- Lived:
- 1275–1296 by tradition — born at Āpegāv on the Godāvarī; the life happened at Alandi and Nevāsā in Maharashtra, with Pandharpur as its pole star
- Field:
- philosophy and poetry — the Varkari bhakti tradition; the founding classic of Marathi literature
- The Big Idea:
- At about sixteen, he poured the Bhagavad Gītā's 700 Sanskrit verses into some 9,000 verses of spoken Marathi — not translating scripture but throwing it open, on the stated principle that the deepest knowledge belongs in the language people actually live in.
- In their words:
- "My Marathi is a language to delight in — yet I will match its words against nectar itself, and win the wager." (Jñāneśvarī, chapter 6; the rendering is ours)
- If you remember one thing:
- A boy whose own priesthood had cast him out gave scripture to everyone the priesthood excluded — in their own tongue, at sixteen — then closed a stone chamber over himself at twenty-one; and every summer for seven centuries, a river of pilgrims has walked his sandals to Pandharpur singing his name.