śrī gajānana mahārāja āratī (marāṭhī)

The Marathi aarti to Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon, composed by Dasganu Maharaj, who names himself in the closing line. It opens by addressing him as Ganaraya of the nature of being and consciousness — victory to you, who came down to the earth to carry across the dull and the ignorant — and its second verse states the paradox the whole song rests on: you are truly and beyond doubt the unqualified brahman, eternal and undecaying, which pervades everything that moves and does not move, and you took on a human body as a mere play. Then the things people at that shrine tell of him: that he would let nobody know what he was, going about with the chant gani gan ganat bote; the endless lila at Bankatlal's house; the chillum lit without fire; water brought in a moment into a dry well; the pride of Brahmagiri broken; sickness driven off, and devotees given the sight of Vitthal.