Devalok
Local story · 2 tellings · Pan-India, West India

The god who waited on a brick

Krishna came to Pundalik's door, was told to wait on a brick while the son served his parents, and stayed; the Varkari saints sang to him as Vitthal.

Who is in it

  • Vithoba the god standing on the brick at Pandharpur
  • Krishna the god who came to Pundalik's house
  • Pundalik the devotee who kept him waiting
  • Dnyaneshwar Varkari saint, author of the Dnyaneshwari
  • Tukaram Varkari saint, composer of abhangas

Places: Alandi, Dehu

The story, beat by beat

  1. Pundalik, once neglectful of his parents, now serves them devotedly at Pandharpur.
  2. Krishna arrives at his door while he is busy with them.
  3. Pundalik tosses a brick for the god to stand on and asks him to wait.
  4. Pleased, the god stays standing on the brick, hands on hips, and is worshipped as Vitthal.
  5. Dnyaneshwar writes the Marathi Dnyaneshwari and Tukaram composes abhangas to this god.
  6. Each year the Varkaris walk from Alandi and Dehu to Pandharpur carrying the saints' sandals.

devotion waiting filial duty pilgrimage

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Folk documentation

Varkari tradition (Marathi)

West India · Pandharpur, Alandi and Dehu, Maharashtra Vaishnava Marathi Varkari

The Varkaris explain their god's odd posture with a story about manners. Pundalik of Pandharpur had become a devoted son, and when Krishna came calling he was in the middle of tending his old parents. He threw the visitor a brick to keep his feet out of the mud and asked him to wait. The god was so taken with a devotion that put duty first that he stayed on the brick, arms akimbo, and has stood there since as Vitthal, a name folk etymology reads as 'stood on a brick'. Dnyaneshwar's Marathi commentary on the Gita and Tukaram's abhangas gave the community its scripture and songs, and every year the Wari brings pilgrims on foot from Alandi and Dehu to Pandharpur with the saints' sandals in a palanquin. Scholars add that Pandharpur is ringed by Shiva temples and that Vithoba may once have been a pastoral god assimilated to Shiva before he was read as Krishna.

Vithoba — Wikipedia; Pundalik — Wikipedia; Vithoba of Pandharpur; Pandharpur Wari pilgrimage: saints, sandals and salvation; Bhakti movement in Maharashtra; The Cult of Vithoba

Encyclopedia

Puranic Krishna

Pan-India Vaishnava

The Bhagavata's Krishna never visits Pandharpur, and no Sanskrit Purana gives the brick story; the Pandharpur Mahatmya that does is a later regional text.

What is different here:

The brick, the waiting god and the Marathi saints belong to the regional layer; the possible Shiva past of the image is a scholarly argument (Deleury, Eaton) rather than a tradition.

Vithoba — Wikipedia

Sources: Vithoba — Wikipedia; Pundalik — Wikipedia; Vithoba of Pandharpur; Pandharpur Wari pilgrimage: saints, sandals and salvation; Bhakti movement in Maharashtra; The Cult of Vithoba

More stories with the same people

Temple legend

Pundalik's brick

Busy serving his parents when Krishna calls, Pundalik tosses him a brick to stand on; the god waits there still, hands on hips, as Vithoba of Pandharpur.
Local story

Kanakadasa's window at Udupi

Turned away from the Udupi temple, the shepherd-saint Kanakadasa sang outside until the image turned to face him through a gap in the wall.
How a tradition frames it

Krishna alone: Sankardev's Assam

Sankardev's Ekasarana keeps only Krishna as an object of worship and drops Shiva and Brahma from the cult, sung through the Kirtan Ghosha.
How a tradition frames it

Rama the monk and Krishna the cousin

Jain tellings keep Rama and Krishna as great men in a fixed roster of sixty-three: Lakshmana kills Ravana, Rama becomes a monk, and Krishna is Neminatha's cousin.
From the epics

Krishna's penance for a son

Jambavati asks Krishna for a son like Pradyumna; Krishna spends six months in austerities under the sage Upamanyu, and Shiva appears as Ardhanarishvara to grant the boy Samba, named after that form.
Legend

Kama burnt by the third eye

Taraka can die only to a son of Shiva, and Shiva sits in grief and meditation after Sati.
Temple legend

The image that came from Vaikuntha to Guruvayur

An image made by Vishnu himself passes from Brahma to King Sutapas to Uddhava, who has Brihaspati and Vayu install it in Kerala after Dwarka sinks.
Local story

Kanakadasa's window at Udupi

Madhva finds the Krishna image in a lump of clay; the low-caste singer Kanakadasa, barred from the temple, sees the god turn west through a crack that became the Kanakana Kindi.