Give me smallness
Every other voice asks for strength, clarity, or stillness. Tukaram asks for something no one else on the list asks for.
लहानपण दे गा देवा । मुंगी साखरेचा रवा ॥
ऐरावत रत्न थोर । त्यासी अंकुशाचा मार ॥ध्रु.॥
ज्याचे अंगीं मोठेपण । तया यातना कठीण ॥
तुका म्हणे जाण । व्हावें लहानाहुनि लहान ॥
airāvat ratna thor, tyāsī aṅkushāchā mār
jyāche aṅgī moṭhepaṇ, tayā yātanā kaṭhiṇ
tukā mhaṇe jāṇ, vhāveṁ lahānāhuni lahān
"Give me smallness, God — the ant is the one who gets the grain of sugar. The great jewelled elephant gets the driver's hook. Whoever carries bigness carries a hard punishment with it. Tuka says, understand this: become smaller than the small."
One of the most widely recited abhangas in Maharashtra, taught in Marathi school readers and sung in the Warkari tradition. Airāvat is Indra's white elephant — magnificent, jewelled, and led by a hook in the neck.
We cite by opening line rather than number: abhang numbering differs between printings of the Gāthā, and the placement of the dhruvapada (refrain, marked ध्रु.) also differs — some editions print ऐरावत रत्न थोर as the refrain, others as the second charaṇa. Text pending a final check against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā.
मन करा रे प्रसन्न । सर्व सिद्धींचें कारण ॥ … मनें इच्छा पुरविली । मन माउली सकळांची ॥ — "Make the mind glad — it is the cause of everything: freedom or bondage, ease or the wanting of it. … The mind granted its own wish. The mind is mother of us all."
मनें प्रतिमा स्थापिली । मनें मना पूजा केली — the mind set up the idol; the mind worshipped the mind. A devotee of Viṭhṭhal is saying that every act of worship passes through the mind — and then he calls that mind māulī. Mother. Not enemy, not battlefield, not something to conquer before dawn. Mother.
जे कां रंजले गांजले । त्यासि म्हणे जो आपुले ॥ तोचि साधु ओळखावा । देव तेथेचि जाणावा ॥ … ज्यासी आपंगिता नाहीं । त्यासी धरी जो हृदयीं ॥ — "Whoever calls the worn-out and the crushed their own — recognise that one as the saint; know that God is right there. … Whoever has nobody to hold them: the one who holds them to their heart."
The test of holiness here is not serenity, or knowledge, or having transcended anything. It is whether you go and sit with the person nobody is sitting with. Which cuts both ways: if you are the frightened one tonight, then by Tukaram's definition whoever stays with you is doing the holiest work available to a human being.
शब्द चि आमुच्या जीवाचें जीवन । शब्दें वांटूं धन जनलोकां ॥ तुका म्हणे पाहा शब्द चि हा देव । शब्दें चि गौरव पूजा करूं ॥ — "Words are the very life of our life — and it is with words that we hand our wealth out to the people. Tuka says: look — the word itself is God; with words we honour and worship."
He lost the shop, the grain, the standing, the family. What was left was words, and he spent them at a rate of thousands. When fear has taken away everything you could point to, naming is still available to you — and having something left to say is not a small inheritance. For him the naming was also prayer: the line after it calls the word itself God.
Most of the other names in this collection share one thing: they are quoted from the far side of the thing. The Upanishads speak from realisation. The Stoics speak from composure. The moderns speak from a lectern. Tukaram writes from inside it — the failed shop, the empty grain store, the wife who died crying for food in the famine, the pandits laughing at a farmer who presumed to write scripture. Much of the Gāthā is written before any arrival, and he keeps those abhangas alongside the joyful ones without choosing between them. That is not a weakness in his testimony. It is the reason it is usable.
Which is why his instruction on fear is so unlike the others. He does not ask for strength. He asks for smallness. The ant is small enough that the sugar belongs to her. The elephant is magnificent, and therefore has a hook in its neck. That is worth sitting with, because almost all the fear a person carries in a city is fear attached to bigness: being seen to fail, losing the position, not being enough. Tukaram's way out is not to grow bigger than the fear. It is to want less of the size the fear is attached to.
व्हावें लहानाहुनि लहान — become smaller than the small.
The sugar is down at that height.
The weapons are words
He had every reason for bitterness, and he turned it into abhangas — some tender, some furious, several aimed straight at God, and a few at the holy men of his day. He does not, though, claim to be unarmed.
आम्हां घरीं धन शब्दांचींच रत्नें । शब्दांचींच शस्त्रें यत्न करूं ॥
शब्द चि आमुच्या जीवाचें जीवन । शब्दें वांटूं धन जनलोकां ॥
तुका म्हणे पाहा शब्द चि हा देव । शब्दें चि गौरव पूजा करूं ॥
shabda chi āmuchyā jīvāche jīvan, shabdeṁ vāṁṭūṁ dhan janalokāṁ
tukā mhaṇe pāhā shabda chi hā dev, shabdeṁ chi gaurav pūjā karūṁ
"In our house the wealth is words: words are our jewels, and words are the weapons we work with. Words are the very life of our life — and it is with words that we hand our wealth out to the people. Tuka says: look — the word itself is God; with words we honour and worship."
A very widely quoted abhang, printed in the Tukārām Gāthā and standard in Marathi anthologies; 3385 in the mr.wikisource sequence. We cite by opening line rather than number, since numbering differs between printings. We print the popular शब्दांचींच; the Wikisource text reads शब्दाचीं.
Two honest notes. The third charaṇa, often recited and sometimes doubted, is in the Wikisource text (3385). We print it because it is the turn: the words are not only his weapons and his wealth, they are, for him, God. And a separate abhang uses the very similar phrase शब्दांचीं रत्नें करूनी अळंकार — the two are sometimes conflated in circulation. Text pending a final check against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā.
नाहीं निर्मळ जीवन । काय करील साबण ॥ … तैसी चित्तशुद्धि नाहीं । तेथें बोध करील काई ॥ — "If the water itself isn't clean, what will the soap do? … In just the same way — where the mind has not been cleared, what will good advice accomplish?"
Everyone in your life has told you to calm down. Here is why it did nothing, written four hundred years before they said it: soap needs clean water to work in. The advice was not wrong — it simply had no medium to act in. Water first. Then soap.
मन गुरू आणि शिष्य । करी आपुलें चि दास्य ॥ प्रसन्न आपआपणास । गति अथवा अधोगति ॥ — "The mind is both the guru and the student; it does its own serving. Glad or not glad with itself — that is what decides whether you rise or fall."
The argument you have been having in your head since this afternoon has exactly one participant. You are the one shouting and the one being shouted at, and you are also the one who could stop. He says it without any pity, which is somehow easier to hear than sympathy.
मऊ मेनाहूनि आह्मी विष्णुदास । कठिण वज्रास भेदूं ऐसे ॥ … भले तरि देऊं गांडीची लंगोटी । नाठ्याळा चि गांठीं देऊं माथां ॥ — "Softer than wax are we, servants of Viṣṇu — yet hard enough to pierce a diamond. … To the good we'll give even the loincloth off our backs; to the unruly, a knock on the head."
Gentleness is not the same as having no spine.
What he does not say matters. He does not say he has no weapons. He does not claim to be past all this, or to have no fight left in him. He says: शब्दांचींच शस्त्रें — the weapons are words, and words are what we work with. That is a man admitting he is armed and telling you which armoury he chose. And it is a sacred armoury: the same abhang ends by calling the word itself God.
Which makes his position quite different from the advice you have already been handed. "Don't be angry" was never Tukaram's line. He wrote abhangas that argue with God, accuse God, sulk at God. And he did not keep all his heat for heaven: he wrote that the Wārkarī is softer than wax and hard enough to pierce diamond — the cloth off his back for the good, a knock on the head for the unruly — and he was savage about holy men who perform renunciation. So this is not a man without anger. One way we might read him today: the heat stayed, and he chose its target and its instrument — the hypocrite, not the household; the sentence, not the fist.
शब्दांचींच शस्त्रें — the weapons are words.
Same heat. Different exit.
I am hungry — come running
He does not resolve his sadness, reframe it, or turn it into gratitude. He points the whole ache at someone and says it. The complaint is the practice.
भेटी लागी जीवा लागलीसे आस । पाहे रात्रंदिवस वाट तुझी ॥१॥
पूर्णिमेचा चंद्रमा चकोरा जीवन । तैसें माझें मन वाट पाहे ॥२॥
दिवाळीच्या मुळा लेंकी आसावली । पाहतसे वाटुली पंढरीची ॥३॥
भुकेलिया बाळ अति शोक करी । वाट पाहे परी माउलीची ॥४॥
तुका म्हणे मज लागलीसे भूक । धांवूनि श्रीमुख दावीं देवा ॥५॥
pūrṇimechā chandramā chakorā jīvan, taiseṁ mājheṁ man vāṭ pāhe
divāḷīchyā muḷā leṁkī āsāvalī, pāhatase vāṭulī paṇḍharīchī
bhukeliyā bāḷ ati śok karī, vāṭ pāhe parī māulīchī
tukā mhaṇe maj lāgalīse bhūk, dhāṁvūni śrīmukh dāvīṁ devā
"My whole life aches for the meeting; night and day I am watching your road. As the full moon is life itself to the chakor bird, so my mind keeps watching. As a daughter longs for the Diwali summons home, I watch the road to Pandhari. As a hungry child cries and cries, and still watches for its mother. Tuka says: I am hungry. Come running, God, and show me your face."
One of the most widely sung abhangas in Maharashtra. We cite by opening line rather than by number: abhang numbering differs between printings of the Gāthā, and the same abhang carries different numbers in different editions. Text pending a final check against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā / the Sākhare edition. We print the sung text; Wikisource (2811) reads रात्रीं दिवस and पूर्णिमेचा चंद्र चकोराचें जीवन, and marks the chakor line as the refrain.
Two images that do not survive translation. The chakor is the partridge of Indian poetry, said to live on moonlight and to stare at the full moon all night. And divāḷīchyā muḷā is the formal summons a married daughter waits for from her parents' house before Diwali — the invitation that lets her go back to her māher. Dnyaneshwar used that same word for God, three and a half centuries earlier.
सुख पाहतां जवापाडें । दुःख पर्वताएवढें ॥ … धरीं धरीं आठवण । मानीं संताचें वचन ॥ध्रु.॥ — "Measure it out and joy is the size of a barley grain. Sorrow is the size of a mountain. … Hold on, hold on to remembrance; honour the word of the saints."
A saint sat down, did the arithmetic honestly, and reported that the sorrow outweighs the joy by a mountain to a seed. He did not argue with the sum. His answer, in the refrain, was not cheer up but hold on — hold on to remembrance. (The rest of the abhang counts the years lost to sleep, childhood and illness; it is on our reading page.)
बुडतां हे जन न देखवे डोळां । येतो कळवळा म्हणऊनि ॥ — "I cannot stand to watch these people drowning. That is why the ache rises in me."
His own account of why he wrote at all. Not to teach and not to be admired — because he could see people going under and could not bear the sight. Kaḷvaḷā is the specific Marathi word for the twist you feel in the stomach when someone else is in pain. The whole Gāthā, by his own account, is that sensation, written down for the rest of his life.
आता पुढें धीर काय देऊं या मना — "Now what courage can I give this mind?"
A saint who has run out of encouragement for himself. He says so to God, and leaves it unresolved.
The barley grain and the mountain are the honest arithmetic, and he did not soften the result. But the anchor is where he shows what he actually did with a sorrow that size. Three pictures of waiting — the chakor and the moon, the daughter and the Diwali letter, the hungry child and the mother — and then the plain line under them: I am hungry. Come running. He is not describing the ache to a reader. He is saying it to someone, in his own language, in the second person.
That is Tukaram's one move with sadness, and it is not what a self-help paragraph would predict. No resolution, no reframe, no gratitude list. The feeling is turned into address — pointed at a listener and spoken, and then spoken again the next day. For a reader without a Pandurang, the shape still holds: an unbearable feeling becomes a little more bearable at the moment it is said out loud, to someone, in words that are yours. The complaint is not what gets in the way of the practice. The complaint is the practice.
भेटी लागी जीवा — my whole life aches for the meeting.
He pointed the ache at someone and said it. Then said it again tomorrow.
A conversation with my own mind
After the famine took his wife — and, the tradition adds, a son — he went up into the hills alone. Tradition places this abhang on Bhandara hill: the one in which the trees are his relatives.
वृक्षवल्ली आम्हां सोयरीं वनचरें । पक्षी ही सुस्वरें आळविती ॥१॥
येणें सुखें रुचे एकांताचा वास । नाहीं गुण दोष अंगा येत ॥ध्रु.॥
आकाश मंडप पृथुवी आसन । रमे तेथें मन क्रीडा करी ॥२॥
कंथाकुमंडलु देहउपचारा । जाणवितो वारा अवसरु ॥३॥
हरिकथा भोजन परवडी विस्तार । करोनि प्रकार सेवूं रुची ॥४॥
तुका म्हणे होय मनासी संवाद । आपुला चि वाद आपणांसी ॥५॥
yeṇeṁ sukheṁ ruche ekāntāchā vās, nāhīṁ guṇ doṣ aṅgā yet
ākāś maṇḍap pṛthuvī āsan, rame tetheṁ man krīḍā karī
kanthākumaṇḍalu dehaupachārā, jāṇavito vārā avasaru
harikathā bhojan paravaḍī vistār, karoni prakār sevūṁ ruchī
tukā mhaṇe hoy manāsī saṁvād, āpulā chi vād āpaṇāṁsī
"The trees, the creepers, the creatures of the forest are our kin; even the birds call to us in sweet voices. With this happiness, living in solitude pleases me — no merit and no fault touch the body here. The sky is my canopy, the earth my seat; the mind delights there, and plays. A patched quilt and a water-pot are all the body needs; the wind tells me the hour. Hari's story is my meal, laid out in many courses. Tuka says: here there is conversation with my own mind. My own argument, with myself."
Among the best-known abhangas in Marathi — it is in school textbooks — and confirmed in full across two independent sources. It is 2471 in the mr.wikisource Gāthā sequence, whose base edition is not named; santsahitya.in numbers it 2376 in a different, alphabetical arrangement. We therefore cite by opening line. Spellings vary between printings (आह्मां / आम्हां, पृथुवी / पृथीवी, अवश्वरु / अवसरु, तुका ह्मणे / तुका म्हणे); we follow the clearer modern spellings. Not yet checked against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā (Lad, 1950/55).
Two words carry the abhang. Soyarīṁ — kin, relatives by marriage — is Dnyaneshwar's word from the Pasāyadān. And ekānt is solitude, not loneliness; Marathi keeps those apart as carefully as Hindi does. The abhang is the record of one turning into the other.
जेथें जातों तेथें तूं माझा सांगाती । चालविसी हातीं धरूनियां ॥१॥ चालों वाटे आम्ही तुझाचि आधार । चालविसी भार सवें माझा ॥ध्रु.॥ बोलों जातां बरळ करिसी तें नीट । नेली लाज धीट केलों देवा ॥२॥ अवघें जन मज जाले लोकपाळ । सोइरे सकळ प्राणसखे ॥३॥ तुका म्हणे आतां खेळतों कौतुकें । जालें तुझें सुख अंतर्बाहीं ॥४॥ — "Wherever I go, you are my companion there; you walk me along, holding my hand. I walk the road with you alone as my support; you carry my load alongside me. When I go to speak and babble, you set it right; you took away my shyness and made me bold, God. All people have become my guardians — everyone is kin to me, friends dear as life. Tuka says: now I play, delighted; your happiness has filled me inside and out."
The order of events is the thing. First there is one companion — one hand, one presence that stays when he goes to speak and makes a mess of it. Only after that does the third stanza arrive: everyone has become kin. The crowd did not cure him. One stayed, and then the crowd was bearable. For a man who had been laughed out of a village assembly, you took my shame and made me bold is not a small line.
तेरा दिवस जाले निश्चक्र करितां । न पवसी अनंता मायबापा ॥ … तुका म्हणे आतां मांडिलें निर्वाण । प्राण हा सांडीन तुजवरी ॥ — "Thirteen days have gone without food, and still you do not come, Ananta, mother-father… Tuka says: now I have set my mind on the end. I will give up this life on you."
The thirteen days on the riverbank after his notebooks were sunk, in his own voice. Fasting to the end at a god's door — dharaṇā — was a recognised form of protest-petition in his world. This is not a recommendation; it is a record of how far he went, and of the fact that even here he does not stop talking to somebody. Māybāpā — mother-and-father — is what he calls the silence. In another abhang (2231) he writes the sequel himself: you kept the papers safe in the water, and he apologises to God for the trouble. If you are anywhere near the edge he describes tonight, please let a person hold this with you — the numbers at the bottom of this page answer at any hour.
आनंदाचे डोहीं आनंदतरंग । आनंद चि अंग आनंदाचें ॥१॥ काय सांगों जालें कांहीचियाबाही । पुढें चाली नाहीं आवडीनें ॥ध्रु.॥ — "In a pool of joy, waves of joy; joy is the very body of joy. What can I say of what happened — it is beyond all telling. Desire goes no further than this."
We quote only the opening and the refrain. This is the far side of the hill — what the solitude eventually turned into for him. It is here as a fact about his life, not a promise about yours: the man who wrote thirteen days and you do not come also wrote this, in the same voice, and the Gāthā keeps both without choosing.
The Bhandara hill abhang is taught as a nature poem, and that loses the point. He did not go up there for the view. The famine had taken his wife (and, the tradition adds, a son), the business was gone, and the village had made up its mind about him. One way to read it: he was not seeking solitude; he was fleeing company. And the poem he came back with says the trees were his soyare — the word for the family you acquire, the people who are obliged to turn up. He had been left, and he went somewhere and found something that would not leave.
The last line is the one to keep. A conversation with my own mind; my own argument, with myself. That is a precise description of the inside of a lonely evening — the circling, the self-interrogation, the case for and against. Tukaram does not report having stopped it. He reports it as company. Somewhere on that hill the voice that had been prosecuting him became a voice he could talk to, and the Marathi for loneliness, ekaṭepaṇ, quietly turned into the Marathi for solitude, ekānt. Nobody can say how long that takes. He does not say either.
Thirteen days, and you do not come.
He said it to someone anyway — and kept the pen.
Who asks after us, tired and spent?
Of all the voices here he is the only one who writes tiredness in the first person, from inside it — and asks the question every exhausted person is too proud to ask.
कोण आह्मां पुसे सिणलें भागलें । तुजविण उगलें पांडुरंगा ॥१॥
कोणापाशीं आह्मीं सांगावें सुखदुःख । कोण तानभूक निवारील ॥ध्रु.॥
कोण या तापाचा करील परिहार । उतरील पार कोण दुजा ॥२॥
कोणापें इच्छेचें मागावें भातुकें । कोण कवतुकें बुझावील ॥३॥
कोणावरी आह्मीं करावी हे सत्ता । होइल साहाता कोण दुजा ॥४॥
तुका ह्मणे अगा स्वामी सर्व जाणां । दंडवत चरणां तुमच्या देवा ॥५॥
koṇāpāśīṁ āmhīṁ sāṅgāveṁ sukhaduḥkh, koṇ tānabhūk nivārīl
koṇ yā tāpāchā karīl parihār, utarīl pār koṇ dujā
koṇāpeṁ icchecheṁ māgāveṁ bhātukeṁ, koṇ kavatukeṁ bujhāvīl
koṇāvarī āmhīṁ karāvī he sattā, hoil sāhātā koṇ dujā
tukā mhaṇe agā svāmī sarva jāṇāṁ, daṇḍavat charaṇāṁ tumachyā devā
"Who asks after us, tired and spent? Without you, Pandurang, we are simply left so. To whom are we to tell our joy and our sorrow? Who will see to our thirst and hunger? Who will take away this fever; who else will carry us across? From whom are we to ask the little food we want; who will soothe us, fondly? Over whom may we claim this right; who else will be our help? Tuka says: master, you know all of it. I bow at your feet, God."
Confirmed in full against the mr.wikisource Tukārām Gāthā, where it is 1027 in a sequence whose base edition is not named (the Government Gāthā of Lad, 1950/55, numbers differently by about two dozen). We cite by opening line. The wikisource text prints the older spellings आह्मां, ह्मणे; we have kept them. Single-source so far — this abhang is not among the famous ones and we have not found it in a second independent printing; we say so. Not yet checked against a named critical edition.
Two words in the first line anchor the section. Siṇaleṁ — from śiṇ, fatigue — and bhāgaleṁ, worn out, spent, the word Marathi uses for a traveller at the end of the road. He puts both together, about himself, and then asks six times in five lines: who. The ugaleṁ of the first line is quiet in both senses — "left just so", and "left silent".
ठेविलें अनंतें तैसें चि राहावें । चित्तीं असों द्यावें समाधान ॥१॥ वाहिल्या उद्वेग दुःख चि केवळ । भोगणें तें फळ संचिताचें ॥२॥ तुका ह्मणे घालूं तयावरी भार । वाहूं हा संसार देवा पायीं ॥३॥ — "Stay just as the Infinite has placed you; let the heart keep its contentment. To carry agitation is only pain, and only pain; what we undergo is the fruit of what was stored. Tuka says: let us put the load on him — let us offer this world at God's feet."
The best-known line in Maharashtra, usually quoted alone as a counsel of acceptance — and the three lines together are sharper. Vāhilyā udveg, the agitation you carry, is duḥkh chi kevaḷ, pain and nothing but pain. Then the instruction: ghālūṁ tayāvarī bhār, let us put the burden on him. Not drop it; put it on someone. The same abhang anchors the Overwhelm section below, with its opening line. Wikisource prints three charaṇas and no separate refrain; some sung versions mark the first as the dhruvapad.
शरण आलें त्यासी न दावीं हे पाठी । ऐका जगजेठी विज्ञापना ॥१॥ अळविती तयांसी उत्तर झडकरी । द्यावें परिसा हरी विज्ञापना ॥ध्रु.॥ गांजिलियाचें करावें धांवणें । विनंती नारायणें परिसावी हे ॥२॥ भागलियाचा होइप रे विसांवा । परिसावी केशवा विज्ञापना ॥३॥ अंकिताचा भार वागवावा माथां । परिसावी अनंता विज्ञापना ॥४॥ तुका ह्मणे आह्मां विसरावें ना देवा । परिसावी हे देवा विज्ञापना ॥५॥ — "Those who have come to you for refuge — do not turn your back on them; hear, Lord of the world, this petition. Those who call out — answer them quickly; grant it, Hari, hear this petition. Run to the one who is harassed; Narayana, hear this plea. Be the resting-place of the one who is worn out; hear, Keshava, this petition. Carry on your own head the load of the one who is yours; hear, Ananta, this petition. Tuka says: do not forget us, God — hear, God, this petition."
Five requests, each ending with the same word — vijñāpanā, a formal petition, the word you would use to a king. The fourth is the one this section exists for: be the visāvā, the resting-place, of the one who is spent. Visāvā is the Marathi for the places where a palanquin is set down on the road to Pandharpur; the Wari still names its halts by it. The wikisource text prints होइप — its usual font error for होई (it does the same in two hundred other abhangas); we read होई, be. The abhang sits beside 1027, the anchor — two petitions from the same tired man, one after the other.
आतां कोठें धांवे मन । तुझे चरण देखिलिया ॥१॥ भाग गेला सीण गेला । अवघा जाला आनंदु ॥ध्रु.॥ प्रेमरसें बैसली मिठी । आवडी लाठी मुखासी ॥२॥ तुका ह्मणे आह्मां जोगें । विठ्ठल घोगें खरें माप ॥३॥ — "Where would the mind run now, having seen your feet? The weariness went; the fatigue went; everything turned to joy. The embrace of love's sweetness has settled on me; the taste of it is strong in my mouth. Tuka says: what fits us is Vitthal — the true measure, filled full."
The far side, here as a fact about his life and not a promise about yours. Bhāg gelā, sīṇ gelā — the same two words as the anchor, and here both are gone. What preceded it was not effort or a resolution: the mind had stopped running because it had somewhere to stop. The Gāthā keeps both abhangs without choosing. Confirmed in full against wikisource; the last line's घोगें is obscure and our "filled full" is a reading, flagged.
Put abhangs 1026 and 1027 side by side, as the Gāthā does, and a shape appears. In the first, a tired man asks God to be the visāvā of the weary — the place where the palanquin is set down — and to carry the load on his own head. In the second, the same man asks who will ask after him. Koṇ āmhāṁ puse siṇaleṁ bhāgaleṁ. Not who will fix me, not who will give me strength: who will ask. It is the question the exhausted person in a household cannot say out loud, and Tukaram says it to God, in verse, five times, with the formal word for petition at the end of each line, and then bows.
That is what he brings to tiredness, and it is not a consolation. He does not say rest and it will pass. He says the tiredness is sayable — that the whole of it can be put in front of someone, the fever, the thirst, the small wants, the question of whose job it is to help — and that the saying is itself a kind of setting down. For a reader without a Pandurang the move still holds: the load is carryable because it can be put somewhere, for a night, and the first place it can be put is into words, to someone who will hear the petition.
कोण आह्मां पुसे सिणलें भागलें — who asks after us, tired and spent?
He asked it out loud, to someone, in writing — and the asking was the first thing he set down.
Who makes the milk for the infant?
The only saint here who knew the money arithmetic from the inside — his own abhang says he went bankrupt. He wrote the restless mind as a thing he could not hold, and then wrote the one argument that held him.
कां रे नाठविसी कृपाळु देवासी । पोसितो जनासी एकला तो ॥१॥
बाळा दुधा कोण करितें उत्पत्ती । वाढवी श्रीपति सवें दोन्ही ॥ध्रु.॥
फुटती तरुवर उष्णकाळमासीं । जीवन तयांसी कोण घाली ॥२॥
तेणें तुझी काय नाहीं केली चिंता । राहे त्या अनंता आठवूनि ॥३॥
तुका म्हणे ज्याचें नाम विश्वंभर । त्याचें निरंतर ध्यान करीं ॥४॥
bāḷā dudhā koṇ kariteṁ utpattī, vāḍhavī śrīpati saveṁ donhī
phuṭatī taruvar uṣṇakāḷamāsīṁ, jīvan tayāṁsī koṇ ghālī
teṇeṁ tujhī kāy nāhīṁ kelī cintā, rāhe tyā anantā āṭhavūni
tukā mhaṇe jyācheṁ nām viśvambhar, tyācheṁ nirantar dhyān karīṁ
"Why do you not remember the compassionate God, who alone feeds all people? Who makes the milk for the infant? Śrīpati raises the two of them together. In the hot months the trees crack open — who gives them water? Has he not taken thought for you as well? Stay, remembering that Ananta. Tuka says: the one whose name is Viśvambhara, bearer of the world — hold him in mind without a break."
Confirmed in full across two independent sources: 2300 in the mr.wikisource Gāthā sequence (base edition not named), and santsahitya.in, which prints it as 2226 in its own alphabetical arrangement — so we cite by opening line. Spellings vary between printings (कृपाळु / कृपाळू, पोसितो / पोषितो, तुका ह्मणे / तुका म्हणे); we follow the clearer modern forms. Not yet checked against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā (Lad, 1950/55).
Two words. Cintā in the third stanza is the ordinary Marathi for worry, and he uses it of God: has he not done your worrying? And Viśvambhara, the world-bearer, is a name chosen for its grammar: the one who carries. The last line is an instruction, dhyān karīṁ, and we have kept it because it is his, not ours. He is talking to himself.
माझे मज कळों येती अवगुण । काय करूं मन अनावर ॥१॥ आतां आड उभा राहें नारायणा । दयासिंधुपणा साच करीं ॥ध्रु.॥ वाचा वदे परी करणें कठीण । इंद्रियां अधीन जालों देवा ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे तुझा जैसा तैसा दास । न धरीं उदास मायबापा ॥३॥ — "My own faults keep coming into my view. What can I do — the mind will not be held. Now stand in its way, Nārāyaṇa; make your name, ocean-of-mercy, true. The tongue says it, but the doing is hard; I have become a slave to the senses, God. Tuka says: such as I am, I am your servant — do not turn away from me, mother-father."
Anāvar — unholdable — is the exact word Dnyaneshwar's Arjuna surrenders with, and here it is in Tukaram's own mouth, about his own mind, at night, with no teacher present. Āḍ ubhā rāheṁ — stand in its way — is what he asks for: not that the mind be fixed, but that something stand between him and where it is going. We have one printed source for this one; the wording is plain and the sentiment is everywhere in the Gāthā, but we say so.
साकरेचें नाम घेतां कळे गोडी । तैसी आम्हां जोडी वैष्णवांची ॥१॥ मोक्ष गांठी असे ठेविला बांधोनी । सोस तो भजनीं आवडीचा ॥ध्रु.॥ भोजनाची चिंता माय वाहे बाळा । आम्हांसि तरी खेळावरि चित्त ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे आम्ही देहउपकारें । गाऊं निरंतर नाचों लागों ॥३॥ — "Say the word 'sugar' and you know the sweetness; such is our company of Vaiṣṇavas. Liberation is tied up and kept in a bundle; what we long for is the singing. The mother carries the worry about the child's meal — our mind, for its part, is on the game. Tuka says: with the body's help we will sing without a break, we will start to dance."
Cintā māy vāhe — the worry, the mother carries it. And Tukaram has added the thing that makes it bearable: the child is not grateful or devout. The child is playing. The worry about dinner is real and it is being done — by someone else, somewhere behind the child's back. Whether or not you believe in the mother, the picture of a worry being carried while you look elsewhere is the picture an anxious night most needs.
बरें जालें देवा निघालें दिवाळें । बरी या दुष्काळें पीडा केली ॥१॥ अनुतापें तुझें राहिलें चिंतन । जाला हा वमन संवसार ॥ध्रु.॥ बरें जालें जगीं पावलों अपमान । बरें गेलें धन ढोरें गुरें ॥३॥ बरें जालें नाहीं धरिली लोकलाज । बरा आलों तुज शरण देवा ॥४॥ — "Good, God, that I went bankrupt; good that this famine tormented me. In the remorse, your remembrance stayed; this worldly life became something vomited up. Good that I was shamed in the world; good that the money went, the cattle, the herds. Good that I did not hold on to the fear of what people say; good that I came to you for shelter, God."
Here with care, because it is the far side of the worst case and not a promise about yours. The thing the person doing the EMI arithmetic is most afraid of — nighāleṁ divāḷeṁ, the bankruptcy, the shame, the whole village knowing — happened to this man, in full, and this is what he wrote about it afterwards. Not that it was fine. That it was bareṁ, good, in a sense he had to earn through a famine. The line to keep is the fourth: lokalāj, the fear of what people will say, is named as the thing he let go of, and it is listed with the cattle. Read whole, the abhang also says good that I neglected my wife and children — no one says that as a boast; the 'good' is bitter before it is grateful. And this is a thing a person may come to say about their own loss, after a long time. It is not a thing anyone should say to you about yours — and if the money arithmetic tonight has gone somewhere frightening, please tell a person, and see the numbers below.
What makes Tukaram the right voice for the money side of this feeling is biographical before it is poetic. The famine of 1630 is in the Mughal and European records; his own abhangs say the shop failed, he went bankrupt, his first wife died of hunger in the famine — and, the tradition adds, a son — and the village knew all of it. He is the one saint here who had actually sat with the ledger at night and watched the numbers refuse to change. When he asks who makes the milk for the infant?, it is not a pastoral image. It is the question a bankrupt grain-trader put to himself, and the only argument he found that answered the ledger.
The shape of it is not stop worrying. It is evidence. The infant did not arrange the milk; the tree in May did not arrange the rain; and yet, he says, look — they have been fed, and so, until tonight, have you. He does not promise the result. He points at a track record. And in the other abhang, where he admits his own mind is anāvar, unholdable, he does not claim the argument fixed him; he asks for something to stand in the mind's way, calls the silence mother-father, and leaves it there. Both abhangs are in the same Gāthā, in the same voice, and the tradition keeps both without choosing.
काय करूं मन अनावर — what can I do, the mind will not be held.
And then: who makes the milk for the infant? He let that question hold him.
Put the load on him
A shop, two wives, children, ageing parents, and a famine coming. His own account of those years reads like suffocation itself. So does what he did about it.
हेचि थोर भक्ती आवडती देवा । संकल्पावी माया संसाराची ॥१॥
ठेविलें अनंतें तैसेंचि राहावें । चित्तीं असों द्यावें समाधान ॥ध्रु.॥
वाहिल्या उद्वेग दुःखचि केवळ । भोगणें तें फळ संचिताचें ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे घालूं तयावरी भार । वाहूं हा संसार देवा पायीं ॥३॥
ṭhevileṁ anantēṁ taiseṁci rāhāveṁ, cittīṁ asoṁ dyāveṁ samādhān
vāhilyā udveg duḥkhaci kevaḷ, bhogaṇeṁ teṁ phaḷ saṅcitāceṁ
tukā mhaṇe ghālūṁ tayāvarī bhār, vāhūṁ hā saṁsār devā pāyīṁ
"This is the great devotion God loves: to hand the whole illusion of the household over to him. Stay as the Infinite has placed you; let the mind keep its peace. Carrying agitation is only suffering — what is lived through is the fruit of what was stored. Tuka says: let us put the load on him. Let us offer this whole worldly life at God's feet."
Confirmed in full across two independent sources: 2867 in the mr.wikisource Gāthā sequence (base edition unnamed) and 1191 in santsahitya.in's alphabetical arrangement; the four lines agree, down to the refrain being marked ध्रु. in both. We cite by opening line — and note that the opening line is हेचि थोर भक्ती, not the refrain everyone knows. Spellings vary between printings (भक्ती / भक्ति, राहावें / राहवें, तुका ह्मणे / तुका म्हणे); the wikisource scan has an OCR error in the first word. Not yet checked against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā (Lad, 1950/55).
The refrain — stay as God has placed you, keep contentment in the mind — is the most quoted Tukaram line in Maharashtra, and it is used by mothers-in-law and managers alike to mean adjust kar lo. That is why the whole abhang is here. It opens by handing the household over, and it ends with ghālūṁ tayāvarī bhār — let us put the load on him. The verb is ghālaṇeṁ, to put, to set down on; bhār is a porter's load. He was not telling anyone to carry it quietly. He was naming where to put it.
कां रे नाठविसी कृपाळु देवासी । पोसितो जनासी एकला तो ॥१॥ बाळा दुधा कोण करितें उत्पत्ती । वाढवी श्रीपति सवें दोन्ही ॥ध्रु.॥ फुटती तरुवर उष्णकाळमासीं । जीवन तयांसी कोण घाली ॥२॥ तेणें तुझी काय नाहीं केली चिंता । राहे त्या अनंता आठवूनि ॥३॥ तुका म्हणे ज्याचें नाम विश्वंभर । त्याचें निरंतर ध्यान करीं ॥४॥ — "Why do you not remember the kind God — who feeds the whole world, alone? Who makes the milk come for the baby? The Lord grows the two of them together. Trees crack in the heat of summer — who pours water for them? Has he not taken thought for you too? Stay, remembering that Ananta. Tuka says: his name is Viśvambhar, bearer of the world. Keep your mind on him, without a break."
The anchor of the Anxiety section, heard again here in a gentler key — and the name that carries it: Viśvambhar, viśva, everything; bhṛ, to carry, the root of bhār, the load in the anchor's last line. Who makes the milk come? Not the mother, by effort. Tukaram is not telling a crushed person that nothing is on them. He is telling them the name of the one whose job description is the whole weight — and that the job was never theirs alone.
याति शूद्र वैश केला वेवसाव । आधी तो हा देव कुळपूज्य ॥१॥ नये बोलों परि पाळिलें वचन । केलियाचा प्रश्न तुह्मीं संतीं ॥ध्रु.॥ संवसारें जालों अतिदुःखें दुखी । मायबाप सेखीं कर्मलिया ॥२॥ दुष्काळें आटिलें द्रव्यें नेला मान । स्त्री एकी अन्न अन्न करितां मेली ॥३॥ लज्जा वाटे जीवा त्रासलों या दुःखें । वेवसाय देख तुटी येतां ॥४॥ देवाचें देऊळ होतें तें भंगलें । चित्तासी जें आलें करावेंसें ॥५॥ — "By caste a śūdra; by trade a merchant's business; before that, this God was the family's to worship. One should not speak of it — but you saints asked, so I keep my word. The household made me suffer, and suffer greatly; in the end my mother and father were taken. The famine drained the money and took my standing; one wife died crying food, food. I felt shame to be alive; I was choked by this suffering, watching the business run at a loss. The temple of God that had stood was broken — and what came into my mind, I did."
The saints asked him how his vairāgya came, and this is the answer — a first-person account of the famine by someone it happened to. We quote the opening; the abhang runs on for another fifteen caraṇas, and its twelfth line anchors the Confusion section below. The word in the fourth line is trāsaloṁ, from trās — oppressed, crushed from every side; the nearest Hindi is ghutan. The shop failing, the wife dying, the parents gone, the shame of still being alive — stacked, in one breath, the way they stack. He then went and repaired the broken temple. Not the business.
वचन मानिलें नाहीं सुहृदांचें । समूळ प्रपंचें वीट आला ॥११॥ सत्यअसत्यासी मन केलें ग्वाही । मानियेलें नाहीं बहुमतां ॥१२॥ मानियेला स्वप्नीं गुरूचा उपदेश । धरिला विश्वास दृढ नामीं ॥१३॥ — "I did not heed the words of the well-wishers; I was sick to the root of the household. I made my own mind the witness of what is true and false; I did not accept the majority. I accepted the teaching a guru gave me in a dream, and held firm faith in the Name."
What he did with the advice. Suhṛd — the well-wishers, the people who love you and tell you to adjust. He did not heed them. Mānieleṁ nāhīṁ bahumatāṁ — I did not accept the majority view. For a man who calls himself a Shūdra in the first line of this abhang — a farmer's caste that had taken up a trader's work — in a small village where the whole settlement had agreed on what he should do, that is a line with some weight behind it. It is not a recommendation to ignore everyone. It is the record of one man deciding that his own mind got a vote on what was true about his life.
Everyone in Maharashtra can finish the line ṭhevileṁ anantēṁ taiseṁci rāhāveṁ, and for three hundred years it has been used to tell daughters-in-law, clerks and tired fathers to stay where they were put and keep their mind content. It is the Marathi for adjust kar lo. The whole abhang is on this page on purpose, all four lines, and the whole abhang does not say adjust. It opens by handing the household over and it closes, in Tukaram's own signature line, with put the load on him. The refrain everyone quotes describes what it feels like after the load has been set down. It was never an instruction to hold it.
And he knew the load. The autobiographical abhang is the suffocation itself, listed the way it actually arrives — the parents, the famine, the shop, the wife dying asking for food, the shame of being alive — and the word he uses is trāsaloṁ, crushed from all sides. What he did was not adjust. He stopped running the business, repaired a broken temple, went up a hill, and began addressing the weight to someone by name: Viśvambhar, the one who carries everything. The name is his; the structure of what he did is available to anyone. He decided he was not the only thing holding the world up, and he said so out loud, in writing, to a specific listener. Who makes the milk come? Not you alone. It was never only you.
Stay as God placed you — the line everyone quotes.
घालूं तयावरी भार — put the load on him: the line that ends the same abhang.
I praised you to the skies — and nothing arrived
He is the only voice here who reports numbness as a devotee: the specific flatness of doing the thing that is supposed to move you, with your whole heart, and feeling nothing move.
नामाचा महिमा बोलिलों उत्कर्ष । अंगा कांहीं रस न ये चि तो ॥१॥
कैसें समाधान राहे पांडुरंगा । न लगे चि अंगा आणी कांहीं ॥ध्रु.॥
लाभाचिये अंगीं सोस कवतुकें । फिक्याचें तें फिकें वेवसाव ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे करा आपुला महिमा । नका जाऊं धर्मावरि माझ्या ॥३॥
kaiseṁ samādhān rāhe pāṇḍuraṅgā, na lage chi aṅgā āṇī kāṁhīṁ
lābhāchiye aṅgīṁ sos kavatukeṁ, phikyācheṁ teṁ phikeṁ vevasāv
tukā mhaṇe karā āpulā mahimā, nakā jāūṁ dharmāvari mājhyā
"I spoke the glory of the Name to its heights — and no juice came into my body at all. How is contentment to stay, Panduranga? Nothing else touches me either. Where there is profit, there is eager show of delight; mine is a flat trade in flat things. Tuka says: do your own glory, then. Don't go relying on my merit."
Confirmed in full across two independent sources — 3765 in the mr.wikisource Gāthā sequence (whose base edition is not named) and 2936 in santsahitya.in's alphabetical arrangement. We cite by opening line because the numbering differs between printings. Variants are minor: अंगा / अंगी in the first line, धर्मावरि / धर्मावरी; the wikisource text prints the old ह्मणे, which we give as म्हणे. Not yet checked against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā (Lad, 1950/55).
Two words carry it. Ras — juice, sap, savour: the word Marathi uses for the taste of food and the taste of a feeling, both. Na ye chi — it just does not come. And phikyācheṁ teṁ phikeṁ, "the flat of the flat" — a flatness so complete it has no contrast left to be measured against. He is not reporting doubt. He is reporting that the practice worked on everyone but him, and that he kept doing it.
माझा तंव खुंटला उपाव । जेणें तुझे आतुडती पाव । करूं भक्ति तरि नाहीं भाव । नाहीं हातीं जीव कवणेविशीं ॥१॥ … तीर्थ करूं तरि मन नये सवें । व्रत करूं तरि विधि नेणें स्वभावें । देव जरि आहे म्हणों मजसवें । तरि आपपरावें न वंचे ॥४॥ म्हणोनि जालों शरणागत । तुझा दास मी अंकित । यास कांहीं न लगे संचित । जालों निश्चिंत तुका म्हणे ॥५॥ — "Every means I had of reaching your feet has run out. I would do bhakti — but there is no feeling. My own life is not in my hands, for anything … I would go on pilgrimage — but the mind will not come along. I would keep a vow — but I don't know the rules. I say God is with me — and still I cannot stop dividing mine from theirs. So I have come as a refugee: your servant, branded yours. This needs no stored-up merit. Tuka says: I have gone quiet."
The complete inventory of a man going through the motions. He lists everything a devotee is meant to do and reports, item by item, that the inner part is missing: karūṁ bhakti tari nāhīṁ bhāv — I do the worship and the feeling isn't there; man naye saveṁ — the mind won't come along. The ending is not a recovery. It is a putting-down of the effort: niśchint, which means both "unworried" and "with nothing left to think about." Stanzas two and three, which we have skipped, continue the list.
एकविध वृत्ति न राहे अंतरीं । स्मरणीं च हरी विस्मृति ॥१॥ कैसा हा नवलाव वाटतो अनुभवें । मज माझ्या जीवें साक्षित्वेसी ॥ध्रु.॥ न राहे निश्चळ जागवितां मन । किती क्षीणेंक्षीणें सावरावें ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे बहु केले वेवसाव । तेणें रंगें जीव रंगलासे ॥३॥ — "No single-pointed state stays inside me; even in the remembering of Hari — forgetting. What a strange thing this is to go through: I am the witness to my own life. The mind won't stay still even when I keep waking it; how many times, moment by moment, must I prop it up? Tuka says: I did much business, and my life has taken the colour of it."
Smaraṇīṁ cha harī vismṛti — forgetting, in the very act of remembering. The name is on the tongue and the mind has already left. And then the line that is the reason this abhang is here: mujh mājhyā jīveṁ sākṣitvesī — I am watching my own life as a witness. Sākṣitva, witness-hood, is a word from the philosophers — the part of a person that watches. In Tukaram's mouth it is ambiguous, and he calls it navalāv, a wonder: it may be a gift, and it may be distance. One way we might read it today: the strange, slightly-behind-the-eyes feeling of watching yourself fail to be present. If that feeling has become constant or frightening, it is worth telling a doctor or counsellor about — it is not only a spiritual state.
कां जी माझे जीवीं । आळस ठेविला गोसावीं ॥१॥ येवढा घात आणीक काय । चिंतनासी अंतराय ॥ध्रु.॥ देहआत्म वंदी । केला घात कुबुद्धी ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे मन । कळवळी वाटे सीण ॥३॥ — "Why, Master, have you placed this inertia in my very life? What greater ruin is there than this — a wall between me and remembering. Honouring the body as the self: that bad judgement did the damage. Tuka says: the mind — it aches. It feels only tiredness."
Short, and accusatory. Āḷas is sloth, inertia, the heaviness that will not lift — and he does not blame himself for it. He asks God why it was put there, as if it were a thing installed in him from outside, which is exactly how a numb person experiences numbness: not as something they are doing but as something that has been done. The last line does not resolve. Kaḷavaḷī — the mind aches with tenderness, and what it feels is śīṇ, weariness. He leaves it there. So do we.
What Tukaram gives numbness is something none of the other voices can: a report from inside a devotional life, by a man who never stopped practising. He did not go flat because he abandoned the Name. He went flat while saying it — bolilōṁ utkarṣa, I praised to the heights, and ras na ye chi, the juice simply did not come. Every tradition has a method, and most readers have been handed one — journal, breathe, pray, talk to someone — and have found, on some nights, that the method ran and the feeling did not. Tukaram is the saint of that night. He has the receipt.
And what he did not do is as telling. He did not conclude the practice was false, and he did not conclude he was. He wrote the flatness into the song — the flat of the flat — and kept singing, and in the other abhang he called the whole strange experience a wonder and said he was watching his own life as a witness. There is no resolution in any of the three verses above; the Gāthā has other abhangas where the juice comes back, and they are not quoted here, because he did not know that night that they were coming. What he knew was how to say exactly what was missing, to someone, out loud, without pretending it had arrived. That turns out to be most of what anyone can do, and he did it in four lines.
अंगा कांहीं रस न ये चि — no juice came into my body at all.
He did not stop singing — and he did not pretend it had.
I made my own mind the witness
For years after the famine he did not know what he was — trader, debtor, devotee. When the saints asked him how it all happened, he told his own story in twenty lines. The twelfth is the turn.
याति शूद्र वैश्य केला वेवसाव । आदि तो हा देव कुळपूज्य ॥१॥
नये बोलों परि पाळिलें वचन । केलियाचा प्रश्न तुम्हीं संतीं ॥ध्रु.॥
दुष्काळें आटिलें द्रव्यें नेला मान । स्त्री एकी अन्न अन्न करितां मेली ॥३॥
लज्जा वाटे जीवा त्रासलों या दुःखें । वेवसाय देख तुटी येतां ॥४॥
…
वचन मानिलें नाहीं सुहृदांचें । समूळ प्रपंचें वीट आला ॥११॥
सत्य असत्यासी मन केलें ग्वाही । मानियेलें नाहीं बहुमतां ॥१२॥
मानियेला स्वप्नीं गुरूचा उपदेश । धरिला विश्वास दृढ नामीं ॥१३॥
…
आतां आहे तैसा दिसतो विचार । पुढील प्रकार देव जाणे ॥१८॥
भक्ता नारायण नुपेक्षी सर्वथा । कृपावंत ऐसा कळों आलें ॥१९॥
तुका म्हणे माझें सर्व भांडवल । बोलविलें पांडुरंगें ॥२०॥
naye boloṁ pari pāḷileṁ vacan, keliyāchā praśna tumhīṁ saṁtīṁ
duṣkāḷeṁ āṭileṁ dravyeṁ nelā mān, strī ekī anna anna karitāṁ melī
lajjā vāṭe jīvā trāsaloṁ yā duḥkheṁ, vevasāy dekh tuṭī yetāṁ
vacan mānileṁ nāhīṁ suhṛdāṁcheṁ, samūḷ prapaṁcheṁ vīṭ ālā
satya asatyāsī man keleṁ gvāhī, māniyeleṁ nāhīṁ bahumatāṁ
māniyelā svapnīṁ gurūchā upadeś, dharilā viśvās dṛḍh nāmīṁ
ātāṁ āhe taisā disato vicār, puḍhīl prakār dev jāṇe
bhaktā nārāyaṇ nupekṣī sarvathā, kṛpāvaṁt aisā kaḷoṁ āleṁ
tukā mhaṇe mājheṁ sarva bhāṁḍaval, bolavileṁ pāṁḍuraṁgeṁ
"By caste a śūdra; by trade a merchant — and before all that, this God, worshipped in my family. I should not speak of it, but I keep my word: you saints asked how it came about. The famine ate the money and took my standing; one wife died crying food, food. Life was shame to me, worn out by that grief, watching the business fail… I did not heed the well-wishers; the whole household enterprise sickened me. For true and for false, I made my own mind the witness; I did not go by what the majority said. I accepted the guru's teaching, given in a dream, and held fast to the Name… Now the way of it looks as it looks; what comes next, God knows. Nārāyaṇ never abandons his devotee — that much of his kindness I have come to know. Tuka says: all my capital is this — Pandurang made me speak."
Tukaram's autobiographical abhang, in the Gāthā among the verses where the saints ask him to account for himself. It is 1328 in the mr.wikisource sequence (whose base edition is not named) and 767 at santsahitya.in, which numbers differently — so we cite by opening line. The full abhang has twenty charaṇas; we print ten and mark the gaps. The wikisource scan garbles a few words (सहुदाऩचें, वहएा, स्फूतिऩ); we print सुहृदांचें (of the well-wishers), the reading santsahitya.in also gives, and, in lines not shown, वह्या (notebooks) and स्फूर्ति. Spellings vary: वैश / वैश्य, तुह्मीं / तुम्हीं, तुका ह्मणे / तुका म्हणे. Not yet checked against the Government of Maharashtra Gāthā (Lad, 1950/55).
A note for anyone searching: the famous line satya asatyāsī man keleṁ gvāhī is not the opening of an abhang — it is the twelfth charaṇa of this one, and is often quoted loose. The sixteenth charaṇa (not shown) is the sinking of his notebooks and the thirteen-day vigil by the river, told in one line — the same event his terā divas abhang gives in full, in the Loneliness section above.
ऐका वचन हें संत । मी तों आगळा पतित । काय काजें प्रीत । करीतसां आदरें ॥१॥ माझें चित्त मज ग्वाही । सत्य तरलों मी नाहीं । एकांचिये वांहीं । एक देखीं मानिती ॥ध्रु.॥ — "Hear this, saints: I am a sinner beyond the rest — why do you love me with such respect? My own mind is my witness: truly, I have not crossed over. One person believes a thing because they saw another believe it."
The witness again — and this time it testifies against him. The saints have decided he is holy; his inner witness says not yet, and he trusts it over their praise exactly as he trusted it over the village's contempt. That is the point of the device. He is not claiming to be sure. He is claiming an inside witness that will not lie in either direction, including about himself. A witness that can say I don't know yet is worth more than a crowd that is certain — and the last line names the crowd's method exactly. They believe what they see each other believe.
बरें जालें देवा निघालें दिवाळें । बरी या दुष्काळें पीडा केली ॥१॥ अनुतापें तुझें राहिलें चिंतन । जाला हा वमन संवसार ॥ध्रु.॥ बरें जालें जगीं पावलों अपमान । बरें गेलें धन ढोरें गुरें ॥ — "It was good, God, that I went bankrupt. Good that this famine hurt me. In the burning of it, my mind stayed on you; the whole household business came up like vomit. Good that I was shamed in the world. Good that the money went, and the cattle."
Two abhangas later, the same facts and the opposite verdict. In the life-story they were shame; here each one is bareṁ jāleṁ — it was good. Nothing in the events changed. This is not offered as a promise that confusion turns into gratitude; it is a record that the judgment a person passes on their own life can reverse completely while the facts stay exactly where they were. Which means the verdict you are passing tonight is not the last one available.
निषेधाचा कांहीं पडिला आघात । तेणें मध्यें चित्त दुखविलें ॥१५॥ … आतां आहे तैसा दिसतो विचार । पुढील प्रकार देव जाणे ॥१८॥ — "Then a blow of prohibition fell, and in the middle of it the mind was wounded… Now the way of it looks as it looks. What comes next, God knows."
Asked to account for himself, he reaches the present — it looks the way it looks; what comes next, God knows — and does not pretend to know the plot. The very next line is not doubt but trust: भक्ता नारायण नुपेक्षी सर्वथा — Nārāyaṇ never abandons his devotee; that much he has come to know. Not knowing what comes next, and trusting who is there: he holds both in two lines. If you have been asked how this is all going to turn out, notice that he does not answer that question either.
Line twelve is where the whole abhang turns. Tukaram has just listed every external authority that had an opinion about him — the trade he was born to, the village that watched him fail, the well-wishers whose advice he would not take, the majority. And then: satya asatyāsī man keleṁ gvāhī. For true and for false, I made my mind the witness. Not the judge — the gvāhī, the one who is called to say what they saw. He did not decide, in that moment, what was true. He decided who gets to say. And the answer was not the majority, and not the well-wishers, and not the caste. It was a witness inside him that he agreed to listen to even when it said not yet.
The Buddha told the Kālāmas to test what they were told; Krishna, near the close of the Gita (18.63), told Arjuna to reflect and then choose — and in the next breath asked for surrender. Tukaram's move is his own, and narrower: not decide for yourself but appoint a witness, and let it speak against you too. It arrives from a failed shop rather than a god, which may be why his version is the most usable. He does not claim the witness made him sure. The next abhang has the witness testifying against him; the eighteenth line has it refusing to predict the future, and the nineteenth turns to trust. What the witness gave him was not an answer to what should I do. It was an end to the question whose opinion is this decision waiting for. For the person who has asked eleven people and feels worse after each one, that is the thread that moves.
मन केलें ग्वाही — I made my own mind the witness.
He did not get a verdict from the village. He appointed a witness inside — and let it say not yet.
These passages live inside the longer reads, beside eleven other voices —
the full long-read on Fear → · Anger → · Sadness → · Loneliness → · Tiredness → · Anxiety → · Overwhelm → · Numbness → · Confusion →
The one who laid the foundation, three and a half centuries earlier: Dnyaneshwar →
Read him in full — the abhangas in Marathi, with the meaning line by line: Read Tukaram → · the sources