Vittala

Glossary

A Hindu deity who is considered to be a form of Vishnu and is popularly worshipped in present-day Maharashtra and parts of Karnataka. In iconographical form, he is shown standing on a brick, with his arms held akimbo. He is considered to have been a pastoral deity before being assimilated first into Saivism, briefly, and then Vaishnavism. His principal shrine is located in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, and he is the central deity of the Varkari Panth, a sect with roots in the thirteenth-century Bhakti movement of the region. He is also the central figure of a large corpus of Varkari devotional poems, known as abhangs, which were written by the poet-saints of the region, namely Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram and Eknath.

FILED UNDER

Pre-Modern Art

Chicago	MAP Academy Encyclopedia of Art. “Vittala”. Accessed April 27, 2024. https://mapacademy.io/glossary/vittala/
MLA	“Vittala.” MAP Academy Encyclopedia of Art. https://mapacademy.io/glossary/vittala/. Accessed 27, April, 2024.
Harvard	MAP Academy Encyclopedia of Art. (2022) Vittala. [Online]. Available at: https://mapacademy.io/glossary/vittala/. (Accessed: 27, April, 2024)