The Eternal Wisdom of Dnyaneshwari

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Seven centuries ago Saint Dnyaneshwar wrote a commentary on Gita called Bhavarthadeepika, now popularly known as Dnyaneshwari after its author. He wrote it on the instructions of his Guru Nivruttinath who wanted to bring to the common man the Vedanta philosophy of Upanishads, hitherto available to only Sanskrit-knowing pundits. Since then Dnyaneshwari has been a timeless spiritual guide providing solace to the rustic folk as well as the educated elite. It is considered by many as one of the most important guides for spiritual aspirants seeking Self-Realization and moksha, offering them a choice of four spiritual paths depending upon their individual makeup.

Dnyaneshwar Maharaj naturally composed this work in contemporary Marathi in the traditional ovi style verse. To this day, melodious singing of these verses can be heard in Indian villages.

Dnyaneshwar Maharaj, taking into account that the reader would most probably be a rustic farmer or a villager, has used numerous similes and examples from nature and day-to-day life to explain the Gita shlokas. In this translation, meant for today's well-educated reader, all superfluous similes and examples have been omitted to ensure a smooth flow of philosophical thought without digression. In addition, while maintaining the original order of the numbered verses the text has been paragraphed for a group of consecutive verses dealing with the topic under discussion providing headings and sub-headings to the paragraphs thus making the text easily tractable, permitting a convenient back-reference for a given topic.

Dnyaneshwari is not a book just to be read and kept aside. It is a guide, loaded with eternal wisdom, to be read over and over again - and each reading brings out an entirely fresh take on life.

It is more than seven centuries ago that Dnyaneshwar Maharaj wrote Bhavarthadeepika the commentary on Bhagvad-Gita on the instructions of his Guru and elder brother Nivruttinath (older only by two years) at the age of nineteen (though some say fifteen) years of age, but it is now better known as Dnyaneshwari after the author. It is written in ovi style verse traditional for Marathi religious literature.

Nivruttinath wanted this commentary to bring the philosophy of Bhagvad-Gita to common man, even a rustic. In those times, not only Vedic literature but most of the religious philosophical literature was in Sanskrit which only learned Brahmins knew and therefore outside the reach of common man. Most of such literature even otherwise was inaccessible to non-Brahmins leave alone a rustic farmer as the following lines from the eighteenth Chapter of Dnyaneshwarı show:

The Vedas are full of Knowledge but there is none more miserly because they speak only with the first three castes. Others like women, shudras etc., who suffer tortures from this world, are not allowed under their shelter. I feel that in order to remove these earlier mentioned faults and with the intention of giving benefit to all, the Vedas have reappeared in the form of the Gita.