Wager of Ambrosia

The Wager of Ambrosia

Introduction

Chapter 1

It is said that when the Sanskrit version of Jnaneshwar’s Amritanubhava was shown to Raman Maharshi he danced with joy. He would have gone into deep ecstasy had he read in Marathi the Yogi-Poet’s work on the Gita. This work is commonly known as Jnaneshwari and has the status of a guide-book in the vernacular, even that of a Scripture. The composition is not exactly a commentary, but it takes the Gita only as a precious occasion to create poetic magnificence in yet another medium. Profound spiritual philosophy based on spiritual experiences are described in the language of a mystic and not that of a metaphysician. Seven hundred shlokas of the Scripture have been rendered into nine-thousand owis in a mood as if a whole new aesthetic world were spread out for the spirit’s free and wide-ranging enjoyment. In it the luminous density and dignity of Sanskrit turns into lyrical felicity of a young or fresh Prakritic dialect which is also revealingly true to the warmth and meaning of the original’s substance. With it arrives the dawn of a new literature.

An owi is a three-and-half line verse-unit with the first three lines rhyming with one another and the last half making a brief completing statement. There are generally eight to ten syllables in each line and the whole presents a poetic argument in a swift and terse but vivid fashion. The terse and the swift in these verses actually mean composed definiteness and subtle suggestive many-sided­ness of sense in which poetry is neither crammed nor allowed to disperse in a facile uncontrolled manner. Though pretty ornate, this poetry is highly reflective and throughout there is a spiritual atmosphere. In its calm arrive mysterious sounds whose source is hidden in the depth of silence that upholds everything. Though not quite mantric, the Word unmistakably carries in its gleaming contents what Sri Aurobindo calls the overhead rhythm. Its beauty and charm are persuasive and the poet delights in piling simile upon simile to make his point. It is not infrequent to see a dozen illustrations given to elucidate a single proposition. These illustrations abound in glimpses of nature, in truths

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and facts of life, in shades of human psychology as much as they touch upon aspects of yogic disciplines. While we may get an impression that Jnaneshwar has a leaning in thought somewhat towards the Shankarite Adwaita, it cannot be said that he considered the world to be illusory. The unborn and yet taking birth and the actionless and yet active in his dynamism—such is the divinity of the Supreme in this world and it is in it that we are enjoined to live. It indeed is the true and great liberation, param mukti, mukti from the littleness, from this “transient and sorrowful” existence.

The composition of Jnaneshwari is in the manner of a discourse in which the speaker is explaining the Gita to a mixed audience; in the group there are also well-qualified and competent listeners, though perhaps fewer in number. But the exhortation transcends the immediate context and goes beyond the local-tempo­ral to gather the infinite. The method of discourse gives an easy happy fluency to the presentation, and the sustained audience is indicative of its success. This can happen only when the narrator is clear in mind about the ideas and thoughts he is going to expound. Nowhere is there any hurry; nowhere does the inspiration sag to rob poetry of its charm. There is a joyous awareness of truth and beauty entering into another enterprise of aesthetic experience. The essence of delight, rasa, is everywhere. In fact it is that which weathered the seven centuries with their stormy vicissitudes. The thirty-thousand horsemen of Malik Kaffoor, Alauddin Khilji’s rapacious commander, had not yet descended on the country in the Deccan and there was still the wise and noble king Ramadevaraya reigning from Devagiri to lend wisdom and nobility to life. There was peace and plenty in the land. This prosperity and peace also encouraged artistic and literary activities, with the king himself as their high patron. Jnaneshwar belongs to this period. It is to such a class of the élite that he is reciting the Gita recreated in his Marathi. Eloquence and elegance of the poem bespeak well of it. Prior to this there was hardly anything of value in Marathi and whatever little was there was essentially Sanskritic and metaphysical. But Jnaneshwari, the magnum opus of the Yogi-Poet, gave birth to a new language, offering to the creative spirit a new world of delight. In it, to use a phrase from the magnum opus itself, the ineffable and the effable, Para and Vaikhari, the supreme and the spoken tongues join together;

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in it the secular and the esoteric lose all essential distinction and there is only one single urge. Indeed, while the Yogi-Poet prepared a lustrous body for the language, he also gave to it, more impor­tantly, a gleaming soul even if more thoughtful and meditative than exuberant and emotional. In an obvious refe­rence to Jnaneshwar, Sri Aurobindo speaks of him as the “first Marathi poet... at once a devotee, a Yogin and a thinker.” All the three elements, with a stronger intellectual élan, are characteristically present in Jnaneshwari.

Jnaneshwar completed his work in 1290, at the age of fifteen. It was in the temple of Mhalsa, in Newase, on the southern bank of the Pravara, that he discoursed on the Gita for about three years. The simple folk of the village would gather there regularly and drink of the nectarine poetry as fresh as the water of the River. The rapt crowd consisted of young men and old men, women and children, and the expounder, while unravelling the mysteries of the Scripture, had to take them along with him. But, then, in the audience were also learned people and exceptional people, great souls, who remained spellbound as the honeyed words flowed from the lips of the young speaker. The water of the river Pravara is famous for its sweetness and so too flowed this holy sanctity in a broad crystalline stream, about to join the sacred Godavari. It was for the first time that people were hearing such words in their language, Marathi. Through it directly the voice of the Lord reached the devotee-heart and it felt blessed. They did not know Sanskrit and until then they were deprived of this blessedness, but with Jnaneshwari a whole new world of devotional life opened out for them. The first Marathi poet combined in himself the lyrical mysticism of Valmiki and the spiritual classicism of Vyasa to build the foundation of a larger collective social order. The method of the poet is reiterative, emphasising each idea or concept with the help of several examples. It does amount to a kind of poetic fervour, but it is meant for the listeners to understand what is being presented. Explanatory-exhortative is the technique which makes sure that the author is sure of what he is speaking about. The commentary therefore, instead of becoming a darshana or metaphysical tract on abstruse systems, acquires the status and dignity of a literary creation which is revelatory in its knowledge and substance. In fact, the author’s title of the book is Bhavartha Deepika—“The Purported Sense Illuminator”

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—which offers fair freedom to elaborate upon the meaning of the original. Thus the poetic work also becomes a spiritual guide-book. Its mellifluence is haunting and there is the sublimity of Himalayan altitudes, yet the narrator requests the indulgence of the audience. Not that there is diffidence; but he is conscious that what he is trying is something quite unusual which will be considered scandalous by the traditionalists and the purists. The family—his parents and with him his two brothers and one sister—had to suffer social humiliation; maybe it is a thing of the past now, but such were the cruel realities of the time and Jnaneshwar had to face them as aspects of the lifeless spirit. However, we should also be fair to the learned Brahmins who diligently preserved the Shastric textual body for the benefit of the common kind: the moment they recognised that Jnaneshwar was not an ordinary person but possessed supernatural yogic powers, they admitted that the documented scriptural stipulations could not be applied to such highly evolved beings. Incidentally Sachidananda, who was brought back to life by Jnaneshwar and who became later his devotee and disciple, copied the verses as the composition proceeded. The poet acknowledges this debt in the epilogue of the poem. Very little is known about the author and his works—as far as historical details are concerned—and much has assumed the form of astounding mediaeval myths.

The version of Jnaneshwari which we have at present was edited by Sant Eknath, the sixteenth-century householder poet and devotee. In the course of the intervening three-hundred years Jnaneshwari had got greatly corrupted with misinterpretations and interpolations and the text had to be critically looked into. There is a belief that Jnaneshwar himself, in his subtle form, told Eknath to undertake the work of preparing an authentic text of the original. It is the authority of this critical edition that we now accept, for all our religious, philosophical and literary references. However, we have no idea of the method the bhakta adopted in carrying out this research. Yet the standard text is fairly dependable and, more importantly, the spiritual contents are genuine. We can breathe in it and grow in it, as would a flame in the tapas-force of a Yogi. That is a great gift indeed.

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