18th Century Literature

<p>Answer: (b) Varkari. Tukaram (c. 1608–1650) is the great sant-poet of the Varkari tradition — the varkaris, pilgrims who walk to Pandharpur, the town of Vitthal (Vitthoba/Panduranga), a form of Vishnu shown standing with hands on hips. Born in Dehu to grain merchants, famine and grief turned him from the market to the kirtan. He stands in the sant line of Dnyaneshwar, Namdev and Eknath: Marathi poet-saints who rejected caste pride and taught that God is reached by devotion, not ritual privilege.</p>

<p>Answer: (c) Vallabhacharya. Surdas, the blind poet of Braj and singer of Krishna's childhood, is traditionally the disciple of Vallabhacharya and the crown of the Ashtachhap — the "eight seals," the eight poets of Vallabha's Pushtimarga (the path of grace). His great work is the Sursagar, an ocean of songs in Brajbhasha. Where Tukaram flees the household as fever, Surdas finds God inside the household — courtyard, butter-pot, mother's lap — in sagun bhakti.</p>

<p>Answer: (b) abhang. The abhang is Tukaram's verse-form — a short Marathi devotional lyric meant to be sung, a personal cry that still belongs to a pilgrimage people. The set text is K. B. Marathe's The Poems of Tukarama (1991); only Section 1, "Autobiography," subsection "Thoughts about the World," poems 1–12, is on the paper. Later subsections are not set, so answers must not wander beyond poem 12.</p>

<p>Answer: (b) bandha (bondage). Verse 5 draws the consequence: the godlike nature is for liberation (moksha); the demonic for bondage (bandha). Then Krishna consoles the trembling warrior: "Grieve not" (ma shuchah) — you are born with the godlike qualities, Arjuna. The chapter's stakes are liberation and bondage — the only stakes the Gita recognises — and the verse ends in consolation, not condemnation.</p>

<p>Answer: (b) curds. In Usha Nilsson's Surdas (Sahitya Akademi, 1969) — the set text — the accused food is curds, not butter; follow the set rendering in the exam. Little Krishna argues like a small lawyer: Yashoda sent him early to the forest, he wandered for hours, the cowherds smeared his face — and his small arms cannot reach a high-hung pot. Yashoda throws down the stick, picks him up, and hugs him; Surdas seals it: Jasumati's joy makes Shiva and Brahma crazy with envy.</p>

<p>Answer: Autobiography. The set text is K. B. Marathe's The Poems of Tukarama (Motilal Banarsidass, 1991). Its Section 1 is labelled "Autobiography," and the first subsection, "Thoughts about the World," poems 1–12, is the whole Tukaram on this paper. The voice is fiercely autobiographical — I throughout — which is why Marathe files them so. Name Marathe and the subsection in the exam; do not wander beyond poem 12.</p>

<p>Answer: bee. In pad 22 a woman of Braj speaks to Krishna as a black bee that wants to taste her. Behind the pad stands the Bhramaragita of the Bhagavata Purana — when Uddhava brings Krishna's message to Braj, the gopis address a passing dark bee as the dark messenger, and through it, Krishna himself. She is puzzled and hurt: she is not the golden jasmine (suman) he left her for; his absence is a mountain she cannot cross.</p>

<p>Answer: 334–335. The set text for Gita Chapter XVI, verses 1–5, is S. Radhakrishnan's English translation (George Allen &amp; Unwin Ltd, London), pp. 334–335. Only verses 1–5 are set — the chapter's later, longer portrait of the asura is not on the paper. Radhakrishnan, philosopher as well as translator, reads the two sampads as psychological and ethical types present in every person, not fixed destinies.</p>

<p>Answer: Sursagar. Surdas's great work is the Sursagar — literally an "ocean of songs" — composed in Brajbhasha. Its ruling mood is vatsalya rasa: parental affection raised to worship, where the devotee mothers God — Yashoda, Nanda, the cowherd friends, the high-hung pot. Only three pads are set on this paper: "Maiya mori" (1), "maiya mohe" (2), "kat tu suman" (22) in Nilsson's numbering.</p>

<p>Answer: "Grieve not." After sorting the godlike (for moksha) from the demonic (for bandha), Krishna turns to the warrior trembling before battle: "Grieve not" (ma shuchah) — you are born with the godlike qualities, Arjuna. He is answered not with tactics but with anthropology: know what you are made of, and the fear will know its place. The chapter ends in consolation, not condemnation — the list is a diagnosis, and a diagnosis is the first step of a cure.</p>

<p>Poems 1–6 are the unit's first room: the world as fever and snare, the saints as school, the Name as the only property. Poem 1 opens with the master-gesture — do not let go of my hand — humility and surrender: Narayana's feet are the solid gain. Poem 2 is haste: grain taken out by the hand sprouts sooner than grain left in the bag; use the time now. Poem 3 keeps the crowd far, like the old forest sages. Poem 4 asks whom God loves — not the learned but whoever knows the nine forms of worship (navadha bhakti): bhakti over scholarship. Poem 5 is the fever-poem, calling "Mother Panduranga" to run, since He is the Lord of the helpless. Poem 6 makes the singer a stranger at the crossroads who has cast off wealth, family, mother, desire. The world is not reformed here; it is left, for the feet of Vitthal.</p>

<p>This is the opening of Surdas's "Maiya mori" (1) — the butter-thief's defence (in Nilsson's set rendering, curds). Little Krishna, accused, argues like a small lawyer: you sent him early to the forest after the cows; he wandered for hours and came home in the evening; the other cowherds smeared his face. And the clincher — look at these arms: such small arms cannot reach a pot hung so high. The defence is comic and exact, and it works: Yashoda throws down the stick, picks him up, and hugs him. Surdas seals the pad: Jasumati's joy makes Shiva and Brahma crazy with envy. The theology sits inside the comedy — the Lord is a thief who must still be believed innocent, and the mother's tenderness is itself the worship of vatsalya rasa.</p>

<p>Poem 7 is a gallery of hypocrites — the finest observation in the set. The world is full of parts, like actors on a stage: a heron stands as if in meditation — to catch fish; a hypocrite wears the garland and the brow-mark and hides guile beneath them; an angler offers a morsel — with a hook inside; a butcher is kind to beasts — with a knife behind the kindness. Tuka's verdict is disarming: he is a simple man in that world, and Panduranga is merciful. The pictures are not decoration; they show how the world looks to a devotee who will not trust appearances. For Tukaram, maya is not metaphysics — it is social fraud, and the answer to it is not argument but surrender to Vitthal.</p>

<p>Verse 4 of Gita Chapter XVI names the demonic endowment (asuri sampad) in six hard words: ostentation (dambha — religious show, piety performed for applause), arrogance (darpa — the swagger of power), self-conceit (atimana — thinking too much of oneself), anger (krodha), harshness (parushya — roughness of speech and act), and ignorance (ajnana — spiritual blindness). The demonic here has no horns: it is pride dressed as piety and cruelty dressed as strength.</p><p>Set beside Tukaram's poem 7 — the heron in meditation, the garlanded hypocrite, the angler's hook — verse 4 reads like the Gita's own gallery of the same fraud: show without substance. Radhakrishnan treats these six as ethical types present in every person, not demons elsewhere; the seeker must starve them while cultivating the twenty-six godlike qualities. That is why verse 5 can follow with consolation rather than doom.</p>

<p>In pad 2, big brother Daau (Balarama) teases Krishna mercilessly: he says Krishna was bought, not born of Jasumati; he asks who the father and mother really are; why is Krishna so dark when Nanda and Yashoda are fair? The cowherds snap their fingers and clap; Balbir coaches the mockery. And the sting in the tail: you only punish me, Mother — you never chastise him. Jasumati, says Surdas, enjoys Mohan's anger even as she looks at him — the mother's delight inside the complaint. Then she answers, and the pad turns: Kanha, your brother talks nonsense; he has been a crook from birth. And the oath that closes it — "O Shyam of Surdas, I swear by all the cattle: I am your mother and you my son." The household's wealth becomes the seal of love: sagun love, not a riddle.</p>

<p>Vatsalya rasa is parental affection raised to worship: the devotee does not argue with God or flee the world for Him — the devotee mothers Him. It shapes all three set pads. In "Maiya mori" (1), the devotee is the mother holding the child-God: Yashoda's tenderness, throwing down the stick to hug the "thief," is itself the worship. In "maiya mohe" (2), vatsalya deepens into the mother's oath — Jasumati swears by the cattle that Krishna is her son, answering theology with love. In "kat tu suman" (22), the mood shifts from mother to lover, but the logic holds: a God with a body can be held, teased, and missed — sagun bhakti's God is near enough to quarrel with. This is what separates Surdas from Tukaram: the household is not a fever to flee but a home where God is found.</p>

<p>Tukaram's twelve poems are filed by Marathe under "Autobiography," and the voice is fiercely first-person throughout — I in fever, I at the crossroads, I trembling. The arc runs from "hold my hand" (1) to "take these madmen from my sight" (12): personal surrender, then social vision, then the surrender of even the reformer's hope.</p><p>Poems 1–6 are the personal cry. Poem 1 strikes the master-note — do not let go of my hand: the world raises hindrances, men die without number, and Narayana's feet are the solid gain. Poem 2 preaches haste in a farmer's image: grain taken out by the hand sprouts sooner than grain left in the bag — use the time now. Poem 3 keeps the crowd far, like the old forest sages. Poem 4 sets the sant position — God loves not the learned but whoever knows the nine forms of worship (navadha bhakti). Poem 5 is the fever-poem, calling "Mother Panduranga" — tenderness breaking through world-weariness — to run, since He is the Lord of the helpless. Poem 6 makes the singer a stranger at the crossroads who has cast off wealth, family, mother, desire. The first room's logic: the world is fever and snare; the Name is the only property.</p><p>Poems 7–12 turn outward. Poem 7's gallery of hypocrites — actor, heron, garlanded hypocrite, angler, butcher — shows maya as social fraud, not metaphysics. Poem 8 answers fraud with renunciation: sprinkle dust on the head, end "mine" and "another's." Poem 9 wants solitude — company is noise that drowns the Name. Poem 10 confesses the failure of preaching: without true experience (anubhava), men stay wretched. Poem 11 turns the knife inward: saints must not praise him, lest pride sever him from Vitthoba's feet — humility as spiritual strategy. Poem 12 closes in trembling: he has no strength to beat men onto the path, so he begs Panduranga not to set such madmen before his sight.</p><p>The devotee who began asking God to hold his hand ends asking God to spare his eyes — compassion without power. That is Tukaram's autobiography: not a life story but a soul's diary, from surrender, through social vision, to the surrender of reform itself. Exam tip: walk the twelve in order with the key images (hand, grain, crowd, navadha bhakti, Mother Panduranga, stranger; then the five hypocrites, dust, solitude, anubhava, praise, trembling) and close on this arc.</p>

<p>Surdas, blind poet of Braj, disciple of Vallabhacharya and crown of the Ashtachhap, sings sagun bhakti in Brajbhasha: God with a name, a body, a family, a mischief. Its ruling mood is vatsalya rasa — parental affection raised to worship. The devotee does not argue with God or flee the world for Him; the devotee mothers Him. The three set pads (Nilsson 1969: 1, 2, 22) are three stations of this mothering.</p><p>"Maiya mori" (1) is the butter-thief's defence — in the set rendering, curds. Little Krishna argues like a small lawyer: Yashoda sent him early to the forest, he wandered for hours, the cowherds smeared his face — and small arms cannot reach a high-hung pot. The defence works: Yashoda throws down the stick, picks him up, and hugs him, and Surdas seals it — Jasumati's joy makes Shiva and Brahma crazy with envy. The theology sits inside the comedy: the Lord is a thief who must still be believed innocent, and the mother's tenderness is itself the worship. The devotee here is not the singer but the mother holding the child-God.</p><p>"Maiya mohe" (2) keeps the household and sharpens it. Daau (Balarama) taunts: Krishna was bought, not born; who are his parents; why so dark when Nanda and Yashoda are fair? The cowherds clap; Balbir coaches. The sting: you only punish me, Mother. Jasumati enjoys Mohan's anger even as she looks — delight inside the complaint — then answers: Kanha, your brother talks nonsense; he has been a crook from birth. And the closing oath — "O Shyam of Surdas, I swear by all the cattle: I am your mother and you my son." The household's wealth becomes the seal of love. The theological tease — whose son is the dark one? — is answered not by philosophy but by a mother's oath: sagun love, not a riddle.</p><p>"Kat tu suman" (22) changes the voice: a woman of Braj addresses Krishna as a black bee. Behind it stands the Bhramaragita — the gopis addressing the dark bee as the dark messenger. She is puzzled and hurt: she is not the golden jasmine he left her for; his face radiates differently with different women; his absence is a mountain she cannot cross. A God with a body can be unfaithful in lila, and the devotee is the lover who keeps speaking. It is not Tukaram's hypocrite-heron: the bee and the jasmine are this pad's pictures.</p><p>Three stations: the mother's lap (1), the mother's oath (2), the gopi's bee (22). Vatsalya here is not sentimentality but theology in a home — God near enough to hold, swear by, and quarrel with. Exam tip: place each opening line with its situation, speaker and feeling; never treat all three as butter-theft; keep Nilsson 1969 named.</p>

<p>Chapter XVI — "Daivasura-sampad-vibhaga-yoga," the yoga of distinguishing the divine and demoniacal endowments — sorts human nature itself into two lots, Krishna teaching Arjuna on Kurukshetra's field. The set text is Radhakrishnan's translation (pp. 334–335); only verses 1–5 are set.</p><p>Verses 1–3: the godlike endowment (daivi sampad) — some twenty-six qualities of one "born for the divine state": fearlessness; purity of heart; steadfastness in knowledge and yoga; charity; self-control; sacrifice; study of the scriptures; austerity; uprightness; non-violence; truth; absence of anger; renunciation; peace; absence of slander; compassion for beings; uncovetousness; gentleness; modesty; absence of fickleness; vigour; forgiveness; fortitude; purity; absence of hatred; absence of pride. The architecture matters: it opens with fearlessness (abhaya) and moves from inner states through disciplines (charity, sacrifice, study, austerity) to social conduct (non-violence, truth, compassion, gentleness). The godlike is not otherworldly; it is a character, livable in the world.</p><p>Verse 4: the demonic endowment (asuri sampad) in six hard words: ostentation (dambha), arrogance (darpa), self-conceit (atimana), anger (krodha), harshness (parushya), ignorance (ajnana). No horns here: pride dressed as piety, cruelty dressed as strength — the Gita's own gallery beside Tukaram's hypocrite-heron. Verse 5 draws the consequence: the godlike is for liberation (moksha), the demonic for bondage (bandha).</p><p>Set the chapter in its unit: beside Tukaram's world-as-snare, the Gita lists the inner marks that bind or free — the snare has an address inside us; beside Surdas's courtyard, the Lord here is the teacher, not the butter-thief.</p><p>Then the close — and it is a consolation, not a condemnation: "Grieve not" (ma shuchah) — you are born with the godlike qualities, Arjuna. The trembling warrior is answered not with tactics but with anthropology: know what you are made of, and the fear will know its place. Radhakrishnan's reading clinches it: the two sampads are psychological types present in every person, not fixed destinies — the seeker cultivates the godlike and starves the demonic. The list is a diagnosis, and a diagnosis is the first step of a cure. Exam tip: answer as a two-column contrast (inner states → disciplines → conduct vs. the six demonic marks) and close on ma shuchah.</p>