Bahinabai
| Bahinabai | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1628 Devghar or Devgaon near Ellora, Maharashtra, India |
| Died | 1700 (aged 72) Sirur, Maharashtra, India |
| Honors | Sant in Marathi, meaning "Saint" |
Bahinabai (1628–1700 AD) or Bahina or Bahini is a Varkari female-saint from Maharashtra, India. She is considered as a disciple of another Varkari poet-saint Tukaram. Having been born in a brahmin family, Bahinabai was married to a widower at a young age and spent most of her childhood wandering around Maharashtra along with her family. She describes, in her autobiography Atmamanivedana, her spiritual experiences with a calf and visions of the Varkari's patron deity Vithoba and Tukaram. She reports being subjected to verbal and physical abuse by her husband, who despised her spiritual inclination but who finally accepted her chosen path of devotion (bhakti). Unlike most female-saints who never married or renounced their married life for God, Bahinabai remained married her entire life.
Bahinabai's abhanga compositions, written in Marathi, focus on her troubled marital life and the regret being born a woman. Bahinabai was always torn between her duties to her husband and her devotion to Vithoba. Her poetry mirrors her compromise between her devotion to her husband and God.
Bahinabai has written an autobiographical work called Atmamanivedana or Bahinibai Gatha, where she describes not only her current birth but also twelve previous births. The first 78 verses of the total 473 trace her current life.
As per the account, she was born in Deogaon(Rangari) or Devgaon(R) near Elloraor Verul in northern Maharashtra, where she spent her childhood. Her parents, Aaudev Kulkarni and Janaki were brahmins, the Hindu priest class, and considered their first child Bahinabai as a harbinger of good fortune. Bahinabai started reciting the names of God from an early age, while playing with her mates.
Bahinabai was married at the age of three with a thirty-year-old widower called Gangadhar Pathak, who she describes as a scholar and "an excellent jewel of a man", but stayed with parents until she reached puberty as per the custom. When Bahinabai was about nine years old, she with her parents and husband, had to leave Devghar due to a family dispute. They wandered with pilgrims along the banks of river Godavari and begged for grain, as customarily wandering holy men do. They visited Pandharpur, the city which hosts the chief temple of Vithoba, in this period. By the age of eleven, she with her family finally settled in Kolhapur. She was "subjected to the demands of married life" at this age, but she was not into it.
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