahaliigas is by no means as famous, as a set, as thejyotirlintgas.26It appears to be a replica of the set of jyotirlihgas, a way of enabling twelvemore liUigaemples to share as a set in a religious importance analogous to thatof the jyotirlihgas. That Maharashtracontains almost all of these mahalingas,as well as half of the twelve jyotirlihgas, shows Maharashtra's mportance to a
major pilgrimage tradition of all of India.
With respect to another very important set of pilgrimage places locatedthroughout India and visited by pilgrims from all over India, Krsnamunimakes a claim that is similar, but clearer and bolder. The set is that of theseven liberation-(moksa-)granting ities (saptapuri),and Krsnamuni's claim isthat there is a complete replica of this set to be found in Maharashtra. After
listing (v. 138)the saptapuriof all of India-Ayodhya, Mathura,Maya(= Gaya),Kanti (=Kfaicipuram), Kasi (=Varanasi, Banaras), Dvarka/Dvaravati, and
Avanti (=Ujjain) 27-Krsnamuni claims that the bases or abodes (adhisthd-nem) of these seven are in Maharashtra(v. 139). Thus,
25By the definition of Maharashtra given by Krsnamuni in Rddhipuramdhdtmya306,
Ramesvar too would be included in Maharashtra, which by that definition extends as far southas the Tamraparni river.
26 I have not been able to locate any other references to the set of mahlizngas. Sopher (1980a,p. 312, n.) refers to another pair of sets of lingas, this time found in distinct, rather than overlap-ping, parts of India: ' The creation of an artificial symmetry between a mythic North (includingBengal and perhaps Orissa) and South (including Maharashtra) is also found in a listing of a
dozen northern and a dozen southern loci of jyotirlinga (sic) . ..'.27 This list agrees with the standard one given by Eck (1982, 38) and Bharati (1970, 97),
except that Maya is more usually identified as Hardvar than as Gaya. That Krsnamuni identifiesit as Gaya is seen from verse 145, below.
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140. Chinnapap s called Ayodhya; Alkapur (=Amaravati) is called Mathura;Vanki on the bank of the Sina[in modernAhmadnagarDistrict] is the tTrtha
1ayTa.
141. Phalasthal (=Phaltan) is called Kanti; Pratestan (=Pratisthan,Paithan) is called Kasi;Rddhipur, Dvaravati; [and] Avanti, Yelaur (=Ellora).
These identifications are then supported by a series of analogies and mythologi-cal connexions between each pair of places:143. Because Rama made Dasaratha's funeral offeringsthere,
Chinnapap'sname is Ayodhya [Rama's capital].144. Krsnanath went to Alarkavati on his way to Rukminl's engagement
ceremony;He made an offering (vidd) to Ambinath; therefore it's known to beMathura
[Krsna'shome
town].145. Gaya is calledMaya because the demon Maya was burned to ashes there.Since the demon Bhasma was burned to ashes (bhasma)at Vaniki, thetirtha Vanki is Maya.28
146. Just as Rukmafigada was released through the Ekadasi vow [at Kanti ?],Rama was released [at Phalasthal ?] from the sin of killing a woman.29Therefore Phalasthal is called Kanti.
147. The Bhogavati [river ?] 30 came from the underworldto meet the Gautami(= Godavari) at Pratisthan;Therefore[Pratisthan] is said to be a mite better than Kasi [India's holiest
city].148. Just as the jyotirliingaMahakal resides in Ujjain, the jyotirlinga Ghusa-
mesvar is in Yelaur.ThereforeYelaur's name is said to be Avanti.
149. Descending in the Kali Age, the Lord showed Dvarka to the BrahmanLaksmidhar[in Rddhipur].31ThereforeRddhipur is called Dvaravati.
All seven of the Maharashtrianplaces are pilgrimage places for Mahanu-bhavas because of the places' connexion with the lives of the Mahanubhavaincarnations. But for only one of the seven identifications-Rddhipur=Dvarka/Dvaravati-does the equivalence rest on an exclusively Mahanu-bhava story. The story of Krsna and Rukmini (in connexion with which Alarka-vati is here identified with Mathura) is told by both Mahanubhavas and non-Mahanubhava Hindus. The other stories and analogies Krsnamuni uses arenot, as far as I know, otherwiseat all prominent in the Mahanubhavatradition.Thus, althoughthe seven Maharashtrianplaces which Krsnamuniidentifies withthe seven liberating cities are of sectarian importance to Mahanubhavas, thereasons he gives for the identifications are overwhelmingly non-Mahanubhava.
28 The demon Maya may be Maya, Namuci's brother, a Dinava. Anyone who put his hand onthe head of the demon Bhasma was turned to ashes. The demon was destroyed when Viniu gothim to place his own hand on his head (Citrav, 1932).
29 On Rukmangada's devotion to the Ekadasi vow, see Ndrada Purdna 2.36 (VefikatesvaraPress edition). By killing Ravana, Rama incurred brahmahatyd the sin of killing a Brahman),not strihatyd (the sin of killing a woman). Perhaps the reference is to Rama's having Laksmancut off the nose and ears ofgurpanakha, Ravana's sister.
30Bhogavati = Sarasvati, according to Godbole (1928, 262). The GautamiMdhdtmya,ch. 41
(in the Venkatesvara Press edition of the Brahmd Purdna), tells of the marriage of a princessBhogavati to a snake (a creature of the underworld) at Pratisthan.
31 This story is widely known in Rddhipur today. In Mahinubhava literature it is found inKrsnamuni'sRddhipuramdhdtmya, vv. 639-94, and it forms the basic story of Mahesvarapandit'sfourteenth-century(?) .Rddhipuramdahtmya.Both of these are elaborations of a story found in thebiography of GundamRaul, ch. 213 (Kolte (ed.), 1972; Feldhaus (tr.), 1984).
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The stories, that is, are found in the purdnic Hindu tradition, though not
necessarily in connexion with the places where Krsnamunilocates them. More
fundamentally, the seven liberatingcities, and the twelve jyotirlingasas well, are
as irrelevant to Mahanubhavatheology as they are important to non-sectarian(and, in the case of thejyotirliitgas, Saiva) Hindu pilgrimagetraditions. Accord-
ing to Mahanubhava theology, only the one, absolute God (Paramesvara)grants liberation; no place can grant liberation, nor can any merely relative
deity (devata) ike Siva, the deity worshippedin lirga temples (Feldhaus, 1980).It is thus something of a mystery where Krsnamunigot the idea of making
these identifications, and what audience he intended them for. Were theyintended to convince non-Mahanubhavas? It might appear so. But if, likeother Mahanubhavatexts, Krsnamuni's Rddhipuramahdtmyawas copied and
preserved in manuscriptswritten in secret codes (Raeside, 1970), it would have
been available only to Mahanubhavasuntil the early twentieth century, whenthe codes were revealed outside the sect. Was, then, the exclusivism of Mahanu-bhavas less strict in the early seventeenth century than it is in our own time orthan it was at the beginnings of the sect ? Or was Krsnamuni himself just ananomalous liberal ?
In any case, Krsnamuni'swork has been preserved-and thereby, implicitly,accepted-by the Mahanubhavatradition. And what Krsnamunihas done hereis to assert that Maharashtrareplicates the religious geography of all of India.He is able in this way to identify the religious importanceof Maharashtraas thatof all of India, and thus to give the fullest possiblerationalefor the commandto
stay in Maharashtra. One should stay in Maharashtrabecause every placeworth going to is there. Maharashtra s a microcosmof India.32
Thus, with the claims of Krsnamuni,the positive valuation of Maharashtrais carried far beyond the moral and physical benefits ascribed to it in some
Sutrapdthacommentaries, beyond the reverence for it implicit in the Mahanu-bhava pilgrimagetradition, and into a whole other realm of values from that ofCakradhar'sunexplained or negatively motivated command to stay in Maha-rashtra. From having been equivalent (or almost so) to the ' end of the land ',Maharashtrahas here become the totality of the world-at least, of all of theworld that matters.
Unfortunately, given the incomplete state of our knowledge of the chrono-logy of Mahanubhavaliterature, it is impossible to be certain that this logicalprogressionof ideas culminating in Krsnamuni'sclaim correspondsto a chrono-
logical development of Mahanubhavas'thinking about Maharashtra. But it is
possible to see that the ideas outlined here constitute a consciously articulatedsense of pride in Maharashtrawhich was in existence by the early seventeenth
century. The Mahanubhavashad, that is, a tradition of 'regional conscious-
ness '. This tradition seems never to have had any political significance; itseems not even to have been widely known outside the sect; but it undoubtedlyillustrates the religious significance that a region can have within a bhakti
sectarian tradition.3332 Not only is this a claim which assumes the importance of non-Mahanubhava Hindu pilgrim-
age places; it is also a typically Hindu sortof claim. Compare,for example, the ubiquitous notionof ' sarvatirtha -a tirtha (holy place, often one at or near water) which includes all tirthaswithin it; and the idea that Kasi (Banaras)-which numerous holy places all over India claimto replicate-contains within it all the other holy places of India (Eck, 1982, 144 and passim).
33I am grateful to SurinderMohan Bhardwaj, Joel Gereboff,Lee Schlesinger, Shankar GopalTulpule, and Eleanor Zelliot for their careful reading and helpful comments. I am also gratefulto the National Endowment for the Humanities and to Arizona State University for the grantswhich enabled me to read through the published Mahanubhava religious-geographical literature
during 1982 and 1983.
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