Chakradhar Swami

Sarvadnya Shri Chakradhar Swami was an incarnation of Nirgun and Nirakar Parmeshwar and the founder of the Mahanubhava Sect in Vaishnavism in 1267. Chakradhar propagated a religious movement as well as social movement, in which all were accepted irrespective of their castes and the traditional ritualistic religion was rejected.
Family
Chakradhar Swami was born at Bharavas (Bharuch,present day Gujarat) as the son of the king named Vishaldeva & Mhalani devi and his ancestral name was Haripaldeva.Died due to fever. Haripaldeva died at the age of twenty but a widely believed reincarnation of lord krishna named Shri Chakrapani Prabhu from Phalatan entered the dead body of Haripaldeva after which he revived. The reborn Haripaldeva was a greatly changed personality .
Ridhapur
Then he came to place Ridhapur where Shri Govind Prabhu regarded as incarnation. After having wandered alone for time, he appeared among the people.At the market place of Ridhapur,Prabhu was eating some sort of sweet(Shengul Gudde).On seeing Haripaldeva,he threw the sweets in front of him and said to eat it as a 'Prasad'. In this way he was incarnated as 'Chakradhar Swami'.He then went to Paithan and offered his grace to an old woman Nagambika alias Nagaisa.A year after this he preached to Nagdev & made him his disciple.
Preaching
During his seven and a half years of his lonely wanderings, he visited a number of villages in Marathwada, Vidarbha, Khandesh and many different parts of Maharashtra preaching his philosophy to the common man in Marathi with the help of illustration and imagery. During this period of propagation of his philosophy, about five hundred followers from different regions of Maharashtra Brahmin and Non Brahmin castes joined him. Actually many distinguished people from the court of Yadavas, like Bhandari Gadonayak and Gopal Pandit who were senior administrators; Kamaisa of Ramdevaraya and Demati of Hemadpandit who were wives of courtly people; Ganpati Apayo, Pimple Vaman Bhatt and Gunakardeva Prajnasagar who were Vedic scholars become followers of Shri Chakradhar Swami.
The preachings of shri chakradhar swamy were appreciated to such an extent that despite of all his sermons being in marathi, the religion propounded was followed in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and North India (then the north west frontier). There are known temples up to Kabul in Afghanistan.
Philosophy
Shri Chakradhar Swami propounded his philosophy like Shri Krishna from among the "Five Krishnas". Although he was a Gujarati by birth, he had excellent knowledge of the Marathi language. He moved among the all sections of society. He discoursed his philosophy extremely effectively among the people in their own language. He used formulaic language full of meaning in a compact style.
One of the most important aspects of the philosophy propounded by him is asceticism.
The philosophy of Shri Chakradhar Swami advocated the bhakti mode as well as an austere code of conduct. This influence the literature of Mahanubhavas. A work like Leela Charitra was composed by Mahimbhatta, a disciple of Shri Chakradhar Swami. He met a large number of people who had been in contact with Shri Chakradhar Swami, collected the reliable information about his deeds and verified it with Nagadevacharya and finally put it into a massive prose biographical text.

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