- Lived:
- birth year unknown — tradition gives him the village of Mehuṇā (Mehuna Raja, Buldhana district) in Vidarbha; the life that matters happened at Mangalvedha and at Pandharpur on the Bhīmā, on the outside of a temple door; died, by the tradition's count, in 1338, under a collapsing wall he had been conscripted to build
- Field:
- Bhakti poetry in Marathi — the abhaṅga singers of the Varkari tradition of Viṭṭhal; by caste a Mahar, which is the whole subject of his life and work
- The Big Idea:
- Pollution can touch only the body; it cannot reach the soul. He made that argument nightly, in song, from the temple step he was never once allowed to cross — and turned the doorstep itself into a stage.
- In their words:
- "The cane is crooked, but its juice is not crooked. Why be fooled by the outer shape? Chokhā is crooked, but his devotion is not." (from an abhaṅga bearing his signature; our rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- The temple never let him in while he lived. When the wall fell on him, tradition says his bones went on murmuring the god's name — so they were gathered and buried at the foot of the temple steps, where they lie today: every pilgrim who enters Pandharpur's shrine walks over Chokhāmelā first.