Sant Janabai

01From Gangakhed to Namdev’s house

Janabai was born at Gangakhed, on the Godavari in today’s Parbhani district of Maharashtra, to a couple named Dama and Karund, probably in the 1260s or 1270s. Her mother died when she was small, and her father took her to Pandharpur, where she was given into the household of Damashet, a tailor, and his wife Gonai. Their son was Namdev. Janabai was a little older than him, and she looked after him for many years. The house was full of the name of Vitthal, and the girl who never went to school began to make songs while she worked. She calls herself, again and again, ‘Nama’s Jani’, the maid of Namdev, and it is with his abhangs that many of hers were kept.

02Vitthal at the grindstone

Her abhangs are the songs of a working woman. She sings of the grindstone and the broom, of cow dung patted into cakes, of washing clothes at the Chandrabhaga, and in each of them Vitthal is beside her. The best known Varkari kathas about her grow from these songs: that Vitthal himself came to turn the quern with her, combed her hair, and helped her carry water when she was tired. In one abhang she says she will go to the market with her head uncovered, the sari slipping from her shoulder, because she has given up shame for the name of the Lord. Other songs are on the lives of the saints, the childhood of Krishna, and the sorrow of the bhakta who is kept from God.

03At the steps of the temple

She lived through the great years of the Varkari path, with Jnaneshwar, Nivruttinath, Sopan, Muktabai and Chokhamela, and she sang of each of them. The tradition holds that she died in 1350, on the same day that Namdev and his family took samadhi at the steps of the Vitthal temple at Pandharpur, and the small shrine of Janabai stands near the temple to this day. About three hundred abhangs are traditionally hers. Varkaris name her with Jnaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram among the saints whose words are sung on the wari, the walk to Pandharpur, every Ashadhi Ekadashi.