Paper short abstract:

The compositions of the 16th-century Marathi poet Eknath portray a wide variety of religious others, whereas the 18th-century hagiographies about him depict a much narrower set. This discursive change indicates a coalescing standard narrative about Marathi bhakti and its priorities over time.

Paper long abstract:

The Marathi bhakti poet Eknath in his bharuds (metaphorical drama-poems) depicted a wide variety of societal and religious characters. From among these texts, scholars are most familiar with the "Hindu-Turk Samvad," which portrays a heated debate between a brahman and a Muslim cleric. Other bharuds depict Muslim mendicants, Virashaiva jangams, Sikhs, yogis and Mahanubhavs (a minor Maharashtrian bhakti tradition), all of whom Eknath discursively employs to teach devotional and philosophical lessons. Nearly forty bharuds are written as if the narrators were Mahars (untouchables), some of whom rebuke and instruct brahmans in the compositions. Marathi scholars have commonly asserted that these bharuds offer a window into the historical circumstances of 16th-century western India. In contrast to the broad cast of characters in Eknath's bharuds, the four main hagiographies composed about Eknath in the 18th century portray a much narrower range of holy others and dialogue partners. These texts contain no clashes between bhaktas and sufis or yogis, although there are muted hints of such encounters. Instead, Eknath's main dialogue partners are mainly arrogant brahmans and meek but spiritually inclined untouchables - a narrative configuration that influenced how Marathi bhakti was interpreted in the 19th- and 20th-centuries. I argue that the differences between portrayals of holy others in these earlier and later texts shed light on how a standard narrative of Marathi bhakti was coalescing in pre-colonial western India, and how the concerns of bhakti proponents changed.