Samartha Ramdas

An abridged retelling from Mahipati's Santavijaya, in Justin E. Abbott's English translation.

A boon from the Sun

In the town of Jamb, on the banks of the Godavari, lived a Brahmin named Suryaji-panta and his wife Ranubai. Every morning Suryaji bathed, offered red flowers and sandal paste to the Sun, and repeated the Sun's mantra twelve thousand times. After twelve years of this, the Sun came to him in his chariot and told him to ask for a blessing.

Suryaji said that seeing the Sun was enough for him. But his wife wished for a son, and a good one: she would rather stay childless than bear a son who brought shame on his parents. The Sun smiled and gave his word. There would be two sons, both devotees of God. The elder would carry a portion of the Sun himself and would manage the work of the world and the work of the spirit together. The younger would carry a portion of Maruti, the monkey-hero Hanuman, and would turn away from worldly things and set many people on the path of devotion.

The elder son was named Gangadhara. When the younger was born, Ranubai noticed a small tail at the end of his spine, and she whispered her wonder to her husband. Suryaji reminded her of the Sun's words and asked her to say nothing about it to anyone. They named the child Narayana.

The boy Narayana

Narayana never cried, and he was never still. At two he was walking and talking, always darting out of the house. When his mother warned him of hobgoblins outside, he asked her to show him one at once, so that he could kill it. When she warned him that thieves would steal his ornaments, he told her to take the ornaments off him, because he could not bear to stay indoors.

At his sacred-thread ceremony the priest told him to beg for his food, to learn the Vedas, and not to climb trees. Narayana said he would beg, and he would learn the Vedas, but he could not bear the thought of not climbing trees. The Brahmins laughed. He learned the Vedas without any effort.

He leaped over walls and across alleys three or four cubits wide. He climbed to the tops of trees the other boys said no one could climb. One day his mother could not find him anywhere in the house. She stepped into a dark room among the grain jars and her foot touched something warm. "Who is that? A cat or a dog?" "It is I," said Narayana. When she asked why he was hiding, he said he had been thinking about how people manage the affairs of the world and could not see how it was done. His mother laughed and took him in her arms, and said he must learn to bring money and grain into the house.

The next day he carried off a bag of grain from a farmer's threshing floor and ran home with it so fast that the farmer could not catch up. When the farmer lifted the bag from the verandah, another one lay under it, and under that another. More than fifty bags came out, and there was no end to them. Narayana told the farmer to take his bag and go before his father came home with a stick. When Suryaji heard the story, he told his wife that she had given birth to an avatar, and that their good fortune was to have him with them.

The elder son Gangadhara, meanwhile, carried on the household and his father's work. His mind rested on Rama as the sky rests above a river that reflects it without being touched by it. One evening, after the village business was done and the others had gone home, Rama appeared to him with Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman, and Gangadhara forgot that he had a body. Rama told Hanuman that from that day he should be called Rami Ramdas.

The wedding

Ranubai said that if the boy were tied to a household, he would stay at home. A family of good standing was found, the guests were invited, and a great procession of horses, chariots and music set out for the bride's town.

The ceremony reached the moment when the priests hold a curtain between the bride and groom and recite the verses. After each verse the priest called out one word, "Savadhana", which means "beware". Narayana asked the bride's brothers whom it was meant for. One of them answered, laughing, that it was a warning to be careful, because from now on the chains of household life would bind his feet.

The words struck something that was already smouldering in him. He thought: my own parents are binding me to a house, and no one can free me except Rama. He called on Rama to rescue him quickly. Then he slipped out from behind the curtain and ran, with the speed of the wind, and no one saw the way he went.

When the priests looked up, there was no bridegroom. Some cried "Catch him!" and horsemen rode through the fields and jungle in the dark. His mother wept that her breasts were full of milk and there was no child to take it. The townspeople talked in three ways. Some said the bride was lucky to have been spared. Some said the bridegroom's mother had come for a daughter-in-law and lost her son. Some said the boy had pushed away a full plate. In the morning the horsemen and police came back without him.

An elder of the town told his parents not to grieve. He reminded Ranubai of the tail she had shown her husband. The boy was Maruti's avatar, he said, and Rama would protect him. Remember the grain bags and the trees and the walls, he said; you will hear of his deeds hereafter. The parents went home comforted.

Maruti and Rama

Narayana ran into a dense jungle, and he was as happy as a deer that has slipped out of a snare. He wore a loincloth and his sacred thread, and he felt neither hunger nor thirst. Tigers, wolves and bears crossed his path, and he felt no fear.

He wanted to see God, and he called out to Maruti in praise. Maruti did not come. So he made a rope of twisted vines, tied it to his wrist, and hung himself from a tall tree, calling out that if Maruti did not come he would give up his life. Maruti appeared at a bound, shining like a statue of light, with crocodile-shaped earrings, and embraced him. Narayana composed his first verses then.

Maruti took him by the hand to Panchavati, where Rama was worshipped. It was the festival of Rama's birth, and a pilgrimage was in progress, with a kirtan sounding in the hall. In the middle of the night, when the crowd had gone, Maruti led him into the inner sanctuary. A form of light stood there, with bow and arrows, a crown, and the yellow robe. Rama spoke to Maruti, and Maruti said that he had come in a portion of himself as an avatar and had brought him to Rama's feet. Narayana heard the voices but could not see Rama. Maruti explained that no one sees Rama until a guru has placed his hand on his head, and asked Rama to give his favour. Rama placed his hand on Narayana's head and gave him the mantra of the divine names. Then Rama told Maruti that his name from now on was Ramdas, and that his followers would increase over the world. He took off his own ochre garment, the one he wore in the forest, and gave it to Ramdas.

The two bathed in the Godavari and walked to Takali. There Ramdas wept that he could not bear to be away from Rama, and they went back to Panchavati. Rama told him that whenever he contemplated him in love, he would meet him. He put Ramdas in Maruti's care.

Maruti stayed with him at Takali for some time. Maruti recited the story of Rama, which he had once composed as a drama in verse, and Ramdas listened and then composed it again in Marathi verse and sang it in kirtans. One day Maruti said he had to go back to Rameshvara, because Rama had put Bibhishana in his charge. Ramdas begged him to take him along. Maruti told him he was still the life of his life and would come at any moment he was remembered, and told him to go south and behave like one possessed.

At Takali, Ramdas made an image of Maruti with his own hands, and Maruti himself said, "Install me here." The Brahmins gathered and installed it, and a thousand were fed. That night Ramdas performed a kirtan, then left the town in the middle of the night. His disciple Uddhava looked everywhere and could not find him.

The forest years

Ramdas turned south, into thick forest. He ate wild fruit at noon and even the leaves of the bitter neem tree, having conquered his tongue. He wore only a waist-cord and loincloth, and neither heat nor cold troubled him. Tigers, wolves and bears kept him company and dropped their enmity to listen to him repeating the names of God. When he came to a town, boys threw stones at him and shouted that the madman had come.

At the junction of the Krishna and Venya rivers, at Mahuli, Maruti appeared again and told him to repeat the thirteen-syllable mantra of Rama thirty-five million times. Then Rama would appear, and Ramdas was to compose books in Marathi in keeping with the Bhagavata. Ramdas repeated the mantra day and night. He no longer felt hunger, thirst or sleep, and his body shone.

Indra, king of the gods, grew afraid. He thought that a devotee like this might ask Vishnu for his own seat in heaven. He sent Mohini, who had unsettled great sages before, and told her to bring Ramdas under her power. She dressed herself, spring went ahead of her to cover the forest with flowers, and the god of love, Kama, went with her. But when Kama saw Ramdas he remembered how Shiva had burned him to ashes. He sat still and did not enter the forest. Ramdas understood why spring had come so suddenly, and he went on with his contemplation. The gods who watched from their chariots showered flowers and went back, and Mohini went home ashamed.

Twelve years passed. Ramdas saw Maruti three times a day, but he did not see Rama. When the count reached thirty-five million, Maruti told him that the best of all means was to plead with God from a repentant heart. Ramdas composed eight verses of pleading and sang them alone in the forest. Rama appeared, as a mother runs to the cradle at the cry of her child. He was dark as a rain-cloud, with a crown that shone like a million suns, and Sita stood on his left.

Ramdas fell at their feet, and God and devotee held each other so long that Rama thought: if we become one, who will be left to call on me, and who will install my image, and who will sing my deeds? So he drew back and became two again, and passed his hand over Ramdas's face. Ramdas asked only that his heart never forget him. Rama told him to live near a town on food obtained by begging, and to give his mantra to anyone who came to him in earnest. Then he vanished.

The king and the leaves

Ramdas lived in the forest on the banks of the Krishna. Each morning he went into the village, called out "Victory to Rama", took a little from ten or eleven houses, and hurried back. In the forest he kneaded flour on a rock and baked cakes on leaves over coals. When he offered them, the story says, Rama himself sat and ate them with him.

He wrote verses on palasa leaves with pen and ink, and in the evening he threw them in the river and let them float away. One day King Shivaji came hunting in that forest. He had found no game by afternoon, and his attendants had scattered. Suddenly he saw tigers, wolves, bears, leopards, monkeys, dogs and hares all playing together without fear around a man who sat with his eyes closed. He thought: this is no ordinary man. He bowed from a distance, afraid to come closer for fear of the animals, and he did not want to shoot them for fear of angering the holy man. At sunset he went back to his camp. He could not sleep that night.

The next day he rode out alone. Again he could only bow from a distance, and he returned to the riverbank. There his secretary had drawn some palasa leaves from the water and was reading what was written on them. The king listened. There were verses and prose, hymns and eight-line stanzas, and he felt tears of love come. He had the leaves copied, and read them again and again. Day after day he went to the river, drew leaves from the stream, and had them copied. He lost his interest in hunting and in the cares of the kingdom.

People began to say that the king was bewitched. The ministers and Brahmin scholars came to him together. They said that whatever he wanted in those verses, he could find in Sanskrit, and that a king should honour a holy man with a gift rather than go in search of him. The king listened and said nothing. He rode out alone the next morning.

This time he came before Ramdas and looked at him closely. Suddenly he saw Maruti appear, with Ramdas worshipping him, and the light was so strong that the king had to close his eyes. When he opened them, only Ramdas was there. The king stood with his hands joined and tears running down his face. Ramdas called him near. The king said he was drowning in the ocean of worldly life and asked to be drawn out.

Ramdas answered that the king carried the burden of a kingdom, and that those who wished to be a guru's disciple would have to change their ways. He said that if people saw the king bowing to a man like him, they would laugh. The king replied that the whole kingdom belonged to his master and that he was ready to obey in every way. Ramdas told him to bathe and come back; it was Thursday, a good day. The king bathed in the Krishna in his clothes. He tore his one garment in two, one piece to dry himself and one to wear. He made the Vaishnava mark on his forehead by rubbing a pebble on a stone. He gathered fruit and flowers in leaves stitched together and carried water in a cup made of a large leaf.

Ramdas whispered the mantra in his ear. He told him to give up killing animals, to be gentle to all creatures, to receive holy men as a suppliant, to worship Vishnu on the eleventh day of each fortnight with a night of singing, and to worship Maruti every day. The king washed his guru's feet and drank the water. Then he said he did not mean to go back to his kingdom; he would stay and carry Ramdas's sandals. Ramdas named the kings of old who had ruled and reached God: Janaka, Ambarisha, Harishchandra, Nala. He told Shivaji to go back and perform his royal duties, and to come to see him at another time. The king looked back again and again as he went.

After that the king came every day, with ministers, merchants and musicians, and he washed Ramdas's feet and dressed him in robes and ornaments. Ramdas thought: this is turning into a hindrance. One morning he left his garments and ornaments on the ground and went up into a mountain forest. The king searched through the forest on horseback and on foot. He ate nothing and drank no water for three days, saying: let all I have go, but let me see my guru again. Ramdas heard him and appeared.

The madman of Mahuli

Ramdas went on to Mahuli, and there the people saw a young man, hardly twenty-five, beautiful to look at, who climbed trees by the river and leaped from branch to branch, grimacing at the boys and letting go of a branch as if to fall, then flying back up to the highest bough. They threw stones and dung at him, and he bore it happily. When someone said he might be a holy man, he picked up stones and chased the boys, so that no one would want to worship him. Mothers warned their children away. The women said that if his mother had borne thorn bushes, she would at least have got a strong fence.

He begged at eleven houses and stayed at none for more than a moment, then went into the forest and baked his cakes on leaves. When Shivaji came to see him, Ramdas gave him one of three leaf-cakes he had baked, and the king ate it on the spot and said it was sweeter than nectar. People said the king had lost his mind.

Ramdas also played with the boys, in the manner of a child, and sang verses as he played about the whirlpools of the river of illusion. One day, in a game of viti-dandu, the sharpened stick flew up and struck him on the forehead. He fell. The boys could not feel his breath. They were afraid of the police chief and of their parents, so they swore on their mothers and fathers that they would never speak of it, dug a hole in the sand, and buried him. Ramdas heard everything. He thought, "Let me watch the fun," and lay still, the way Hanuman once lay still when Lanka burned. Some travellers saw the boys burying something and decided it was none of their business.

For seven days Shivaji's men searched forests and villages and found no sign of Ramdas, and the king fasted all that time. Finally the travellers told the scouts what they had seen. The mayor of Mahuli called the town together and told them their boys had killed the king's guru. Someone suggested tying the body into a bundle, carrying it far off and burning it. They dug into the sand, and Ramdas gave a cry that deafened them. Some fainted. He leaped up and ran into the forest. "How could a man live seven days underground?" they said. The king came, and found him, and worshipped him, and Ramdas sent him back to Satara.

At Mahuli Ramdas met Jayarama Gosavi Vadgavkar, a devotee of Krishna to whom Krishna had shown himself. The two talked for days about the soul and about devotion. Ramdas said they should give a feast for a thousand Brahmins in the forest. The Brahmins of the town laughed, and asked who would pay for it. Ramdas said Jayarama would be the host. They said they would go as far as the forest to see. Ramdas went ahead and told Jayarama. Jayarama called on the eight siddhis, and when the Brahmins arrived they found a pavilion of trees decorated with flowers and fruits, seats in rows, and patterns drawn in coloured powders on the ground. There was no smoke from any kitchen. Jayarama sat alone in a thicket. Ramdas told them to bathe, and when they came back the dishes were being served, vegetables of every kind, ghee and sugar. All were satisfied. They said, "Blessed is the greatness of this saint."

Jayarama asked leave to go home. Ramdas said that where there is love, distance between bodies is not distance. Soon after, a barber came and asked to shave Ramdas's head, and then to stay with him day and night as a servant. His name was Dattu.

His parents

Ramdas travelled to Jamb with a company of followers, singing kirtans along the Godavari, and encamped outside the town. The town's officials came out to welcome him. The messengers told Ramdas's father, Suryaji, that he was not to come. The people looked at Ramdas and began to whisper that he had a mark on his forehead just like the son of Suryajipant who had run off from his wedding. The town astrologer asked what town he was from. Ramdas smiled and said, "My town is Panchavati." The astrologer said, "You are Suryajipant's son, and your name is Narayana."

The mayor ordered someone to call his father. Ramdas objected: one should not call one's guru or one's parents to come to oneself; one should go to them. He rose and walked quickly to his father's house, with the crowd following. He bowed to his father and embraced his brother Rami Ramdas, and then his mother came out. Ranubai held him against her heart and wept. She asked how he could have left her in the middle of his wedding and come back as a wandering mendicant. Ramdas, seeing her pain, composed verses to remove her doubts. His parents said that a jewel of devotees had been born into their family.

A feast was served in his old home, and he waited on the Brahmins himself. After three days he took his mother, father and brother to Satara. Shivaji came out to the garden on foot, bowed full length to Ramdas, and then to his parents. He had them carried through the city in procession, scattered gold coins at the palace gate, bathed and worshipped Ramdas, and ate from the plate Ramdas had used. After a month Ramdas asked the king to send his parents home. Shivaji gave them a horse and carriage, garments, and a copper-plate deed to the village of Jamb. He told Ranubai that Dhruva was born to Sumati, Prahlada to Kayadhu, and Hanuman to Anjani, and that she had given the world a guru. Then Ramdas took Dattu and went back to the forest, in his loincloth.

Temples and the fort

In the years that followed Ramdas set up temples for Rama and images of Maruti in many villages: at Chaphal, Masur, Shahapur, and elsewhere, eleven in all. The festival of Rama's birth and the festival of Maruti's birth were held in each, with kirtans through the night and the poor fed by day. Followers gathered, Akabai, Venubai, Kalyana and many others, and Ramdas composed the Dasabodha.

Shivaji sent messengers to the saints he loved and invited them to a gathering at the fort of Parali. He gave the fort to his guru, and the place was renamed Sajjangad. A great feast for a hundred thousand was held there. Ramdas made his home on the hilltop in a house the king built.

One day a merchant, a disciple of Ramdas, was caught at sea in a ship that was taking on water. He called out to Ramdas to come and save the ship, and promised him a tenth of the cargo if he did. Ramdas appeared, and the ship reached the shore. The merchant bowed at his feet, looked up, and Ramdas was gone. At Sajjangad that same moment the disciples saw that Ramdas's sleeveless jacket was dripping wet. He told them a ship was sinking, a pious passenger had made a vow, and he had gone and come back. The next day the merchant arrived with ten thousand rupees. Ramdas called the Brahmins and gave all of it away, saying he needed nothing but the name of Rama.

Another time a Muslim army besieged Sajjangad and fired cannon from the neighbouring hill. Ramdas contemplated Maruti, and an army of monkeys appeared on the fort and threw huge rocks onto the attackers. The general sent word to Aurangzeb, who said that no harm was to come to the holy man, and the army withdrew.

The end

Ramdas took Shivaji aside and told him that his life was near its end and he should keep his mind on Rama. The king said he had already given Rama his body, mind and wealth. He died on the day his guru had named. His son Sambhaji came to Sajjangad in tears. Ramdas told him that even the greatest avatars had gone from the world.

Some days after, Ramdas called his disciples together and told them that Gangadhara, the grandson of his elder brother, who lived at Jamb, was to be installed as head of the order. He had written a letter to Gangadhara and put it in his copy of the Dasabodha. The disciples came from all along the Krishna valley and sat around him. He said that they should live by begging, and should not perform rites for payment. They should keep the festivals of Rama and Maruti, welcome Vaishnavas to the math, read the Dasabodha, and worship Rama.

At that moment a disciple sent an image of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana from the Karnataka country. Ramdas was pleased and said to leave it in its box for the present. Ramdas told his secretary Kalyana that he did not want a tomb. The disciples pleaded that at least his sandals should be installed. Dattu bowed again and again until Ramdas gave way and said they might build a stone cellar, build Rama's temple over it, and install the image of Rama there. He told them the day: the ninth day of the dark fortnight of Magha, at noon.

Word spread, and people came to Sajjangad. Feasts were given for eight days and kirtans were sung through each night. On the day, Ramdas bathed, put the twelve marks of Vishnu on his forehead and a garland of tulsi around his neck, and sat in the lotus posture. He remembered Rama, and Rama appeared before him, dark in colour, and embraced him. Ramdas left his body. The gods watching from their chariots rained flowers, and the disciples and Sambhaji shouted "Victory to Rama." The text gives the year as 1681.

After the cremation, on the third day, the disciples found in the ashes a stone slab with footprints, and the thirteen letters of Rama's name. They wept, and from beneath the slab a voice told Kalyana to take up pen and ink, and spoke a verse for him to write down: that the body was gone but he now had the form of the universe, that they should read his book and live without grief, and that Ramdas, forever one with the divine, said: think of Rama without ceasing. The slab was installed where it lay.

Gangadhara was brought to Sajjangad in a palanquin with Sambhaji walking before it. The temple of Rama was built over the tomb, and the festivals went on as Ramdas had set them. Sambhaji offered grants of land for the eleven Maruti temples, which Gangadhara accepted so that the work could continue.