Bhakti Saints

The Bhakti Yoga page tells how devotion began as a movement in the Tamil country and spread north. This page follows it there and meets the people. Between the 12th and the 19th centuries, in Kannada, Marathi, Kashmiri, Hindi dialects, Bengali, Assamese and Telugu, saints sang to God in the language of the market and the kitchen. Many came from castes the Sanskrit tradition kept at the door. Their songs are still the first religious words many Hindus learn.

One movement, or many?

Textbooks speak of “the bhakti movement,” as if one wave rolled from south to north. Historians are more cautious. John Stratton Hawley has shown that the single-movement story is itself partly a 20th-century construction; the saints were many movements, in different centuries, with different gods and quarrels. What they share is a family likeness: song in the vernacular, a personal God, a teacher or a community of devotees, and suspicion of priestly gatekeeping.

As with the Tamil saints, most of what we are told about their lives comes from hagiography, written generations later: the Braj Bhaktamāl of Nābhādās (around 1600), Anantadās’s parcaīs of Kabīr, Ravidās and Nāmdev, the Marathi Bhaktavijaya of Mahipati (18th century), and the Bengali Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Dates below are approximate, and the stories are marked as hagiography.

Karnataka: the vacana poets

In the 12th century, around the court of the Kalacuri king Bijjaḷa at Kalyāṇa, in today’s northern Karnataka, a community of Shiva devotees composed vacanas, “sayings” — short, unrhymed Kannada prose-poems, each ending with the poet’s name for God. Their leader was Basava (Basavaṇṇa), a Brahmin-born minister who refused the sacred thread and gathered devotees of every caste around a radical Shaivism. He and his companions rejected temple worship, priests, sacrifice and caste; each devotee wore a small personal liṅga, the iṣṭaliṅga, on the body, and honest work (kāyaka) was itself worship — “work is Kailāsa,” in the saying attributed to him. In a famous vacana, Basava says the rich build temples for Shiva, but he, a poor man, will make his legs the pillars, his body the shrine and his head a golden dome. Later texts describe a “hall of experience,” the Anubhava Maṇṭapa, where saints such as Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahādevī debated; historians note that these accounts are centuries later. Hagiography When the community celebrated a marriage between a Brahmin’s daughter and a leatherworker’s son, the king had the fathers executed; violence scattered the devotees, and Basava left Kalyāṇa and died soon after at Kūḍalasaṅgama. Today’s Liṅgāyats (Vīraśaivas) look to him as founder, and some campaign to be recognised as a religion separate from Hinduism; a rival Vīraśaiva tradition honours five ācāryas, the Pañcācāryas, said to be older than Basava — a question tied up with that modern debate.

Akka Mahādevī, “elder sister” Mahādevī, is the boldest voice among them. She called Shiva Cennamallikārjuna, “jasmine-white Lord,” her only husband. Hagiography Leaving a king who wanted her, she cast off her clothes and walked covered only by her long hair, and at Kalyāṇa held her own against the formidable Allama Prabhu. In her vacanas she asks why she should be ashamed when the Lord sees everything, everywhere. She died young near Śrīśaila. A. K. Ramanujan’s Speaking of Śiva made her known in English.

Maharashtra: the Vārkarīs

In Maharashtra, bhakti gathered round Viṭhobā (Viṭṭhala), a form of Krishna standing on a brick at Pandharpur, and round the Vārkarī pilgrims who still walk there every year carrying the sandals of the saints — see Pilgrimage. The saints are remembered as a family:

• Jñāneśvar (traditionally 1275–1296), whose Marathi commentary on the Gītā, the Jñāneśvarī, is the founding classic. His father had returned to household life after taking saṃnyāsa, so the Brahmins of Alandi shunned the children. Hagiography He made a buffalo recite the Veda, and at twenty-one entered living samādhi at Alandi.
• Nāmdev (c. 14th century), a tailor, who travelled as far as Punjab; his hymns are in the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib.
• Janābāī, a maidservant in Nāmdev’s household. Hagiography Viṭhobā came to grind the grain and wash the clothes beside her; her abhaṅgas speak to God with startling familiarity.
• Chokhāmeḷā (14th century), a Mahar, kept outside the Pandharpur temple, who sang of the pollution of the body that every caste shares. He died when a wall he was building collapsed; his memorial stands at the temple’s threshold. His wife Soyarābāī and son Karmameḷā also composed songs.
• Eknāth (16th century) of Paithan, a Brahmin who edited the Jñāneśvarī and wrote playful bhāruḍ songs. Hagiography He fed Mahars at his house on a ritual day, scandalising his neighbours.
• Tukārām (17th century) of Dehu, a Kunbi grain-dealer ruined by famine, whose abhaṅgas are the most loved of all; he called trees, creepers and forest creatures his kin. Hagiography Ordered by a Brahmin to sink his notebooks in the Indrāyaṇī river, he fasted on the bank — and after thirteen days they floated up dry.

Jñāneśvar closed his commentary with a prayer that Marathi families still sing, the Pasāyadān, “gift of grace”:

Kashmir: Lal Ded

Lal Ded (Lallā, Lalleśvarī; 14th century) wandered Kashmir singing vākhs, four-line verses in Kashmiri, steeped in the yoga and non-dual Shaivism of the valley — see Kashmir Shaivism. Hagiography Unhappily married, she left home, went about unclothed, and taught that she had searched everywhere for Shiva only to find him in her own house. Kashmiri Muslims revere her too, as Lal Ārifā, and the Sufi saint Nund Rishi is remembered as her spiritual son. Her verses were passed down orally and written down only centuries later.

The north: God without form

In 15th-century Banaras two low-caste poets gave voice to nirguṇa devotion — love for God “without qualities.” They and their heirs are called the Sants.

Kabīr was a Julāhā, a weaver from a recently converted Muslim community. He mocked the Brahmin’s thread and the mullah’s call alike, idols and pilgrimages, and sang of a Rām who has no form, met within, through the true guru and the Name:

The “two and a half letters” are the Hindi word prem. Kabīr’s poems survive in three main streams — the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib, the Rajasthani Dādūpanthī collections and the Bījak of the Kabīr Panth — and they differ a great deal. Hagiography At his death, Hindus wanted to cremate him and Muslims to bury him; lifting the shroud, they found only flowers, and divided them.

Ravidās (Raidās) was a Chamār, a leatherworker. Some forty of his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib. He sang of Begampurā, “the city without sorrow,” where there is no tax, no fear and no second or third rank — and is remembered for the saying that if the mind is pure, the Ganga is in one’s leather-soaking tub. Hagiography Mīrābāī is said to have taken him as her guru. Today the Ravidassia community, mostly Punjabi Dalits in India and the diaspora, honours him as its founding guru.

The north: God with form

Alongside them sang the great poets of saguṇa devotion, to Krishna and Rama with a face, a story and a home.

Mīrābāī (16th century) was a Rajput princess of Merta who married into the royal house of Mewar. Hagiography She would not treat her husband as her lord, danced in temples, and survived the poison her in-laws sent her, which became nectar; she left for Vrindavan and Dwarka, where she merged into Krishna’s image. Little of this can be checked; even most of the songs sung in her name were written down long after her. But her refusal has made her the patron saint of women who will not be owned:

Sūrdās (16th century), traditionally blind, sang the child Krishna, his pranks and the longing of the gopīs in Braj; his songs are gathered as the Sūrsāgar, “ocean of Sūr.” Later Puṣṭimārga hagiography made him a disciple of Vallabha — see Other Vedantas — though Hawley’s study of the oldest manuscripts finds no trace of that link. Tulsīdās (16th–17th century) retold the Rāmāyaṇa in Awadhi as the Rāmcaritmānas, begun, by its own account, in 1574 — see Rama. It contains lines on women and śūdras that many readers today reject; it also contains this:

The messenger and the milkmaids

The quarrel between form and formlessness was staged most memorably by Sūrdās himself, in his Bhramargīt, “songs to the bee.” Krishna has left Braj for Mathura. He sends his learned friend Uddhava to console the gopīs — with a lecture on the formless God and the discipline of yoga. Whose side are you on?

Bengal and Assam

Caitanya (1486–1534) of Navadvīpa, a brilliant young scholar, was overwhelmed by love for Krishna, took saṃnyāsa at twenty-four and spent his last years at Puri, lost in ecstasy before Jagannātha. He led crowds in saṅkīrtana, singing the divine names through the streets. His followers came to see him as Krishna and Rādhā in a single body, and his disciples the Gosvāmīs of Vrindavan built the Gauḍīya theology described on Other Vedantas. ISKCON, met on the Modern Teachers page, is his best-known heir.

Śaṅkaradeva (traditionally 1449–1568) of Assam taught ekaśaraṇa, “refuge in one” — Krishna alone, without images or sacrifice — and devotion through hearing and singing. He wrote songs (borgīt) and one-act plays, and his movement built village prayer-halls (nāmghar) and monasteries (sattra), such as those on the river island of Majuli, which still shape Assamese life.

The south: saints of music

In the south, bhakti became the classical music still heard in concert halls. Annamācārya (1408–1503) of Tallapaka sang to Venkateśvara of Tirumala in Telugu; thousands of his songs survive, engraved on copper plates found at the temple. Purandaradāsa (1484–1564), a rich pawnbroker turned wandering haridāsa of Madhva’s school, is honoured as the “grandfather” of Carnatic music for the lessons every student still learns; his fellow-poet Kanakadāsa, a shepherd, is the hero of the turning image at Udupi told on Dvaita. Tyāgarāja (1767–1847) of Tiruvaiyaru, on the Kaveri, poured his love for Rama into Telugu kṛtis; every January musicians gather at his samādhi to sing his five “gem” songs together.

Community practice In Malaysia, Purandaradāsa’s exercises and Tyāgarāja’s kṛtis are the bread of every Carnatic music class; Mīrā bhajans, Tulsī’s Hanumān Cālīsā (attributed to him) and Kabīr’s couplets travel through Hindi film songs and temple bhajans; and the Vārkarī and Liṅgāyat traditions live on in small Marathi and Kannada communities.

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Sources & further reading

• John Stratton Hawley, A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Harvard University Press, 2015).
• John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford University Press, 1988).
• A. K. Ramanujan (trans.), Speaking of Śiva (Penguin Classics, 1973).
• Dilip Chitre (trans.), Says Tuka: Selected Poetry of Tukaram (Penguin, 1991).
• Eleanor Zelliot and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar (eds), Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon (Manohar, 2005) — on Chokhāmeḷā, Ravidās and others.
• Charlotte Vaudeville, A Weaver Named Kabir (Oxford University Press, 1993).
• Linda Hess and Shukdev Singh (trans.), The Bījak of Kabir (Oxford University Press, 2002).
• Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod (eds), The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Motilal Banarsidass, 1987).
• Parita Mukta, Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai (Oxford University Press, 1994).
• John Stratton Hawley, Sūr Dās: Poet, Singer, Saint (University of Washington Press, 1984); and with Kenneth E. Bryant, Sur’s Ocean (Murty Classical Library of India, 2015).
• Ranjit Hoskote (trans.), I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd (Penguin Classics, 2011).
• Edward C. Dimock Jr and Tony K. Stewart (trans.), Caitanya Caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja (Harvard Oriental Series, 1999).
• William J. Jackson, Tyāgarāja: Life and Lyrics (Oxford University Press, 1991).