दक्षिणी मराठी खजाना

Two Sundays back (on 22-07-2018) we had a darshan of Pandurang Vittal in Krishnagiri. An unforgettable experience. The temple is located about three kilometers from Krishnagiri in a village called Shivaji Agraharam. Along with Pandurang Vittal, Rukmini's vigraha is also consecrated at that temple. A little away, at a distance of three or four minutes’ walk, in the same village, there is a separate temple of Thuljapur Amba Bhavani, set amidst sprawling grounds with groves of fruit trees, coconut trees and flower plants. A tranquil atmosphere.

On the day of our visit preparations were afoot for the grand Ashada festival for Vittal. As we drove through the meandering road along paddy fields towards the village, we could hear abhangs and kirtans in Marathi being played over the sound-systems.

The whole village was white washed and bore a festive look. The temple gopura, a miniature version of the gopura of the Vittal temple in Pandharpur was being decorated with festoons and flowers.

We were told that the festival is for seven days, starting on Ashada Ekadasi. The high-point of the festival is the Vittal-Rukmini Vivaha in the morning of the sixth day followed by a procession around the village and its neighborhood in the evening. On other days there would be the usual pujas and cultural programmes associated with such annual temple festivals. All natives of the village now staying elsewhere, including foreign lands, were expected to arrive in a day or two.

The regular daily pujas in the temples in Shivaji Agraharam are performed by a family of Iyer purohits who have been provided with a residence in the village.

The village has thirty households with a population of 150. All are Maratha Kshatriyas. There is no other community in that village other than the family of the Tamil priest. The head of the village, Shri. Janardhan Rao told us that there are 150 such Maratha Kshatriya villages in Krishnagiri District with a total population of around 50,000. They are the descendants of the soldiers who came down South 300 to 400 years back.

We were made to feel most welcome in the house of Shri. Jaradhan Rao, a retired Tahshildar. Over refreshments procured from a Brahmin household from a nearby village specially for us, we were told that all children and youngsters know how to read and write Marathi. They all speak Kshatriya Marathi (KM) of South, which sounds very similar to our DM. The abhangs and kirtans sung at the temples were in KM and aroused in us spiritual feelings and fervor of a sublime nature.

We were told that sometime back these abhangs and kirtans (eighty in all) were taught to them by a Telugu Pandit. The original Telugu scripts of these Marathi abhangs are now written in Devnagari or Tamil scripts in Shivaji Agraharam. Many ladies and gents sing them regularly at the appropriate occasions.

Every year the children are sent to month long religous camps conducted in different towns in Tamil Nadu, where they are taught to read and recite Jnaneshwari and other religious works in Marathi. The children of the new generation seemed to be very comfortable with their KM because of such exposure.

Hearing all these left me wondering why and how we DMs neglected our language. What happened ? Why was it that we, who are well educated, left our children with a degenerated language? Can't we learn from the children of Shivaji Agraharam how to revive and feel proud of our mother language?  

Time alone will tell. Or will it ?