Sant Tukaram (c. 1608 – c. 1650) was a Marathi Vaishnava saint of the Varkari tradition, born at Dehu on the Indrayani river about 25 km from Pune. A Kunbi-Maratha householder by caste, he was a grain trader who lost his business and first wife in the Deccan famine of 1629 and turned to bhakti as a result. His composed abhangas, gathered as the Tukaram Gatha, run to roughly 4,500 verses and form the high point of medieval Marathi devotional poetry. His traditional disappearance into Vaikuntha is dated to Phalguna Krishna 2 of Shaka 1571 (about 9 March 1650 CE). The Sant Tukaram Maharaj Mandir at Dehu remains a principal Varkari shrine, and the annual palkhi procession to Pandharpur, beginning each year at Dehu, traces its route.
Family and the famine
Tukaram was born to Bolhoba Ambile (More) and Kankai at Dehu, the second of three sons. The family belonged to the Kunbi-Maratha cultivator caste and ran a small grain-and-money-lending business. His grandfather Vishvambhar had been a devotee of Vithoba of Pandharpur and had built the small Vithoba shrine at Dehu that still stands. Tukaram was married first to Rakhamabai and later took a second wife, Avalai (Jijabai). His first son was born around 1625.
The Deccan famine of 1629-1630 collapsed both the regional economy and Tukaram’s grain trade. His first wife and his eldest son died of starvation. Tukaram retreated to the hill Bhandara, near Dehu, and there began the discipline of long fasts and continuous chanting that produced his first poems. In the autobiographical abhangas he names his guru as Babaji Chaitanya, who appeared to him in a dream and gave him the Rama-Krishna-Hari mantra of the Varkari tradition.
Composition and the river incident
Tukaram composed in ovi and abhanga metres in spoken Marathi rather than literary Sanskrit, addressing his songs to Vithoba (Vitthala) of Pandharpur. The verses are direct and often confrontational, criticising hypocritical Brahmins, dishonest merchants and ritual without inner feeling alongside the more conventional praise of the deity. The local Brahmin Mambaji is recorded as having objected that a Shudra was singing the Vedas in his abhangas; the controversy is the central event of Tukaram’s middle life.
The biographers Mahipati (in the Bhakta-vijaya, 1762) and Nivruttinath (the saint’s own son’s son, in a brief 17th-century memoir) record that Mambaji, with the support of the local Brahmin assembly, forced Tukaram to sink his manuscripts in the Indrayani river. The pothi (manuscript bundle) is said to have remained submerged for thirteen days and then floated up undamaged. The story is hagiography in form, but the underlying conflict between the Sanskrit-literate Brahmin establishment and the vernacular Shudra-Maratha bhakta is independently attested in Mahipati and in court records.
The Gatha and its themes
The Tukaram Gatha is the standard collection of his abhangas, compiled by his disciple Santaji Teli Jagnade and others in the decades after his disappearance. The Maharashtra Government’s authoritative edition runs to 4,500 numbered abhangas. The recurring themes:
- The longing for Vithoba: the personified bhakti to the deity at Pandharpur, addressed as Vitthal, Pandurang, Hari.
- Criticism of false sanctity: abhangas naming Brahmins who recite without practice, ascetics who keep purses, merchants who weigh dishonestly.
- The autobiographical voice: the famine, the loss of family, the dream-initiation by Babaji Chaitanya, the river incident.
- The democratic theology: Vithoba meets every devotee, regardless of caste, who comes to Pandharpur with sincere bhakti.
The Varkari context
Tukaram is the fourth of the great Varkari saints in the tradition’s own ordering, after Dnyaneshwar (13th century), Namdev (13th-14th century) and Eknath (16th century). The Varkari sampradaya centres on the Vithoba shrine at Pandharpur in Solapur district, with twice-yearly pilgrimage (the Ashadhi Ekadashi yatra in June-July and the Kartiki Ekadashi yatra in October-November). The Dehu-Pandharpur palkhi procession, carrying Tukaram’s wooden sandals (paduka), is one of the principal currents that converge on Pandharpur for the Ashadhi yatra each year; the procession has been recorded annually since the early 19th century and continues to draw hundreds of thousands of walkers.
The disappearance
The traditional account holds that on Phalguna Krishna 2 of Shaka 1571, Tukaram was taken up to Vaikuntha in his physical body. Witnesses are said to have seen a celestial vehicle descend at the bank of the Indrayani and depart with him. His sandals and his outer garment fell back and were preserved. The historical reading is that he died, probably by violence or by deliberate withdrawal, and that the disappearance narrative arose to account for the missing body. The shrine at Dehu’s Bhandara hill is built at the supposed point of departure.
For what it’s worth, the Tukaram Gatha is one of the few Indian devotional corpora where the social criticism is present in the founding texts rather than added by later commentators. Reading the abhangas straight, without the softening filter of modern devotional anthologies, gives a sharper picture of seventeenth-century rural Maharashtra than most contemporary documentary sources.
Common questions
Did Tukaram meet Shivaji?
The tradition records a meeting between the saint and the young Shivaji Bhonsle (b. 1630) at Dehu, with Shivaji offering Tukaram a gold ornament and Tukaram returning it with an abhanga. The meeting is plausible chronologically; both lived in the same Pune-Dehu region in the 1640s. Direct documentary evidence is thin. The Shivaji-Tukaram correspondence preserved in some Gatha editions is regarded by modern editors as a later interpolation.
How does Tukaram differ from Dnyaneshwar?
Dnyaneshwar (1275-1296) was a Brahmin from Apegaon who composed in literary Marathi and produced the philosophical Bhavarthadipika (Dnyaneshwari) commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Tukaram was a Kunbi-Maratha cultivator who composed in spoken Marathi and produced devotional and social-critical abhangas rather than a philosophical commentary. The two together form the philosophical and devotional poles of the Varkari literary canon.
Where can visitors go at Dehu?
The Sant Tukaram Maharaj Mandir at Dehu, on the Indrayani river, contains the small Vithoba shrine built by Tukaram’s grandfather and the principal sankirtan hall. The Bhandara hill, where Tukaram is said to have departed, is a short walk from the village. Dehu is 30 km north of Pune by road and is reached by suburban bus or shared transport. The annual Tukaram Beej anniversary, on Phalguna Krishna 2 (March), draws large crowds; the Ashadhi palkhi departs from Dehu around mid-June.
One limitation worth noting
The Tukaram Gatha as published is a compiled text. No manuscripts from Tukaram’s lifetime survive. The earliest surviving manuscripts date from the late seventeenth century onward, and the four-and-a-half-thousand abhanga corpus includes layers added by later devotees in his style. The Maharashtra State Gazetteer edition by Dhere and the Sahitya Akademi critical edition are the principal academic anchors. The biographical summary is at the Tukaram entry on Wikipedia.
