The year was 1290 . A crowd had gathered around a clearing, where broken down pillars marked the presence of an ancient temple, now long gone. A young boy, just 14 years old, leaned against one of those pillars, deep in thought. Then, he began speaking, and the crowd fell silent, listening to his every word. He spoke without any notes, translating the Bhagavat Gita, from Sanskrit, which only the pundits knew, to the language everyone in the village knew and spoke – a variety of Prakrit which developed into the Marathi language. Even as he spoke, one of the men in the audience realized how momentous this event was, and how important this composition would be. He began writing down the words the young boy spoke, and this composition was named by its author and composer, the Bhavartha Deepika – the enlightening meaning (of the Bhagavat Gita). Now, the ancient, holy text, was no longer restricted to the pundits, but accessible to all, understood easily by them, composed as it was, in their...
The Rudram chanting (hymns dedicated to Rudra, or Lord Shiva) seemed to fill the entire space. The sound reverberated within the small, cavernous shrine, the stone walls echoing the words over and over again till the air itself seemed to pulsate with the same rhythm as the chanting. In such a charged atmosphere, the simple act of placing a bilva leaf on the Shiva lingam and pouring water on it, seemed much more than a mere ritual. It was this divine experience that made our visit to Aundha Nagnath so memorable.