The most repeated story of Tukaram's life concerns his own manuscripts. Tradition holds that Brahmin opponents, most often named as a scholar called Rameshwar Bhatt, objected to his verses on grounds of caste and doctrine and pressed him to throw his notebooks into the Indrayani river, and that Tukaram did so, only for the manuscripts to resurface undamaged after thirteen days of fasting and prayer on the riverbank, an episode read within the tradition as divine vindication of his right to compose.
Historians treat the story as pious legend rather than verified biography, but it remains the single most repeated image associated with him. His collected verses, several thousand abhangas, were compiled after his death into the Tukaram Gatha, which remains in active devotional use and is regarded as one of the central texts of Marathi bhakti literature.
Tradition also holds, again as legend rather than history, that Tukaram did not die but was taken bodily into heaven in a celestial chariot at the end of his life around 1650, a claim historians read as a devotional narrative that removed the ordinary fact of his death from the record his community kept. His verses were later cited with approval by figures well outside his own tradition, including Mahatma Gandhi, who read them during his years in prison, and his influence runs directly through the annual Pandharpur wari, the mass walking pilgrimage in which Varkari pilgrims still carry his palanquin from Dehu to Pandharpur every year.