Bhakti und Bhakta, religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Heilsbegriff und zur religiosen Umwelt des Shri Sant Ekanath.

• Author: Gaeffke, Peter
• Position: Review

By HUGH VAN SKYHAWK. Beitrage zur Sudasienforschung, 132. Wiesbaden: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1990. Pp. xvi + 382. DM 72 (paper).

Under this title the reader will find a running subcommentary to many passages of a Marathi commentary on the Bhagavatapurana called the Sri Ekanathi Bhagavata. This is the most important work of the Marathi saint and scholar Ekanatha (in the following, Eknath, d. c. 1575), one of the triad of principal Marathi bhaktas. The others are Jnanesvara and Tukaram. Since no published translation of this work exists (a handwritten translation/paraphrasis is kept in the Jayakar Library of the Poona University), the great number of translated passages in Skyhawk's book are a welcome addition to the increasing number of medieval Indian texts available in modern Western languages to interested readers.

Most of the translations come from the second adhyayan of the Bhagavata commentary, covering the ovis 1 to 800. Against this, the rest of the text is sparingly translated: 1.239-310, on pp. 127-41; 3.32-38, on pp. 211f.; 9.250-335, on pp. 295-93; 12.494-579, on pp. 295-307; and 31.495-521, on pp. 326-29. Despite this major work of translation, this book does not aim to be a digest of Eknath's work, but its importance is rather found in the commentary and the footnotes to each of the mentioned passages, by which the author intends to build up a comprehensive picture of the Varkari bhakti of Eknath.

Skyhawk's book follows the layout of Eknath's text: 1. honored names; 2. the Harikatha; 3. the avatara idea; 4 and 5. what is bhakti, what is a bhakta; 6. the value of the human body; 7. the service to the guru; 8. the guru-parampara. This adherence to indigenous scholarship is, however, superseded in the actual points made, which are found only when one reads through the whole commentary and the footnotes.

It would be a major effort to bring together all the thoughts and insights worked into this commentary. Here it must suffice to extract two major issues to which the author devotes longer pieces. They are the Muslim influences on Eknath and Skyhawk's debate with Paul Hacker.

The Muslim question is especially important because many Muslim authors simply assume that bhakti came into being as a gift of Sufism. On the other hand, Hindu writers and with them most Western Indologists deal with bhakti as if there were no Muslims in India. This latter attitude derives from the fact that Indian medieval religious literature ignored the...