Tukaram Maharaj, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, was a poet-saint of the Bhakti tradition in the village of Dehu in Maharashtra, India. A grocer by trade, Saint Tukaram composed a vast number of abhangas, devotional songs, in the course of his life. By celebrating God in song and in the local language of Marathi, Tukaram shared his knowledge and expressed his devotion in a manner that everyone who lived in his region could understand. These abhangas are now collected in a work known as Tukaramachi Gatha.