The Beginnings of Marāṭhi Literature

Extract

It is usually taken for granted that Marāṭhī literature begins with Mukund Rāj, Jñāneśvar and Nāmdev. These are likely to continue to hold their position as the real inaugurators of the intellectual awakening in Mahārāshṭrā which broke away from Sanscrit and made use of the vernaculars as the literary medium. The recent research which has revealed the fact that these outstanding personalities were not alone in this new departure, has yet to be fully investigated, and the value of the earlier literature which has emerged has to be determined. That the Mānbhāū sect with which this newly discovered literature is associated had a very long and curious history has been known for a good many years, and Sir Eamkrishna Bhandarkar and others had become interested in it, but it is to the late Mr. Vinayak Lakshman Bhave that we owe the discovery that this sect were the guardians from the twelfth century at least of what he calls “an unknown chamber in the palace of Marāṭhī literature”. Of the 500 hitherto unknown authors whose names, he tells us, he has catalogued, and whose works number five or six thousand it is not likely that many will take high literary rank. But to the followers of the Mānbhāū sect who wrote or translated these Gitās and Bhāgavatas so long ago, and who carried the Marāṭhī tongue and their books in old Marāṭhī to Peshawar and beyond, so that to-day in these far-off Maṭhs one can talk to their inmates in that language—to them Mahārāshṭrā owes a real debt. The members of this remarkable sect did more, it would appear, than anyone has hitherto dreamed of to shape the language for literary expression and to make it the channel to its followers of the ancient Sanscrit lore.