Shridhara was born to a
Kulkarni belonging to
Deshastha Yajurvedi Brahmin (DYB) family in 1658 CE in Nazare a village in
Solapur district, Maharashtra state. His father Brahmananda Kadke, was also his guru with some literary works such as
Atma Prakash in 1681, a vedanta. It is in the form of
Ovi poetry and is divided in 14 chapters. Shridhara added 32 stanzas as a prologue to it. Shridhara was also called as
Nazarekar because his father was a
Kulkarni at Nazare in Sholapur district, but they hail from
Khadki. Later they shifted to
Pandharpur from Nazare in his early days of his life. Shridhara turned to literary composer in the middle age. He first composed
Harivijaya in 1702, an abridged version of
Shrikrishna charita, based on
Bhagavata and
Padma Purana. Then followed
RamVijaya in 1703, an abridged adaptation of
Ramayana. Then after a lapse of ten years or so appeared
PandavaPratap in 1712, an abridged version of
Mahabharata. The last to appear in his series was
Shivlilamrut, based mainly on
Skanda Purana. All these compositions are written in a simple, chaste style. He had correctly anticipated common man as his reader, and common man has ever been grateful to him for these writings. They not only read but worshipped these compositions like holy scriptures. Shridhar's popularity is quite a phenomenon in
Marathi literature. There were many Marathi poets before and after him, who had worked on mythological themes,
Mahanubhava poets like Bhaskarabhatta, Borikar and Narendra,
Eknath, Mukteshwara ( from whose version of Mahabharata Shridhara himself had borrowed liberally and literally),
Raghunath Pandit, Samraj and Nagesh.
Moropant alone among them had condensed all the three epics,
Ramayana,
Mahabharata and the
Bhagavata, but his compositions in
Āryā metre addressed pandits well versed in Sanskrit, but could not reach the masses. Shridhara did not belong to the category of saint-poets or pandit-poets. And yet he was the only one among them who could reach out so well to the masses. His simple abridged versions in the popular
Ovi meter appealed to their taste. ==Literary works==