Bhakti movement

Also called: Bhakti · Topic: Bhakti and Sufi Traditions · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 3 "Empires and Kingdoms: 6th to 10th Centuries"; Class 7, Ch 4 "Turning Tides: The 11th and 12th Centuries"; Class 8, Ch 3 "The Marathas"; Class 9, Ch 5 "State and Society up to 1000 CE"; Class 12, Ch 4 "Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Bhakti-Sufi Traditions"

Meaning

Bhakti means loving devotion to one personal god of the devotee's own choice, such as Vishnu, Shiva or Shakti (the goddess). It offers a direct link with the divine, with no elaborate Vedic ritual and no priest in between. This devotion is very old: its early traces are in the Mahabharata. It spread widely from the 6th-century Tamil region onward, which historians later called the "Bhakti Movement".

It matters because bhakti made worship open to all, whatever their class or gender. Love, song and surrender replaced costly sacrifice. Later it gave rise to new sects, new philosophies and poetry in regional languages.

Explanation

Background: from Vedic yajna to a personal god

• The Vedic starting point:
• The Vedic gods had no rigid hierarchy (no fixed ranking). One hymn calls Indra the highest god. Another hymn gives that place to Agni or Varuna.
• Most worship was through yajnas (offerings poured into the sacred fire by trained priests using set formulas).

• The gods stood for forces of nature, such as fire, storm, sun, dawn and water. Chhath (Sun worship) and Makar Sankranti (the Sun's northward turn) carry this nature worship into the present.

• Why the yajna kept many people out:

• A yajna needed priests, money, animals, ghee and exact chanting.

• So poor people, many castes and women could not take part equally.

• The shift:

• Over time, worship moved towards personal deities: Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti.
• The devotee now chose one god and offered love, song and surrender, not a costly sacrifice.
• When worship stopped costing much, it became open to all.

A long history before the "movement"

• Devotional worship is not new in the 6th century. Early references appear in the Mahabharata.
• It already had almost a thousand years of history before c. 800 CE.
• Over that long period it took different forms:
• routine temple worship, which was daily, calm and organised;

• ecstatic adoration, where the devotee is so lost in love of god that they seem to be in a trance.

• Singing and chanting were central to it, especially in Vaishnava sects (those who worship Vishnu) and Shaiva sects (those who worship Shiva).

How it grew: the Tamil saints, then the philosophers

• The Tamil beginning (c. 6th–10th centuries):
• The organised wave started in the 6th-century Tamil region, in the south.
• The Alvars (devotees of Vishnu) and the Nayanars (devotees of Shiva) composed bhakti poetry in Tamil between the 7th and 10th centuries [2].
• The Alvars wandered from temple to temple singing ecstatic hymns to Vishnu. They compared the soul to a woman longing for her lord's love [3].
• The Nayanars were poet-musicians of the 7th and 8th centuries CE. Their images are worshipped in South Indian temples [4].
• These saints came from all castes. Some belonged to groups then treated as "untouchable", such as the Pulaiyar and the Panars.
• They borrowed the ideas of love and heroism from Sangam literature (the oldest Tamil literature, from the early centuries CE).

• They sang in the language of ordinary people and described god and devotee as lover and beloved [2].

• Philosophy gives devotion a base (11th–12th centuries):

• Ramanuja (c. 1017–1137) taught Vishishtadvaita ("qualified non-dualism"). This means God is one, but God is modified by matter and soul [5].
• He made bhakti part of his theory of salvation. This gave devotion an intellectual base [5].
• For him, moksha (release) was more than escape from rebirth. It was the joy of contemplating God. A devotee reached it by singing God's praise, by worship in the temple and at home, and by thinking about God's perfections all the time [5].
• Basava founded the Lingayat / Virashaiva sect ("Heroes of the Shaiva Religion") in the 12th century, in the Kannada-speaking Deccan [6][7].
• He taught ideas and practices of surprising unorthodoxy, which means he openly broke accepted religious rules [7].
• Lingayat thought shows Ramanuja's influence. It holds a qualified monism (God is one, but in a qualified way) and sees bhakti as an intuitive, loving knowledge of God [7].

Main features and the saguna–nirguna split

• Shared features:
• The devotee is directly connected with one chosen god.
• The saints sang in regional languages, not only in Sanskrit.
• Their worship was full of feeling, with song and chanting.
• Costly ritual and the priest as middleman lost importance.

• Anyone could take part, whatever their caste or gender.

• Two kinds of bhakti:

• Saguna ("with attributes"): God has a form, a name and a story. Examples are Shiva, Vishnu and his avatars, and the forms of Devi. These gods are anthropomorphic (shown with a human shape and human feelings). This kind of bhakti suits images, temples and pilgrimage.

• Nirguna ("without attributes"): God is abstract and formless. So there is no image worship. Devotion works through the name of God, the word and inner realisation.

• The result: a spread of devotion, not one organisation. Bhakti reached:

• all social groups: kings, traders, farmers, weavers, leather-workers and women;
• all regions: from Tamil country to Karnataka, Maharashtra, the Gangetic plain, Bengal, Assam and Rajasthan;
• many languages, with each region singing in its own tongue.

Time, place and evidence

• Period:
• Devotional worship goes back to about a thousand years before c. 800 CE, with early references in the Mahabharata.
• The organised wave began in the 6th century. The Alvars and Nayanars were active in the 7th–10th centuries [2][3][4].
• Ramanuja lived c. 1017–1137 [5]. Basava belongs to the 12th century [6].

• The wider medieval spread is usually dated c. 8th–18th centuries.

• Places:

• It began in the Tamil region (South India).

• It then reached the Kannada-speaking Deccan (Lingayats), Maharashtra, the Gangetic plain, Bengal, Assam and Rajasthan.

• Key people:

• The Alvars.
• The Nayanars, especially Nanachampantar (Sambandar), Appar and Chuntaramurtti (Sundarar), who are worshipped as saints [4].

• Ramanuja [5] and Basava [6].

• How we know:

• the Mahabharata (early references to devotion);
• the Tamil hymns of the Alvars and Nayanars [2];
• Sangam literature, which shows where their themes of love and heroism came from;
• images of the Nayanar saints placed in South Indian temples [4];
• Ramanuja's philosophical writings on Vishishtadvaita [5].

Don't confuse with

• Vedic yajna worship: yajna needed priests, fire offerings, wealth and exact formulas, and it worshipped many nature gods with no fixed hierarchy. Bhakti is love for one chosen personal god, with no middleman.
• Alvars vs Nayanars: both were Tamil saints of c. 7th–10th centuries. Alvars worshipped Vishnu. Nayanars worshipped Shiva [3][4].
• Saguna vs nirguna bhakti: in saguna bhakti, God has form and attributes (Vishnu, Shiva, Devi) and images and temples are used. In nirguna bhakti, God is formless, so there is no idol worship.
• Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita vs Basava's Lingayat sect: Ramanuja was a Vaishnava philosopher who taught "qualified non-dualism" [5]. Basava founded a 12th-century Shaiva sect in the Kannada Deccan. That sect was only influenced by Ramanuja's qualified monism [7].

Prelims Hooks

• Early references to devotional worship appear in the Mahabharata. The organised bhakti wave began in the 6th-century Tamil region, not in the north.
• Alvars → Vishnu; Nayanars → Shiva. Both were active c. 7th–10th centuries [2][3][4]. Alvar means "one who is immersed" [3].
• The three most famous Nayanars are Sambandar (Nanachampantar), Appar and Sundarar (Chuntaramurtti) [4].
• Ramanuja (c. 1017–1137) → Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) [5].
• Basava → Lingayat / Virashaiva sect → 12th century, Kannada-speaking Deccan [6][7].
• Trap: "The Bhakti Movement was an organised movement with a single founder" is wrong. It had no founder, no headquarters and no common rulebook.

Mains Points

• From ritual to relationship:
• Yajna needed priests, wealth and exact Sanskrit formulas. Bhakti needed only love and a song in one's own language.
• So control over who could reach god moved away from priests.

• This is why bhakti reached the lower castes and women, whom Vedic ritual had left out.

• Was it really a "movement"? (a historians' debate)

• It had no founder, no organisation and no single doctrine. It was a spread of devotion across regions, castes and languages over about a thousand years.

• A good GS-I answer questions the label. It still uses the shared features that justify grouping these saints together: vernacular song, emotion, direct access to god and criticism of ritual.

• Popular devotion drove philosophy:

• The Tamil hymns came first. Ramanuja later gave bhakti a formal base in Vishishtadvaita, and that base shaped regional sects like Basava's Lingayats [5][7].
• The saguna–nirguna split also explains later differences. Saguna paths built temples, images and pilgrimage networks, and states could take them over through patronage. Nirguna paths rejected images, so they attacked caste, ritual and priestly authority more sharply.

Related concepts

• Saguna bhakti

Read more

• The emergence of bhakti: from Vedic worship to personal devotion