Of all the Maharashtrian women sants, Janabai is the most popular and her abhangs are sung widely. The way she performed all her household chores together with Vitthala, giving to her daily drudgery a new respectability and meaning, is unparalleled! She is indeed the purest example of Vitthala bhakti!
She arrived in Pandharpur as a small lower caste orphan girl having lost her way. There she came under the care of Damsheti, the father of the great Vitthalbhakta Sant Namdev. In this saintly home she grew up and spent all her life as a maidservant. She was a few years elder to Namdev, and took care of him as a young boy and later became his disciple. In her abhangs, she very often mentions her good fortune to have been guided by Namdev Maharaj, and she makes it a point to sign her abhangs as ‘Nama’s Jani’ (namayachi jani). In some of her songs she tells Vitthala that she would gladly be born again and again –only if it was in Pandharpur in the house of Namdev! Her songs show the same style and images as her guru’s. When he sings: ‘With a sling of love I caught Gopala!’, Jani says with even greater confidence dharilam Pandaricha chor, ‘I caught the thief of Pandhari! I bound a rope around his neck and confined him in my heart – I will not let him go anymore!’
As Namdev Maharaj grew up, got married and had children, there were 14 members in his house! And Janabai would call herself the 15th member! There was a lot of work and grinding to be done! At a time when flourmills did not exist, women would get up very early – when other family members were still asleep – and immediately sit down for grinding. It was an inevitable hard work, and women would preferably sit in pairs while rotating the heavy millstone, and they would sing in an urge to unburden their hearts, expressing their worries, their family concerns, confiding in the millstone! The rhyme and rhythm of their songs and the sound of the mill brought about the ‘ovi’, a verse form for grinding and lulling infants.
The image of Janabai grinding together with Vitthala at dawn is etched in the mind of the Maharashtrian people. She calls Vitthala ‘The one hungry for love’, and her bhakti was so pure that Vitthala was there with her almost every day, helping her in all the household chores. Her abhangs are full of such descriptions: Vitthala grinding in his pitambara, yellow dhoti, telling Jani to simply watch and sing; Vitthal fetching water with her from the river – allowing her not even to get her feet wet; Vitthala carrying the trash after the courtyard is broomed; and both of them together making cowdung cakes.
She sings, Dalitam kanditam, tuj gaina ananta, “While grinding and pounding I sing your name, infinite one, not even for a second I forget to sing your Name! In all my daily chores I have your name on my lips! You are my father, mother, friend and sister, Chakrapani! While grinding I am totally immersed in your feet – says Nama’s Jani.” In these few lines she reveals the secret of her bhakti: to take God’s name every moment uninterruptedly and to keep him embraced in the heart!
Vitthala appeared to her in various forms, as a friend, as a father, but mostly as a female friend, sister or mother – Vithabai, Vithai, Pandurangi. Her life was one of constant remembrance of the Lord similar to Gopaler Maa and Kururamma who lived in this sacred land in recent times. It is a noteworthy step in the development of the bhakti movement that women bring God into the kitchen, but it is even rarer to speak of God becoming a woman serving his bhaktas! Being an orphan, instead of fretting about her life, Janabai gave herself entirely to God.
In another abhang she sings Maya meli bapa mela, ata sambhali Vitthala, “Mother is dead, father is dead – now take care of me Vitthala! Don’t neglect me, I’m your child! I’m your servant, ignorant and simple-minded – give me a place at your feet! Who else but you can protect me? How much longer will you just look on – I’m so weary! Life of all Life! Jani calls on you!”
Vitthala’s labour of love for Janabai doesn’t stop here. He helped her in bathing and oiled and braided her hair, because “Jani is all alone, no one else to take care of her!” When Jani feels that Vitthala neglected her or failed to appear, she calls out to him in an intimate language.
Songs and legends tell us that Janabai was painfully aware of her position as a maidservant, a woman and an orphan of a low caste. During her initial years in Sant Namdev’s house, we hear that Vitthala had visited for a festive dinner, but Janabai had been left outside, crying, longing. Feeling her pain, Vitthala lost his appetite and stopped eating. At night he went stealthily to Janabai’s cottage where she could offer him nothing but his own leavings which had been given to her. Here occurs also the famous story of the exchanged blankets, where Jani almost got into a huge trouble when they found Vitthala with Jani’s torn old blanket in the temple and his costly silk shawl in her cottage.
Though sometimes vexed with her repetitive chores and her being a woman, she comes to terms with it Strijanma mhanavuni na vhave udasa, “I should not feel sad to be born a woman, the sadhus and sants taught me this. I’m serving in the house of the sants, Vitthala gave me the essence of love!”
When Namdev Maharaj had vowed to compose one billion abhangs for the Lord, Jani was also allotted a certain number. Her 350 verses appear as an annexure to the Namdev Gatha. As she was unlettered, Vitthala himself came to write them down for her and he found them exceedingly sweet. Since that time she was fully integrated into the group of sants around Namdev and had the wonderful opportunity to have their association. She was especially fond of Sant Jnaneshvar and composed moving abhangs on him.
Legend tells that she was also one of the 14 family-members who left their body at the same time with Sant Namdev in 1350, and that they were all buried beneath the ‘Namdev Payari’, the steps to Vitthala’s temple gate. The dates of her life must have more or less overlapped with those of Namdev (1270 – 1350) and it seems she was in her eighties when she left her body.
Janabai’s abhangs allow women to identify with her easily, and they sing her songs even now. But mostly their minds remain caught up in the worries, hopes and difficulties of their samsar, hardly anybody reaches the state of surrender of a triumphant Janabai who sings Mi to samarthachi dasi, mithi ghalina payapasi, “I’m the dasi of the All-Powerful and I will embrace His feet! This is my firm decision: I will make a festival of the Lord’s name and I will sing His names with all my chores! At His feet lies all bliss – Vitthala is speaking with Jani!”
Sant Janabai’s life and her abhangs are practical lessons in remembering and living in the Lord’s company even as women go about their monotonous daily chores.