Sant Tukaram (c.1608-c.1650), also Shri Tukaram, and colloquially referred to as "Tuka" , was a seventeenth century Marathi poet Sant of India, related to the Bhakti movement of Maharashtra. Tukaram, was a devotee of Vitthal (a form of Lord Krishna), the supreme God in Vaishnavism. He is especially revered by the Varkari community. Tukaram is widely recognized as the climactic point of the Bhagawat tradition which began with Namdev, Most of the information on the sants of Maharashtra comes from the biographies written by Mahipati in the 1700s, called Bhaktivijaya and Bhaktililamrit. Scholars assign various dates to Tukaram's birth; the most frequently assigned dates are 1568, 1577, 1608 and 1598 AD. There is lesser dispute that he died in 1650 AD. He was born in Dehu, very close to modern Pune city in Maharashtra. His father was a small trader or peddler and he was barely literate all his life. His family were successful grain sellers . Tukaram lost his first wife, Rakhumabai, during a famine. Though it is alleged by some that she died of starvation, that is unlikely because Tukaram came from a wealthy landlord and money-lender family. His second wife was Jijabai (also called Avali). He had three sons, named Santu or Mahadev, Vithoba and Narayana. Narayana was considerably younger than Mahadev and Vithoba, and was a great bhakta like his father.
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