Paper short abstract:

The bucolic picture of the Varkari tradition presents the image of the black and stumpy Vithoba from Pandharpur as an exclusive object of veneration. This male god is referred to as mauli ('mother') and his image is reduplicated in temples of Vithoba spread over Maharashtra.

Paper long abstract:

(in continuation)

Although Dnyaneshvar had never mentioned Vithoba in his 13th century Marathi commentary to the Bhagavad-gita, he stands as another object of worship among varkaris, and, similar to Vithoba, is appealed to as mauli. The saint-poet has been long worshiped through the black slab used as a cover for his 'sanjivan samadhi' / a grave (as per his Shaiva background) in the settlement of Alandi within the 'temple of samadhi'. It is his invisible body, nowadays also manifested in visible pictures and through a mask on the slab, that stands for the object of worship and attracts devotees independently of Pandharpur and Vithoba.

The third mauli of the Varkari tradition is the commentary itself eponymously named Dnyaneshvari. The text attracts special attention as the object of ritual worship and the mode of special exercise in religious advancement and is also evoked in secular context.

It is this fluidity of objects and the trend to bring them into one by the single appellative of mauli or to disassociate on theological basis that I will interpret through emotive responses of contemporary devotees and field study.