Historicity
Pundalik is commonly perceived to be a historical figure, connected with the establishment and propagation of the Vithoba-centric Varkari sect. Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar considers Pundalik to be the founder of the Varkari cult and the one who promulgated the cult in Maratha country. Stevenson (1843) goes further, suggesting he might have been a Jain or a Buddhist, since Varkari tradition is a combination of Jain and Buddhist morals, and Vithoba is viewed as Vishnu in his form as Buddha. Frazer, Edwards and P.R. Bhandarkar (1922) all suggest that Pundalik tried to unify Shiva and Vishnu, and that this culture originated in Karnataka. Ranade (1933) thinks that Pundalik, a Kannada saint, was not only the founder of the Varkari culture but also the first great devotee or first high priest of the Pandharpur temple. Upadhyaya supports the priest theory but declines the Kannada origin theory. Tulpule also accepted the theory that Pundalik was the historical founder of the Varkari sect, though declines to fix a date for him due to "lack of authentic evidence". According to M. S. Mate, Pundalik was instrumental in coaxing the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana to build the Pandharpur temple to Vishnu, placing him in the early 12th century. Deleury (1960) believes Pundalik was a mystic, influenced by the Vaishnava Haridasa sect of Karnataka, who brought a drastic change in the worship of Vithoba. Pundalik not only founded the Varkari sec, but also was the first to identify Vithoba with the god Vishnu. Pundalik's fame also led to naming of Pandharpur to Paundrika-kshetra - the sacred place of Pundalik.
Other scholars like Raeside (1965), Dhanpalvar (1972), and Vaudeville (1974) have questioned the historicity of Pundalik altogether, and dismissed him as a mythical figure. In his analysis of the text Panduranga mahatmya by Sridhar (discussed in "Legend" section ahead), Raeside says that the legend of devotee Pundalik could have been nothing more a derivative of Puranic legend. Dhanpalvar strongly agreed with this possibility. Vaudeville found the legend of the Pundalik of Pandharpur was very similar to the legend of Pundarik, the devotee of Vishnu, in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The religious historian R.C. Dhere, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award for his book Sri Vitthal: Ek Mahasamanvaya, opines that identification of Vithoba with Vishnu led to conversion of the Shaiva (related to god Shiva) Pundarika shrine to the Vaishnava shrine of the devotee Pundalik. The main argument of the hypothesis is that the memorial shrine of Pundalik is a Shaiva shrine, rather than a Vaishnava one, compromising of a Shiva-linga, the symbol of god Shiva.
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