Eknath

Eknath (IAST: Eka-nātha, Marathi pronunciation: [eknath]) (c. 1533 – c. 1599), was an Indian Hindu Vaishnava saint, philosopher and poet. He was a devotee of Vitthal, a Hindu deity. He is a major figure of the Warkari tradition. He is often viewed as a spiritual successor to prominent Hindu Marathi saints Dnyaneshwar and Namdev.

==Biography== Historical information about his life is obscure. He is believed to have lived during the latter three-quarters of the 16th-century. He was born into a Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin family of Vishwamitra gotra to Suryanarayan and Rukmini Bai at Paithan, a town in present-day Maharashtra. He was known to be an adherant of the Ashvalayana Sutra, a collection of Indian texts detailing domestic rituals for householders. His father held the title of Kulkarni and kept financial accounts. The ancestral family deity was Ekvira.