The Tool of Domestic Labour in the Iconography of Janabai’s Temples in Maharashtra

The article deals with a unique object of temple worship from Maharashtra, a Marathi-speaking region of Western India, represented by a tripartite structure having a grindmill as its middle section. The motives for such a layout are found in the poetry of the medieval maid-servant Janabai (13th – 14th centuries), who described in her hymns her love for the god Vitthal / Vithoba from Pandharpur and their special bonds, including his help in grinding grain. The technical assemblage of the three components into the genre scene ‘God grinds together with Janabai’ was first recorded in the introductory lithograph for the chapter 21 of the Bhaktavijay, which established Janabai as an independent character. Published in the middle of the 19th century, this collective hagiography became one of the first samples in Marathi book printing and a source of deduction of ethnocultural and nationalistic meanings throughout the period of the formation of Maharashtrian identity. In addition, in the Marathi bhakti milieu a grind mill and grinding process function as a sustained metaphor drawn from the resources of the philosophy of monism-advaita. It implies final atomicity as a result of ‘crushing’ and ‘grinding’ of duality which leads to merging with the Absolute. Ubiquitously manifested the iconography of the servant and the god, inextricably linked by a millstone in the temples in honor of Janabai, visualizes this metaphor through narratives and heroes rooted in the regional culture

Art · Art history · Iconography · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Poetry · Servant · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophy