Soundings from the Rubbish Stream: Calling Wittoba a Crucified Savior Shows Ignorance of that God, His Cult, and His Myth.

Wittoba / Vithoba

The Rubbish Stream: A wide flowing river of nonsense about comparative religion based in misunderstandings and wrong ideas Europeans had in the 18th century, before the texts and even the langages needed to understand other people's religions were available or understood. Eventually languages were learned, texts studied and old misunderstandings jettisoned and replaced with right ones, except in certain circles that just kept uncriticaly reasserting the old, long debunked misunderstandings, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.

Common Assertions: (1) Wittoba (2) of the Telingonese was (3) crucified (4) in 552 B.C.These assertions come mainly from Kersey Graves’s, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1876), and have been mindlessly copied by a great host of Graves plagiarizers ever since.

The Facts: (1) Wittoba.  One of the difficulties in seeing the problem with Graves’s assertions about Wittoba is that nobody spells that deity’s name that way anymore (except, of course, Graves’s plagiarizers¹).  Modern writers with real knowledge of this deity most often spell it Vithoba, Vitthal, or Vitthalla. Only those with no independent knowledge of this deity still spell the name Wittoba. An experiment that dramatically demonstrates this visually is to do a Google Image search first for “Wittoba” and then for “Vithoba.” 

(2) of the Telingonese. Graves spells this two ways, Bilingonese and Telingonese.² Of the two spellings Telingonese is closest to being correct, referring to Telinga, another name for the Telugu language, or to Andhra Pradesh, the region where Telugu it is principally spoken. However, Wittoba/Vithoba worship is not centered in Andhra Pradesh where Telugu is spoken, but in Maharashtra where Marathi is spoken.  Wittoba/Vithoba has his temple there in the city of Pandharpur.  When authors associate Wittoba with Bilingonese or Telingonese they are giving away their dependence on Graves. Plagiarizers beware! 

(3) crucified. Nothing like that at all in the Wittoba/Vithoba story, which is a local variation of the Krishna story.

(4) in 552 B.C.  Not only is there nothing like that in the Wittoba story, but the worship of Wittoba/Vithoba cannot be shown to have existed prior to the 12th or 13th century CE.

The real Wittoba/Vithoba Story.  As was said, the Wittoba/Vithoba legend is a local variation of the Krishna story.  A young man named Pundalik, previously negligent of his duty regarding his aging parents, has a change of heart and transforms himself into the ideal attentive son.  Krishna sees this, is pleased, and comes to Pundalik.  When Krishna arrives, Pundalik, just off to attend to some need of his elderly parents, tells Krishna he must wait and tosses him a brick to wait upon. When Pundalik returns, Krishna offers him a boon, and Pundalik asks only that Krishna always remain.  And so, as the story goes, Krishna (now called Vithoba).continues to stand in his Temple on the brick Pundalik gave him down to the present day.

Any who would like to pursue the subject of the real Wittoba/Vithoba further will be helped by D. B. Mokashi, Palki: An Indian Pilgrimage (trans., Philip C. Engblom; introductory essays by Philip C. Engblom and Eleanor Zelliot (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987).

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¹ Direct or indirect plagiarizers.

² Kersey Graves, The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (4th ed. rev. and enl.; Boston: Colby and Rich, 1876), 29, 108.