THE MEDIEVAL BHAKTI MOVEMENT in HISTORY Historians of India

THE MEDIEVAL BHAKTI MOVEMENT IN HISTORY An Essay on the Literature in English ELEANOR ZELLIOT Historians of India, perhaps more than those of any other area, feel the need for an understanding of the historical implications of religious developments. The questions are many, and they come both early and late in a review of Indian history. Almost all we know about the Aryans comes from the sacred Vedas; we ponder the relationship of Buddhism to the rise of the Indian state; fifteen hundred years later, we look to see how renascent Hinduism and revived Islam intertwine with nationalism. And, between the ancient and the modern lies the bhakti movement, the spread of a personal devotional faith. Its roots are in the far past, its flowering is still ap parent today, its place in history is puzzling and fascinating. Here I should make clear that I am speaking of bhakti not as a religious concept of devotional worship but as a movement, the phenom enon of a set of religious ideas and structures first seen in the South in the 7th century and slowly sweeping up to the North by the 15th century. The very use of the word "movement," which does not appear in a discussion of any other facet of Hinduism until the modern period, implies an historic place. Bhakti has been credited with securing the final triumph of Hinduism over Jainism and Buddhism, with bringing the vernaculars into being as literary languages, with spreading the concepts of the Great Tradition of brahmanical Hinduism to the common man, with reconciling Hinduism and Islam, with reviving Hinduism in the face of the Muslim threat, with providing the ethos for the last great Hindu kingdom in India, that of the Marathas. The saint-poets of the bhakti movement have been compared with Christian mystics, who, however, left behind them no movements. The bhakti movement has been seen as the Indian counterpart of the Protestant Reformation, with one or another of its poet-saints, usually Kabir, sometimes Caitanya, filling the role of Luther. It is also possible to write the bhakti movement small, or so broad it loses its historicity. It is true that many of its regional groups can be seen as Mandelbaum (1970, p. 523) described religious sects, 144 ELEANOR ZELLIOT i.e., "movements to reorganize society," but "equality rather than hierarchy among all believers was a common theme, and in almost all these movements the devotees finally came to sort themselves into jatis [endogomous castes] and to act like other jati members in their local order." Contemporary saints and religious figures, especially Mohandas K. Gandhi, have been described as bhaktas. As Louis Renou wrote, "There is no sect [or, indeed, Hindu movement] without some element of Bhakti" (quoted in Mandelbaum, p. 533). I will not attempt to substantiate any of these claims or to deal with bhakti in its broad context. My essay will review the medieval bhakti movement in the various language areas in rough chronological fashion and with great brevity, noting the basic literature in English available and raising a few questions along the way in an attempt to see where we stand in viewing this many-faceted, multi-language movement as a whole. My excuse for this audacious attempt is that a wealth of literature has appeared in English, current scholarship is rich, and my curiosity moves me. Recently, three of my students have written undergraduate papers on the Sikh Gurus, the Liilgayats, and Saiva bhakti in the South, and we were forced to ask together: if bhakti in Punjab became the militant Sikh nation, if bhakti in Karnataka became a non-conformist caste-like sect within Hin duism, ifbhakti in Madras was thoroughly interwoven with brahmani cal religion and orthodox temple worship, then what exactly is the place of the bhakti movement in history? Tbe--eiemenfs of each medieval bhakti group generally are these: saint-poets, known by name and surrounded by legendary history, singing songs of devotion to Kr~J).a, Rama or Siva in the common language of their area; a companionship among these saints, knowl edge of one another and at times of poet-saints in other areas; inclusion of all castes and of women among the saint-poets; an anti ritual or non-ritualistic attitude, sometimes iconoclastic, sometimes deprecating of orthodoxy, with full trust only in devotional experi ence; and, a continuance of structure from the original saint-poets: a succession of poets or gurus, an order, a lay community, a pilgrimage, a festival, a caste-like group, a community devotional singing of the songs called a bhajan or a kirtan. There seem to be exceptions to all these bench marks. Each regional bhakti movement shares something in common with others, but no two seem to have identical structures, attitudes, influences, or histories. My brief notes on the various regional forms of the bhakti move-.

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