your bridge home
Saints and Poets
A Sanskrit scholar of impeccable training spent his evenings writing songs in the voice of a washerwoman, a beggar and a snake charmer.
He had everything the learned world could hand a man.
Eknath was born at Paithan, around 1533. Into a Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin family with a saint already in it.
His great-grandfather Bhanudas was a revered Varkari figure. His parents, Suryanarayan and Rukminibai, died when he was small, and his grandfather Chakrapani raised him.
He was trained properly, in Sanskrit, in the full apparatus. His teacher was Janardan Swami, who was in the service of the fort at Devgiri.
A working administrator, as well as a spiritual master. Which may explain something about the practicality of the student.
So here is a man with the language, the lineage, the training and the standing.
Enough to spend a life producing the kind of Sanskrit commentary other scholars would read, and argue with, for centuries.
He did some of that. And then he spent most of his working life doing something else.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.