Bahinabai

Bahinabai

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Category: Religion

Bahinabai Profile

  • Name:
  • Bahinabai
  • Spouse:
  • Gangadhar Pathak

Bahinabai Biography

Bahinabai was a Varkari female-saint from Maharashtra. She is also known by the names Bahina and Bahini. She was disciple of another Varkari poet-saint Tukaram. She was born in 1628 in Devghar, Ellora, Maharashtra. Through her works Bahina sometimes curses his fate of being born as a woman and often asks her God Vithoba to help her to balance her twin roles of a wife as well as a devotee of God. She composed Pundalika-Mahatmya, which details the legend of Vithoba and devotee Pundalik. Through her autobiography Atmamanivedana (or Bahinibai Gatha), she has written her spiritual experiences. She even keeps an account of her previous 12 births in this autobiography. The first 78 verses of the total 473 belong to her current birth as Bahinabai.

 

Bahinabai was born in a Brahmin family. She got married to a widower named Gangadhar Pathak at a younger age. She was only 3 then and her husband was 39. She was not happy with the family life and subjected to verbal and physical abuse by her husband. Through her works, she has expressed her agonies of married life and for being born as a woman in male dominated society. She became more attached to the path of devotion and bhakti during this period and has composed many works in due time. Bahinabai's abhanga compositions, written in Marathi, told about her troubled marital life and the regret being born a woman. She always suffered in between the broken married life and her devotion to Vithoba.

 

Till puberty, she stayed with her parents. But due to family disputes, she along with her husband had to leave Devghar and they finally settled in Kolhapur. Bahinabai was exposed to Hari-Kirtana songs and tales from the scripture Bhagavata Purana at Kolhapur. Bahinabai's husband was gifted a cow, who soon gave birth to a calf. Through the autobiography work, Bahinabai reports a spiritual encounter with the calf. Later she moved towards bhakti and a few blamed her as mad. She even faced criticism from her husband for making low caste Tukaram, her guru.

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Updated: February 18, 2014

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