Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Between 1690 and 1720 Śridhar narrated in simple Marathi verse nearly all the basic, perennial stories of the Indian tradition: the epics in Rāmavijaya and Pāṇḍava-pratāpa, the essential puranic tales in Harivijaya and Śivalīlāmṛta. As a consequence he is still read very widely by the devout
1 ‘… The Brahman may prefer Moropunt, the Kunbi Tukaram, but each will put Shridhur next to him, and each will prefer Shridhur to the poet preferred by the other’. Acworth, H. A., Ballads of the Marathas London, 1894, intr., xxvii.Google Scholar
2 The Śivalīlāmrta has been republished at least eight times since 1900, always in pothi form.
3 Joshi, C. N., Śridhara caritra āṇi kāvyavivecana, Hyderabad, 1951.Google Scholar
4 Joshi, , op. cit., 135–6, 596.Google Scholar
5 Deleury, G. A., The cult of Yithobu Poona, 1960.Google Scholar
6 cf. Deleury, op. cit., 73–109; Karve, I., ‘On the road’, Journal of Asian Stttdies, XXII, I, 1962, 13–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Tukārām, MacNicol called, the greatest of the bhakti poets, a ‘mens naturaliter Christiana’—Indian tfieism London, 1915, 279.Google Scholar
8 Vidyarthi, L. P., The sacred complex in Hindu Gaya London, 1961, 16–17. Vidyarthi found that out of 381 named ‘sacred centres’ the majority have been forgotten, including several major ones in the period since 1812.Google Scholar
9 Mandalik, V. N. (ed.), Padmapurāna(Ā;nandāśrama Sanskrit Series), 4 vols., Poona, 1893–1894.Google Scholar
10 Wilson, H. H., ‘Essays on the purānasZ, II. Padma purāna’, JRAS Ser. I, V, 1839, 280–313.Google Scholar
11 Dhārūrkar, Vitthala Dājī, Pandhari-māhātmya Pandharpur, 1938 (first edition, Bombay, 1903).Google Scholar
12 The story is given in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency XX (Sholapur), Bombay, 1884, 466.Google Scholar
13 Mallikārjuna is firmly brought into the Vaisnavite fold by being a rebirth of Hari as the son of a king, Śrīcandra.
14 cf. Deleury, op. cit., 144.
15 Name given to the curve of the Bhima on which Pandharpur lies, and nowadays, by extension, to the whole middle portion of the Bhima.
16 Vidyarthi, , op. cit., 114–17, translating Vāyu-purāna, cv-cvi. According to this Gayā's body covered five krośa with his head at the sacred centre of the kṢetra. Śrīdhar elongates him considerably, leaving his head at Kāśi, his waist at Pandharpur, and his feet at the Gomantācala, Pā.-mā., viii. 22–3, 34–6.Google Scholar
17 Bombay Gazetteer XX, 460, 466.Google Scholar
18 Nāmadevācā gāthā ed. V. N. Joga, Poona, 1925; Rāma-māhātmya, 94.4, p. 178.
19 J. E. Abbot, Bahīṇā Bāī (The Poet Saints of Maharashtra, 5), Poona, 1929, 148–56. Śridhar names Pundalik's parents Janhu and Satyakī, gives him a wife, and adds the whole story of the conversion. This is now the authorized version in the Vārkarī pantha, except for the wife. Cf. S. V. Dandekar, Vārakarī panthācā itihāsa rev. ed., Poona, 1957, 29.
20 Khare, G. H., Śri-Vitthala āṇi Panḍharapūra Poona, Bhārata Itihāsa Saṃśodhaka Manḍala, 1938, II, 6.Google Scholar
21 This is the earliest printed edition available. Joshi, op. cit., 621, refers to a Bombay edition by Bāburāv Śetye of 1863, but I have not been able to see this. A11 the subsequent editions follow the Ratnagiri edition closely.
22 Dated Śaka 1728 (1806). J. F. Blumhardt and S. G. Kanhere, Catalogue of the Marathi manuscripts in the India Office Library 1950, 31.
23 Joshi, op. cit., 664–5. Joshi, 621, mentions a manuscript of this long version dated Śaka 1750, but his description of the work is based on the printed edition.
24 Borabay Gazetteer xx, 441.Google Scholar
25 See above, III A[3].
26 Khare, I, 17.