Initial development in Tamil lands (c. 798 CE), one of the Tamil
Alvars and author of the
Tiruvaymoli and the
Tiruviruttam temple. One important foundation of the Shaiva Siddhantha tradition is the Shaiva bhakti of the Nayanars. , a major poet of the Bhakti movement of
Vaishnavism The Bhakti movement originated in
Tamilakam during the seventh to eighth century CE, and remained influential in
South India for some time. In the second millennium, a second wave of bhakti spread northwards through
Karnataka (c. 12th century) and gained wide acceptance in fifteenth-century
Assam,
Bengal and
northern India. According to Brockington, the initial
Tamil Bhakti movement was characterized by "a personal relationship between the deity and the devotee", and "fervent emotional experience in response to divine grace". They promoted love of a personal God first and foremost which is also expressed by love of one's fellow human beings. They also wrote and sang hymns of praise to their God, and came from numerous social classes, even
shudras. These poet saints became the backbone of the
Sri Vaishnava and
Shaiva Siddhanta traditions. The Alvars, which literally means "those immersed in God", were Vaishnava poet-saints who sang praises of Vishnu as they traveled from one place to another. Like the Alvars, the Shaiva Nayanars were Bhakti poet saints. The
Tirumurai, a compilation of hymns on Shiva by sixty-three Nayanar poet-saints, developed into an influential scripture in Shaivism. The poets' itinerant lifestyle helped create temple and pilgrimage sites and spread spiritual ideas built around Shiva. Early Tamil-Shiva Bhakti poets influenced Hindu texts that came to be revered all over India.
Spread throughout India in the 2nd millennium (1131–1196), founder of
Lingayatism ,
Bengal. The influence of the Tamil bhakti saints and those of later northern Bhakti leaders ultimately helped spread
bhakti poetry and ideas throughout all the Indian subcontinent by the 18th century CE. However, outside of the Tamil speaking regions, the Bhakti movement arrived much later, mostly in the second millennium. For example, in
Kannada-speaking regions (roughly modern
Karnataka), the Bhakti movement arrived in the 12th century, with the emergence of
Basava and his Shaivite
Lingayatism, which were known for their total rejection of
caste distinctions and the authority of the
Vedas, their promotion of the religious equality of women, and their focus on worshipping a small
lingam, which they always carried around their necks, as opposed to images in temples run by elite priesthoods. Another important Kannada figure in the Bhakti movement was
Madhvacharya (c. 12–13th centuries), a great and prolific scholar of
Vedanta, who promoted the theology of dualism (
Dvaita Vedanta). Similarly, the Bhakti movement in
Odisha (known as Jñanamisrita bhakti or Dadhya Bhakti) also began in the 12th century. It included various scholars including
Jayadeva (the 12th-century author of the
Gita Govinda), and it had become a mass movement by the 14th century. Figures like
Balarama Dasa,
Achyutananda,
Jasobanta Dasa,
Ananta Dasa and
Jagannatha Dasa preached Bhakti through public
sankirtans across Odisha.
Jagannath was and remains the center of the Odisha Bhakti movement. The Bhakti movements also spread to the north later, particularly during the flowering of northern
Bhakti yoga of the 15th and the 16th centuries. Perhaps the earliest of the northern bhakti figures was
Nimbārkāchārya (c. 12th century), a Brahmin from
Andhra Pradesh who moved to
Vrindavan. He defended a similar theology to
Ramanuja, which he called
Bhedābheda (difference and non-difference). Other important northern bhaktas include
Nāmdev (c. 1270–1350),
Rāmānanda, and
Eknath (c. 1533–1599). Another important development was the rise of the
Sant Mat movement, which drew from
Nath tradition and Vaishnavism. Kabir was a saint known for Hindi poetry that expressed a rejection of external religion in favor of inner experience. After his death, his followers founded the
Kabir panth. A similar movement sharing the same Sant Mat Bhakti background that drew on both Hinduism and Islam, was founded by the
Guru Nānak (1469–1539), the first Guru of
Sikhism. In
Bengal, the most famous composer of Vaishnava devotional songs was
Candīdās (1339–1399). He was celebrated in the popular Bengali
Vaishnava-Sahajiya movement. One the most influential of the northern Hindu Bhakti traditions was the
Krishnaite Gaudiya Vaishnavism of
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) in Bengal. Chaitanya eventually came to be seen by the Bengali Vaishnavas as an
avatara of
Krishna himself. Some scholars state that the Bhakti movement's rapid spread in India in the 2nd millennium was in part a response to the arrival of
Islam and subsequent Islamic rule in India and Hindu-Muslim conflicts. That view is contested by some scholars, with
Rekha Pande stating that singing ecstatic Bhakti hymns in local language had been a tradition in
South India before
Muhammad was born. However, other scholars state that Muslim invasions, the conquests of Hindu Bhakti temples in South India and the seizure and the melting of musical instruments such as
cymbals from local people were part responsible for the later relocation or demise of singing Bhakti traditions in the 18th century. According to
Wendy Doniger, the nature of the Bhakti movement may have been affected by the daily practices to "surrender to God" of Islam when it arrived in India. and other religions in India from the 15th century onwards, such as
Sikhism,
Christianity, and
Jainism. Klaus Witz, in contrast, traces the history and nature of the Bhakti movement to the
Upanishadic and the Vedanta foundations of Hinduism. He writes that in virtually every Bhakti movement poet, "the Upanishadic teachings form an all-pervasive substratum, if not a basis. We have here a state of affairs that has no parallel in the West. Supreme Wisdom, which can be taken as basically non-theistic and as an independent wisdom tradition (not dependent on the Vedas), appears fused with the highest level of
bhakti and with the highest level of God-realization."
Key figures The Bhakti movement witnessed a surge in Hindu literature in regional languages, particularly in the form of devotional poems and music. This literature includes the writings of the
Alvars and
Nayanars, poems of
Andal,, Ghananand,
Raskhan,
Ravidas,
Jayadeva Goswami,
Sankardev,,
Narsinh Mehta,
Gangasati and the teachings of saints like
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The writings of
Sankaradeva in
Assam, however, included an emphasis on the regional language and also led to the development of an artificial literary language called
Brajavali.
Brajavali is, to an extent, a combination of medieval
Maithili and
Assamese. The language was easily understood by the local populace, in line with the Bhakti movement's call for inclusion, but also retained its literary style. A similar language, called
Brajabuli was popularised by
Vidyapati, which was adopted by several writers in
Odisha in the medieval times, and in
Bengal during its
renaissance. These writers championed a spectrum of philosophical positions ranging from theistic dualism, qualified
nondualism and absolute
monism. Similarly, the first translation of the Ramayana into an
Indo-Aryan language was by
Madhava Kandali, who translated it into
Assamese as the
Saptakanda Ramayana.
Shandilya and
Narada are credited with two Bhakti texts,
Shandilya Bhakti Sutra and
Narada Bhakti Sutra, but both have been dated to the 12th century by modern scholars. == Theology ==