ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss the role of the guru within a reconfiguration of the spiritual economy of thirteenth century Maharashtra that propelled the era of vernacularization. I position Chakradhar, one of the key figures of this era as a metonymic index of a larger reconfiguration of the social capital of literacy within the field of Marathi public discourse. I argue that Chakradhar is emblematic of the rise of literacy as a social value within a new vernacular sphere. My aim is to avoid either a “great man” theory of vernacularization or the idea that the vernacular sphere was a reconfiguration of the cosmopolitan or courtly sphere. Instead, a nexus of old social values placed on literacy transcended the field of Sanskrit and courtly culture, and permeated an already-vibrant oral Marathi sphere. Chakradhar was not necessarily an agent of this change, but his life and the work associated with him conveys the history of a broad-based paradigm shift that brought the elite world of Brahminical literacy into the everyday world of vernacular discursive life.
