Devotional and mystic movements in medieval India, c.1200-1700
The Bhakti Tradition's Evolution into Medieval North India
The Basics
Bhakti means passionate personal devotion to God. Its seeds lay in the Vedas, but it became a popular movement only between the 7th and 12th centuries in south India. The Shaivite Nayanars and Vaishnavite Alvars, patronised by the Pallava, Pandya and Chola kings, rejected the austerities of Buddhism and Jainism. They preached that devotion alone, not ritual or caste status, brought salvation. They sang in Tamil, so ordinary people understood them. Women, such as the poet-saint Andal, and people from low castes took part. Acharyas led by Nathamuni later collected the Alvars' hymns. They placed these hymns alongside the Vedas, so bhakti became woven into temple worship. This strengthened both Brahman authority and the Chola state, which gained from land grants and new agriculture.
By the time of the Delhi Sultanate, Brahmanical ritualism had lost much of its old authority in north India. This happened as the Rajput kingdoms that had patronised it gave way to Turkish rule. Into this gap stepped the Nath Panthis, a sect of wandering yogis who questioned both caste hierarchy and the Brahman's claim to spiritual superiority.
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, bhakti devotion had spread widely across north India, but it did not flow in one single channel. It split into two broad streams, remembered as Saguna Bhakti, worship of god with attributes or form, and Nirguna Bhakti, worship of god without attributes or form.
By the late fourteenth century, bhakti ideas that had grown in the Tamil country under Alvars and Nayanars, and systematised philosophically by Ramanuja in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, had still not taken deep root in the Hindi-speaking heartland of North India. Sanskrit remained the language of elite religious thought, and image worship of Vishnu remained largely confined to orthodox, caste-conscious circles. This is the gap that Ramananda stepped into.
Kabir lived in the fifteenth century. He lived in and around Benares (Kashi). Benares was then a centre of Hindu learning and Muslim settlement. Kabir was born to a Brahman widow. He was raised by a Muslim weaver couple. This exposed him to both religious worlds from childhood. Tradition says he became a disciple of Ramananda. From Ramananda he inherited the idea of nirguna bhakti, devotion to a formless God. Kabir turned this into a bolder critique of organised religion.
Ravidas, Dadu Dayal and the North Indian Sant Tradition
The Basics
Kabir showed that a weaver could challenge both Brahmin ritualism and Muslim orthodoxy. He gathered a large following without formal Sanskrit learning. This proved nirguna ideas could spread among ordinary working people. The question was whether others from humble backgrounds would carry this message further.
Mirabai was born around 1503 into a Rajput royal family of Rajasthan. She was married into the Mewar royal house. She became the daughter-in-law of Rana Sanga, the Mewar ruler. Royal Rajput women were expected to follow strict codes of purdah and family honour.
Mirabai's defiance showed that bhakti could let a woman bypass family and royal authority. She was one voice among several women across medieval India who used devotion to speak when other paths were closed to them.
Bengal in the late fifteenth century already had a devotional tradition around Krishna and Radha. In the twelfth century, the poet Jayadeva composed lyrical verses on the love of Radha and Krishna. These verses drew on the Bhagavata Purana. This Bengal tradition was also shaped by Sahajiya Buddhist and Nathpanthi currents. These currents stressed esoteric, emotional and bodily paths to the divine. This made Bengal Vaishnavism distinct from bhakti in north India or the south.
By the early 16th century, Krishna bhakti was spreading in the Braj region. This area, around Mathura, Vrindavan and Govardhan, was linked to Krishna's childhood. Devotees worshipped Krishna's image with love and tenderness. This differed from the Nirguna sants, who rejected image worship.
By the later sixteenth century, Saguna Bhakti already had a flourishing Krishna tradition. This centred on Mathura and Vrindavan, with refined Braj poetry for temple worship.
By the thirteenth century, Maharashtra was ruled by the Yadava dynasty of Devagiri. It had its own regional devotional current, distinct from the Nirguna saints of the Gangetic plains.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, the Varkari tradition founded by Jnaneshwar and Namdev had a settled base at Pandharpur. Regular pilgrimages called vari and a growing body of Marathi devotional poetry marked this tradition. Maharashtra of this period was also changing politically, moving from the late Deccan Sultanates to the rise of Maratha power under Shivaji in the 17th century. Against this backdrop, two sants carried the Varkari message forward and gave it fresh social depth.
Vallabhacharya's own philosophy is called Shuddhadvaita, meaning pure non-dualism. He rejected Shankara's idea that the world is illusory. For Vallabhacharya, the world, souls and matter are all real manifestations of Brahman, whom he identified with Krishna, not separate from him and not a deceptive appearance. Brahman voluntarily conceals part of his nature to create the world of individual souls and matter, but this creation is as real as Brahman himself. So there is no need for a doctrine of maya as illusion. This is why his system is called "pure" non-dualism, as opposed to Shankara's non-dualism, which he saw as compromised by treating the world as unreal.
In the late fifteenth century, the Brahmaputra valley was ruled by the Ahom kings. They were originally a Tai-Shan people who had entered Assam in the thirteenth century. Under king Suhungmung (c. 1497 to 1539), the Ahom state began adopting Hindu ways. He took the Hindu title Svarga Narayana. Assam still had many tribal and non-Brahmanical communities. It was in this frontier society, far from the Gangetic heartland of Bhakti, that Shankaradeva (traditional dates c. 1449 to 1568, though accounts differ) grew up and worked.
Sufism began inside Islam, far from India. It arose as a reaction against worldly power and moral decline that followed the rise of the Islamic empire after the 7th century.
The Chishti order reached India with Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, who arrived soon after Muizzuddin Muhammad Ghori's invasions; accounts differ on the exact year, placing it anywhere between c.1192 and c.1206. After staying in Lahore and Delhi, he settled in Ajmer, then an important political centre with a sizeable Muslim population. He left no written book, and little authentic record survives, but his fame grew steadily, especially through his successors. He taught that the highest devotion to God lay in feeding the hungry and helping the helpless. He died in c.1235; his fame grew further when Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq later visited his grave, and Mahmud Khalji of Malwa built the dome and mosque at his dargah (tomb-shrine) in the 15th century. Mughal emperor Akbar's patronage later greatly raised the standing of the Ajmer dargah.
A khanqah is a Sufi hospice. It was a building where a saint lived, taught and received visitors. It was not a monastery cut off from the world. Anyone could enter, regardless of class, religion or gender. All shared meals cooked in a common kitchen. The saint's cell, called hujra, was the centre of this household. Disciples lived nearby, following prayer, service and silence. Nizamuddin Auliya's khanqah in Delhi became one of the most visited in India. It was known for its hospitality towards people of every class.
The Chishtis had built a model of popular Sufism centred on poverty, humility and distance from political power. But Sufism in India was never one single pattern, and a second major order arrived around the same time with a very different outlook on wealth and state service.