God at Play, Volume 1

The oldest extant Marathi work, a medieval chronicle of Chakradhar’s divine life on earth, in a new English translation.

God at Play, or Līḷācaritra, is a remarkable biography of the medieval religious figure Chakradhar Svami. His followers, called Mahanubhavs, understand him to be a divine incarnation of Parameshvar. Mhaimbhat, a Brahmin goldsmith who became one of Chakradhar’s most important followers, compiled this astonishingly down—to—earth religious text around 1278. It records not onl...