The Dnyaneshwari is Sant Dnyaneshwar's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi verse, also called the Bhavartha Deepika, the lamp of the inner meaning. It follows the Bhagavad Gita's eighteen chapters, opening its seven hundred verses into about nine thousand ovis, stanzas in a Marathi metre held to follow the songs women sang at the grinding stone. Its closing ovi records that Sant Dnyaneshwar made it in the Shaka year 1212, 1290 CE, with Sachchidananda Baba as his scribe, and tradition holds that he spoke it at Nevase, leaning against a temple pillar still shown there. In 1584 Sant Eknath prepared a corrected text at Paithan.
Its opening ovis picture Ganapati as the whole of scripture, the eighteen Puranas his jewels and the ten Upanishads the flowers on his crown. Many chapters begin in praise of Sant Nivruttinath, Sant Dnyaneshwar's elder brother and guru, and in the sixth Sant Dnyaneshwar promises that his Marathi will win a wager even against nectar. The last chapter traces his teaching from Shiva through the Nath yogis to Sant Nivruttinath, and near its close comes the Pasaydan, nine ovis asking the God who is the Self of the universe that the wicked may shed their crookedness, that all beings may be bound in friendship and that every creature may find what it longs for.
The Dnyaneshwari is a foundational text of the Varkari tradition, read alone or chanted together, and devotees sit reading it at Sant Dnyaneshwar's samadhi at Alandi, where tradition holds he entered living samadhi at twenty-one. The Pasaydan is also sung or recited on its own, as a prayer for the good of all. In this collection, Sant Dnyaneshwar's padukas are carried each year in a palkhi from Alandi to the Vitthal Rukmini temple at Pandharpur for Ashadhi Ekadashi.