Bahinabai (1628 – 1700) was a disciple of Sant Tukaram and for various reasons she is very significant. A Brahmin by birth, she wrote her whole lifestory by herself in auto-biographical verses. In many of her verses she deals with the various difficulties she faced as a woman seeker and her mental agonies. Bahinabai’s greatest significance however is the reconciliation she achieved between duty and devotion, between marriage and her love for God. This is very rare among the medieval women saints who generally rejected their samsar and husbands in their quest for God. Bahinabai’s marriage was by no means happy, there were conflicts and she was even a victim of domestic violence. But by God’s grace she was able to harmonise her marriage and her devotion to Vitthala.
She was born in 1628 in Deogaon, near Verul (the present day Ellora), a beautiful, sacred tirtha. Her father was the Kulkarni, the scribe, there. Her parents were childless for long and Bahina was their cherished first-born after a lot of austerities. When she was just five years old her parents married her to a vedic priest, a learned but ill-tempered scholar who was thirty years old and a widower.
Owing to a family-feud they had to leave Deogaon. Taking their son-in-law along, they walked as mendicant brahmins and visited many holy places. On their way they came to Pandharpur, where the little Bahina was deeply impressed by the atmosphere of bhakti and heard for the first time verses of Tukaram and other sants. Eventually they settled down in Kolhapur.
A turning-point in Bahina’s life came when her parents were gifted a cow with a calf in alms. Aged ten then, she describes the deep emotional bond that developed between her and the calf. The calf would eat only from Bahina’s hand, follow her around everywhere and at night they would even sleep together. She says: “If the calf was out of sight, I felt troubled like a fish out of water!”
At this time Jayaram Swami, well-known for his kirtans and harikatha came to Kolhapur. Bahina and her parents attended the kirtan accompanied by their calf. When people removed the calf due to lack of space, both Bahina and the calf started crying for each other so inconsolably that it drew the attention of Jayaram Swami, who blessed Bahina and caressed her head. Such a happy event however ended in disaster! When her husband came to know of this he was angered by the attention Jayaram Swami gave his wife. He punished Bahina by tying her up and beating her mercilessly. Nobody dared to interfere, but the cow and her calf were very distressed and stopped eating altogether; a few days later the calf died. Bahina lay unconscious for three days and wished to die as well. In this state, however, she had the vision of Vitthala and Tukaram as one. Sant Tukaram blessed her and gave her the mantra ‘Ram Krishna Hari’. With all her heart she accepted him as her Guru even without having seen him in physical form. Bahina was suddenly a totally changed person. She sat all the time meditating and her heart was overflowing with Tukoba!
Now people started venerating her and flocked for her darshan which again didn’t go down well with her husband, an orthodox vaidik. His ego was hurt and he was jealous of the attention Bahina received. He hated also the idea that she as a Brahmin had accepted a lower caste as her guru; and so he threatened to leave her. At that time Bahina was three months pregnant, and though anguished, she reconsidered her position in society and decided to hold her husband as her God and Guru. Divine intervention came – Bahina’s husband became very sick overnight. He was bedridden for a whole month, fearing imminent death. Bahina nursed him patiently. When he repented and promised Bahina to bring her to Dehu, the hometown of Sant Tukaram, he recovered. What bliss for Bahina to meet her Guru in person and to experience all the bhajan and harikathas there! She describes how one day the inspiration to write verses came upon her like “the tide of the ocean”, like “the words of God stamped in her heart!”
For many years they lived in Dehu, and Bahinabai gave birth to her daughter Kashibai and later to her son Vithoba. After Sant Tukaram’s physical disappearance in 1650, the family shifted to Shirur where she died at the age of 72 in 1700. On her deathbed, she composed a very unique set of abhangs, where she describes her twelve previous births to her son Vithoba. She says that during all these births she was a spiritual seeker and asserts that the present birth would be her last. (Bhagavad Gita 7.19)
Bahinabai has written about 728 abhangs and she signs them in the last line as ‘Bahina mhane’. She has a few songs on Vitthala and Pandharpur, where she discusses philosophy and morals, right conduct and Guru, seva to the husband etc. One very famous abhang however stands out and is repeated again and again. In this abhang she compares the Varkari Sampraday to a temple: Santa Kripajhali, imarata phala ali, “The Sants gave their blessing and the building rose up! Jnanadeva laid the foundation and erected the temple. His disciple Namdev built the walls by his widespread kirtan. Ekanath erected the pillar by writing his Ekanathi Bhagavath, and Tukaram became the pinnacle!”