The Mother Figure in Marathi Bhakti Literature : 10

     The Mother Figure in Marathi Bhakti Literature :10

 It is Aashadhi Ekadashi today. Even when the traditional wari, the usual pilgrimage, could not take place due to the dreaded disease,Covid, the fervour of the day remains hale and hearty.

On this day when the whole Marathi ambience is drenched in devotion, not to mention the usual monsson worries, we are going to say good bye to our series, at least for the time being. Let us end the series with the "Pasayadana", one of the greatest prayers in the whole world.

It is the final, and yet always abiding, prayer in the Dnyaneshwari. We are going to discuss it as the finale of our current series because embedded in its text are many a facet of motherhood. Let us here look at some of these.

In this exceptionally poetic prayer, Sant Dnyaneshwar opines that the wickedness of the evil should vanish forever. A very maternal invocation is this. A mother, in fact, both the parents, mother and father, are ready for every ordeal so that the child does not suffer the hurtful harm inflicted by the bad. Why, the parents of Sant Dnyaneshwar himself accepted the cruel punishment for a sin never committed so that their children's lives would not get destroyed by the societal rigidity. In fact, this intense imploring makes the prayer truly maternal in spirit, whether it would refer to an individual mother's wish for her child or the "Jagat Mauli", Sant Dnyaneshwar, invoking the ideal way to goodness for the whole world.

Yet another facet of the prayer is Sant Dnyaneshwar imploring that all the darkness of all the sinfulness should vanish from the whole world. Yet again it is a very parental wish. The soul/sole desire of the parents is that the child should never ever be sullied in any way by any sin. It is wonderous indeed to know how parental was the great sage who had such maternal tenderness (and for the whole world) at the ripe old age of twenty-one!

Yet another aspect of this great prayer is the supplication, "let(s) everyone attain whatever (s)he aspires to", yet again an ardent wish of parents. It is the ultimate benediction of a parent, a mother, a father. In fact, so imbued is this invocation with the filial love that every word echoes with it. Indeed it would be an enriching exercise to thus attempt to analyse the entire text some time soon. For the time being, let us bid farewell to our series by maintaining that the filial feel is indeed the bedrock of the saintly ideations.

pratima@ celebrating the deep filial love beyond any bounds