ABSTRACT
I have referred to the affinity between the Varkari tradition and Kabir. One sure sign of that relation is their shared turn away, if only momentarily, from the ambient culture of deities. We gained a glimpse of this tendency when I alluded to the living, striving devotee prior to religion, the flesh-and-blood devotee, unsubstitutable with another devotee in communal prayer. Like an arrowshot into the future, there is a figure of this kind in Dnyaneswara. This is the singular, indefatigably ardent Arjuna who can in the Dnyaneswari (.. 1290), Dnyaneswara’s monumental rejoinder in Old Marathi to the Gita, engender in the Lord a peculiar dilemma. (I render the verses here in the order of the original.) If, as the logical outcome of my discourse, muses Krishna, Arjuna were to relinquish his particular being (Vipaye ahambhava yeyaca jail) and rediscover his singularity in the ground that I am (min ten ci jari ha hoil), I would be left to face the prospect of an eternal solitude (tari kai kijail, ekleyan). In which case, where would I find the face I long to set my eyes on (Dithi ci pahatan nivije), who would I yearn to speak to without reserve (kan tonda bharuni bolije), whom would I crave to hold in a tight embrace (datun khevan deije), who else if not Arjuna (aisen kavana ahe)? How can that which settles into the inner reaches of my being (Apuleya mana baravi), this unconfinable tale told to Arjuna (je asamai gothi jivin), how can this happy chatter be confided to him (te kavanensin maga cavalavi) were he and I to merge into my universal nature, become one with each other (jari aikya jalen)? With such plaintiveness (kakulati), comments Dnyaneswara, in such an abject posture did Janardana Krishna contrive within the very terms of his general homily on the merits of the yogi (in this section of the Gita) to embrace in speech his own beloved Arjuna (bolamajhin mana manen, alingun sarlen), himself the exemplary yogi (Dnyaneswari 6: 116-19).1
