1.1 Veda and Upaniṣad

One paradigmatic narrative that has been reworked multiple times across Hindu worldviews involves a primordial sacrifice (yajña) that generates all the types of order (ṛta, dharma) – cosmological, linguistic, moral, political – that we see in the world around us. Suppose we ask questions such as: why is there some structure and coherence in the world? Why is it the case that after every day there is night, which is followed by day again? A Vedic answer would be that through this sacrifice, the gods produced the world and the forms of interrelation that shape our everyday existence. Rig Veda 10.90 declares that the body of the cosmic person (puruṣa) is ritually dismembered and the different interrelated parts of the cosmos emanate from this order-generating sacrifice. Crucially, we human beings, who are products of and enmeshed within this sacrificial order (dharma), have to repeat the sacrifice; otherwise, the fabrics of reality would gradually unravel (Mahony 2002). So, the sacrifice is both the generative matrix of dharma and the sustaining power of dharma in which we are implicated in the here and now. This fractal-like homology or equivalence (bandhu) is highlighted in some Vedic texts which delineate intricate correlations between the sacrificial ritual and the macrocosm.

The idiom of bandhu is reflected in many of the Rig Vedic hymns where the central deities are variously imaged as ‘protector’, ‘guest’, ‘friend’, and ‘messenger’. Many of these hymns are directed to Indra, who is the deity of valour and is invoked to defend the officiants at the ritual sacrifices. Indra is invited to come to the ritual space to drink the juice of the soma plant offered to him, so that by becoming exhilarated through the drink Indra will vanquish enemies in battle and munificently offer protection, wealth, and cattle to the supplicants. Agni is extremely significant in the ritual imagination of the Rig Veda: Agni is the deity of the ritual fire and the domestic hearth, and is the mediator between the officiants and the high heavens. Another important deity is Varuṇa, who is the governor of the cosmic moral order (dharma). Varuṇa is the punisher of wrongdoing and, through the hymns, is implored to forgive people of transgressing the order (Miller 1993).

Now hear my call, Varuṇa, and today have mercy.
It is you whom I desire, seeking help.
You, wise one, rule over all, both heaven and earth.
Listen in response to my entreaty.
Release above the uppermost fetter from us, unbind away the midmost,
(loosen) below those lowest, in order for us to live. (Jamison and Brereton 2017: 124)

These vocabularies of the gracious accessibility of the divine reality become especially significant in subsequent formulations of bhakti-animated Hinduism. Two deities central to these formulations are Rudra (Shiva) and Vishnu (with, in one list, ten manifestations or avatāras); but in the Rig Veda they are mentioned only in a few verses. There is no clear indication of how these and the other deities that appear in the hymns may be placed on an order of significance, and indeed one verse suggests that they are all rooted in one fundamental divinity: ‘To what is one the sages give many a name’ (1.164.46). This direction towards unification emerges even more clearly in some Upaniṣads which allegorize the Vedic bandhu – the true yajña involves not the pouring out of material oblations but the sacrifice of the self (ātman), that is, the meditative process of surrendering one’s emotions, cognitions, and vital breaths into the ‘fire’ of self-inquiry. This internalized sacrifice constitutes the sacred knowledge (vidyā) which is charged with the power of liberating individuals from the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra) that is marked by impermanence, suffering (duḥkha), and ignorance (avidyā). However, the different Upaniṣads do not give us straightforwardly doctrinal teachings on the nature of this vidyā, and the relation between ātman and brahman is variously characterized in terms of identity, dependence, and communion (Cohen 2018).

In the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (c.500 BCE), we distinctly hear the theme that would later become vital to forms of bhakti associated with various Vedāntic worldviews (c.1000–1600 CE) and their numerous vernacular expressions (Olivelle 1998: 413–433). It repeatedly highlights the devotional proximity of the human to the divine reality who is said to be one (eka) and the source of liberation from the fetters of finitude. Here the divine is Rudra (Shiva) who is the world-producer, rules over perishable objects and the self (ātman), envelops everything, and is present imperceptibly everywhere. Those who seek liberation would take refuge (śaraṇa) in the adorable or praiseworthy (īḍya) Lord who is beyond worldly time, the source of virtue (dharma), the destroyer of sins, and the inner self of all beings (sarvabhūtāntarātmā). This interplay between the language of transcendence – the Lord is distinct from the world and higher than the highest – and the language of immanence – the Lord is deeply hidden in everything – would shape the visions of several Vedāntic theologians. The word bhakti itself appears in the concluding verse (6.23): ‘The topics that have been explained here become clear to a great soul who has the highest bhakti for the deity and the same degree of devotion to the guru’.

1.2 Bhagavad-gītā

What the Vedas and the Upaniṣads seem to indicate is that there is some sort of cosmic ‘kinship’ or ‘affinity’ between humanity and divinity, and this theme becomes even more clearly articulated across the bhakti-shaped textures of the Bhagavad-gītā (Lipner 1997). The eighteen chapters of this text commence on the eve of a fratricidal battle – on one side are five Pāṇḍavas, and on the other are their cousins, the Kauravas. Arjuna, one of the Pāṇḍavas, is an archer and he declares to Krishna, who is his charioteer, that he cannot fight because he cannot be involved in the slaughter of his kinsmen. The Bhagavad-gītā can be read as an extended sermon that Krishna preaches to invigorate Arjuna to stand up and fight. It is often presented as a ‘synthetic’ text which interweaves different styles of theological, cosmological, and ritual vocabulary. There is variously an emphasis on self-inquiry (jñāna), performing sacrificial action (karma) by surrendering it to Krishna who is the supervisor of dharma, and meditatively cultivating a devotional centredness (bhakti) in Krishna. The exercises of Vedāntic systematization were partly dedicated to the hermeneutic task of ascertaining which one of these three disciplines (jñāna, karma, bhakti) is soteriologically superior to the other two, and in what order they may have to be cultivated (Lott 1980).

Recalibrating Vedic cosmology, the Bhagavad-gītā presents worldly action which is surrendered unto Krishna as a sacrificial ritual (yajña). If a student is writing an essay with a meditative form of self-awareness – ‘Through this action I am discharging my dharmic obligations as a student, and the ultimate source and foundation of this dharmic structure is Krishna’ – then this seemingly mundane exercise is charged with spiritual significance. Thus, we read (5.10) that those individuals who work by dedicating all their actions to Krishna are not touched by evil (pāpa), just as a lotus leaf is untouched by water. Krishna is the gravitational centre of a spiritual field, and devotees would inhabit its dynamic milieus by becoming rooted in, or attached to, Krishna. In one of the most frequently cited verses, we hear Krishna’s declaration to Arjuna: ‘Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer, whatever you give away, whatever austerities you practise – do all this as an offering to me’ (9.27). The interiorized style of self-surrender invoked by some Upaniṣads is recalibrated in terms of the attachment of the devotee who would become unwaveringly directed to the deity: ‘if a pure-hearted individual offers me with bhakti a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, I accept their offering of bhakti’ (9.26).

Towards the cultivation of such a wholehearted orientation to Krishna, one would negate one’s ‘I’-centred dispositions, such that one would not hanker after the fruits of action and instead surrender them to Krishna, considering Krishna as the supreme agent. The important claim is that actions performed by individuals with an internal sense of detachment will not accumulate karmic residue, so that even though they are in the world they are not of the world. So, renunciation is not so much the physical migration to a remote island, but the progressive dissolution of an egocentric sense of agency and attachment to the fruits of action. If we are able to move in the direction of this ego-effacing renunciation, we are in the process of cultivating ‘yoga’, which is said to be an equanimity (2.48) in the heat and dust of the everyday world. Krishna himself is perfectly established in yoga, so that Krishna is not attached to the world even though Krishna is working in and through the world (3.22) – Krishna is the transcendental teacher of yoga from whom Arjuna is being invited to learn. For theological systems shaped by the motifs of bhakti, the idiom of yoga (Whicher and Carpenter 2003) refers to the cultivation of devotional attachment to the deity as the spiritual discipline that leads to liberation.

In some verses, we encounter clear depictions of Krishna as the supreme Lord – the origin, the basis, and the telos of all finite reality (7.7, 9.4, 10.20). In another frequently cited verse (4.7), Krishna declares: ‘Whenever there is a decline of dharma and a rise of adharma, I send forth myself’. Although the precise word avatāra – which means ‘descent’ and is sometimes translated as ‘incarnation’ – does not appear here, such verses become the basis of the doctrine that the divine becomes manifested in spatiotemporal conditions. The divine descends, as it were, to the world on the edge of adharma, and this cosmic intervention draws it back from the brink and restores the structures of dharma. Krishna gives Arjuna a cosmic vision with which he is able to behold Krishna’s divine form, and declares that it is through divine grace that Arjuna has been able to see the supreme form (rūpaṁ param) – resplendent, universal, infinite, and primal (11.48). The Bhagavad-gītā, which incorporates multiple cosmological strands, has been read in somewhat different ways on the theme of whether or not the ultimate reality has a specific form (rūpa). Commentators sometimes present verse 18.66 as its quintessential message: ‘abandoning all duties [dharma] come to me [Krishna] for refuge, do not grieve, I shall release you [Arjuna] from all evil’. The word translated as ‘release’ has the same root which gives us the word mokṣa, or liberation from conditions of ignorance, impermanence, and suffering: Arjuna would seek refuge (śaraṇa) at Krishna’s feet, and Krishna will liberate Arjuna from all worldly finitude (saṃsāra).

1.3 Devī-māhātmya

This quest for liberation from the trials of saṃsāra shapes various forms of devotion to the Goddess (devī) (Hawley and Wulff 1996; Pintchman 1984). The Devī-māhātmya paradigmatically narrates how the Goddess intervenes, in the terrifying form of Kali (Kālī), to slay demonic powers. As the cosmic feminine power, the great devī demands that this text glorifying her should be recited with bhakti on the eighth, fourteenth, and ninth days of each lunar fortnight, and especially at the great festival (mahāpūjā) in the autumn (12.3; 12.12) (Coburn 1991: 79–80). Straddling the borderline between dharma and adharma, Kali regenerates order out of the heart of darkness, and it is this mode of maternal care that has been eulogized by poets such as Rāmprasād Sen (c.1718–1775). The flickering mind has to become steadfastly devoted to the feet of the Goddess, under whose protective mantle the devotee would live without fear of any evil. Thus, throwing himself at the feet of the divine mother (mā), Sen declares:

Because I forget You
I burn in pain.
Mā, I wish I were the dust
under Your fear-dispelling feet. (McDermott 2001: 196)

1.4 Bhāgavata-purāṇa

In the bhakti-shaped cosmologies of Hindu worship, we find the divine reality imaged as the cosmic mother – and also as a child, friend, and lover. The paradox is that the supremely perfect Lord, who transcends all spatiotemporal limitations and is not a finite being, is present with us as a human-like protector or companion. In the Bhagavad-gītā, when Krishna reveals to Arjuna his infinite form, in which Arjuna sees the whole world with all its beings, Arjuna is struck with fear. Arjuna asks for forgiveness for having presumptuously addressed him as ‘Krishna’ and ‘friend’ – unaware of Krishna’s majesty, whether out of negligence or affection (praṇayena), Arjuna may have engaged with Krishna disrespectfully while playing, resting, sitting, and eating (11:41–42).

In certain respects, this paradoxical polarity of divine majesty and divine accessibility is highlighted even more clearly in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, which is a central text in the lineages of many Vaiṣṇava Hindus (Sheridan 1986). The crucial book is the tenth which sketches the birth, childhood, and youth of Krishna, who is variously viewed by the lineages as an avatar (avatāra) of Vishnu or the fullness of divinity. In either case, Krishna is presented as the supremely adorable Lord who is affectionate to devotees. The vocabularies of Lord-directed affectivity shape the numerous verses that declare that in the present time, called kali yuga – which is the most morally degenerate aeon – the cultivation of bhakti to the Lord is the only soteriologically effective pathway. This cultivation is structured by practices such as hearing and telling stories about Vishnu and avatāras of Vishnu; worship of images of avatāras in temples dedicated to them; and association with pious devotees (satsaṅga).

In five crucial chapters of the tenth book, we find that bhakti has the spiritual magnetism to decentre individuals from worldliness and recentre them unwaveringly in Krishna (Kinsley 1979; Schweig 2005). These perfect devotees are the cowherd women (gopīs) who are to be emulated by all human beings. On an autumn evening, when the charming full moon has risen, Krishna begins to play on his flute. So enthralling are the notes of the flute that the gopīs abandon their domestic chores and run to the forest to be with him. They praise him with song, and he responds with his own singing, and takes them to the riverbank suffused with breezes. Some of them become filled with pride and Krishna disappears, plunging them into grief. Overwhelmed with pain, they search for Krishna everywhere. This agonized quest, during which they discern clear signs of Krishna’s absence everywhere, is followed by their reunion with Krishna in a circle dance. At the heart of these alternations lies the acute pain of separation (viraha) from the divine, which is presented in Vaiṣṇava theological traditions as a soteriological means of attaining the divine. If Krishna is present to us, we might mistakenly think that we possess Krishna, and even become oblivious to the divine presence; however, when Krishna disappears, so excruciatingly painful is this absence to devotees that they single-mindedly focus their existential core on the (seemingly) absent Krishna alone. The Bhāgavata-purāṇa (10.29.10–11) states, regarding some of the gopīs who could not join Krishna, that ‘[the karma] from their impious deeds was destroyed by the intense and intolerable pain of separation from their lover […] Their bondage was destroyed, and they immediately left their bodies made of the [worldly] guṇas’ (Bryant 2003: 126).

Thus, central to the Bhāgavata-purāṇa is the presentation of the reciprocity between the human and the divine in terms of the ‘binding’ power of love (Hawley 1983). The devotee is the very heart (hṛdaya) of the Lord and they do not know anything other than the Lord; and the Lord too is their very heart (9.4.68). The Lord would not abandon the supreme devotees, and the Lord’s feet are tied to them with ropes of affection (praṇaya) (11.2.55). Thus, Krishna is simultaneously the attractor and the attracted – it is not simply that Krishna is playing on his flute and drawing out human beings from their egocentric absorption; rather, Krishna himself becomes drawn to the devotees who are able to bind Krishna through the soteriological power of their devotional love. This ‘accommodation’ of the deity to the devotee is highlighted in another famous narrative (10.8.32–45) where Yaśodā tells her infant Krishna that his playmates have complained that he has eaten some earth, and is then struck with bewilderment when on peering into his mouth, she sees entire worlds. She sees the sky, islands and oceans, the moon and the stars, and so on – along with herself (sahātmānam). She is about to surrender herself at his feet, considering him to be her refuge, when Krishna, through his cosmic power, makes her forget this vision, so that she takes her infant on her lap with maternal affection (sneha).

1.5 Bhakti-sūtras

The aphorisms in the bhakti-sūtras embody this theme of generating a single-minded orientation to the divine reality (Swami 1957). We read that bhakti is of the form of supreme love (parama-premarūpā) towards the Lord and of the nature of nectar, attaining which people become perfected (siddha), immortal, and contented. Such bhakti involves a restraint (nirodha) which is to be understood as single-mindedness (ananyatā) towards the Lord and indifference to whatever is opposed to the Lord. Further, bhakti is superior to other pathways such as karma and jñāna; the Lord is averse to egoism (abhimāna) and likes the consciousness of one’s wretchedness (dainya). The supreme devotees who converse with one another with a choking voice, with their hairs standing on end, and with tears flowing, purify (pāvayanti) their families as well as the earth. The Bhakti-sūtras end by noting that though love of the Lord is one kind (ekadhā), it appears in eleven forms: the attachment to the greatness of the divine qualities, the attachment to the divine forms, the attachment to worship, the attachment to constant remembrance, the attachment to divine service (dāsyāsakti), the attachment to divine friendship (sākhyāsakti), the attachment of parental affection (vātsalyāsakti), the attachment of the beloved (kāntāsakti), the attachment of self-offering, the attachment of being suffused (tanmayāsakti), and the attachment of the deepest separation (parama-virahāsakti).

2.1 Bhakti and theological visions

Taking the scriptural tapestries of the Bhagavad-gītā as our point of entry into theological landscapes, we see different gurus weaving the threads of karma, jñāna, and bhakti in some distinctive tapestries. The world is said to be without a temporal origination (anādi), and it goes through a series of productions and dissolutions as individuals may progress – in accordance with the spiritual discipline laid down by a guru – towards liberation (mokṣa). At the heart of these theological visions is an exegetical debate about the relation between ātman and brahman.

In the tradition of Advaita Vedānta stemming from Śaṃkara, liberation from conditions of finitude lies in the realization of an undifferentiated not-distinctness or nonduality (advaita) between ātman and brahman (Rambachan 2006). The numerous spatiotemporal entities of the world are essentially advaita with brahman and are not ontologically real over and above brahman. Insofar as bhakti presupposes or implies a real duality between devotee and deity, and involves various types of karma, bhakti cannot immediately lead an individual towards advaita; however, to the extent that it involves an unwavering focus on an icon of a deity, it can penultimately stabilize an individual on the pathway towards advaita through self-knowledge (jñāna). Some figures associated with the long history of Advaita articulate an antithesis of the form ‘the lower bhakti for the masses, the higher advaita for the enlightened’, but Śaṃkara himself arguably did not view devotional subjectivities and the realization of nonduality in such subordinationist terms – rather, the correct practice of bhakti can point an individual towards the brahman beyond all forms and qualities (nirguṇa) that is intimated by Advaita Vedānta (Hirst 1993; Malkovsky 2001).

Some centuries later, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (c.1600 CE) would write his Bhaktirasāyana (Alchemy of Devotion) and his commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā for two distinct audiences. According to Lance Nelson (1988: 85), Madhusūdana composed the first to recommend Advaita visions to devotees outside Śaṁkara lineages, and the second to recommend devotion to fellow ascetics within them. Thus, in the former text, devotion is set out as an independent path that leads to liberation and as the highest goal of life (paramapuruṣārtha), while in the latter text, devotion is ultimately subordinated to jñāna which is to be attained through scriptural meditation. In some commentarial texts of nondualist Kashmir Śaivism, too, we find a similar oscillation between an emphasis on the cultivation of bhakti towards a seemingly distinct deity and the definitive assertion that the devotee is ontologically not-distinct from the highest reality, Shiva. So, bhakti is the deepening of the insight that Shiva is both the subject and the object of devotion (Flood 1993). In these traditions, as developed by Somānanda (c.900 CE), Utpaladeva (c.950 CE), and others, the world is a manifestation of universal and dynamic consciousness (saṃvit). This divine principle is the union of Shiva and Shiva’s cosmic energy (Śakti), and it projects the world of finite selves and material objects which do not exist independently of their divine root (Isayeva 1995).

In contrast, the Śrī Vaiṣṇava worldview of Rāmānuja, who rearticulates several themes of the poems of the Āḻvārs (see section 2.2), is more unambiguously suffused with the idioms and the subjectivities of bhakti (Carman 1974; Lipner 1986; Bartley 2002). The Vedāntic vision of Rāmānuja (known as viśiṣṭādvaita) is structured by the claim that the finite world, which is ontologically real, is nondual with brahman, who is the supremely personal (saguṇa) Lord Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa. The whole world, comprising conscious selves (cit) and insentient materiality (acit), is said to be the body (śarīra) of the Lord. Rāmānuja defines the word śarīra precisely as any substance which a conscious being can completely control and support for its own purposes, and whose essential form is to be the accessory of that being. This definition structures an analogy of being between the embodied self (cit), and the Lord who is embodied in the world – just as the physical body is animated, supported, and controlled by the imperishable self in a human person, so too are all finite selves and physical entities animated, supported, and controlled by the Lord. So, regarding the scriptural dictum tat tvam asi (‘you are that’), tvam refers to the embodied self (cit) which, as part of the body of the Lord, is a real qualifier of tat, who is the Lord. The connector asi is to be understood in terms of the notion of inseparability (apṛthak-siddhi) which relates two entities which are distinct and yet inseparable.

However, although the world is the śarīra of the Lord, this truth is not immediately accessible to all selves because of their ignorance (avidyā) about their existential dependence on the Lord. Such individuals should begin to cultivate a deep devotional love (bhakti) of the Lord, and envision the finite world as rooted in and pervaded by the Lord. In his commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā, Rāmānuja writes that they will seek refuge in the Lord with the understanding that it is the Lord who is the supreme agent energizing their worldly agency. To assist them on their pathway, the Lord assumes different avatāras – the transcendental form of the Lord is not accessible to human conceptualization, and the Lord shapes this form, without any transformation in the divine nature, into the likeness of different beings and grants them their desires. The Lord compassionately becomes a refuge for devotees, and by surrendering themselves to the Lord, devotees can become liberated from the sorrows of the world.

In short, both Śaṃkara and Rāmānuja affirm a fundamental nonduality between brahman and the world but they disagree over whether or not this nonduality implies that the world is ontologically real (Ram-Prasad 2013). Madhva rejects this motif of nonduality, and concludes, on the basis of his readings of the scriptural texts, that the world is completely dependent on as well as distinct (dvaita) from brahman who is the Lord Vishnu (Sharma 1986; Sarma 2003). This relationality is expressed through the metaphor of reflection: the Lord is the prototype, and the world is the reflection which remains dependent on its source at all times. Crucially, according to Madhva, tat tvam asi should be read as ‘you (devotee) are not that (Vishnu)’. The Lord Vishnu, who is the complete reality, should be worshipped with single-minded devotion.

The centrality of the cultivation of bhakti appears also in the Caitanya or Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition associated with the Bengali saint Caitanya (1486–1534) (Gupta 2007; Kapoor 2008). The ultimate reality is the eternal hyphenation of Krishna and Rādhā, who is the personification of the ‘delighting power’ (hlādinī-śakti) of Krishna. Individual selves and physical objects are reflections of the supreme bliss (ānanda) of Rādhā-Krishna. The relation between the world, which is dependently real, and Rādhā-Krishna is that of nondifference and difference (bhedābheda). The commentator Jīva Gosvāmin (c.1500) explains that the Upaniṣads teach that brahman has parts only in the sense that brahman is qualified by finite selves (jīvas) and others; the Upaniṣads which indicate brahman to be partless are concerned with the absolute aspect of brahman. The jīvas, which are manifested by Krishna’s jīva-śakti, are inclined towards the world which is produced by Krishna’s māyā-śakti, and thus they tend to forget that their true nature is spiritual. However, through the development of unwavering bhakti, they can return to the bewitchingly beautiful Krishna. Following the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, the tradition emphasizes the superiority of devotees who seek to realize the sweetness (mādhurya) of the Lord over those who meditate on the Lord’s majesty (aiśvarya).

These themes are reflected in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu of the commentator Rūpa Gosvāmin (c.1500) (Haberman 2003), who divides bhakti into four broad classes: sāmānyā-bhakti, sādhana-bhakti, bhāva-bhakti, and prema-bhakti. The first is devotion in general; the second is devotion that can be attained through specific types of effort; the third is devotion that rises spontaneously; and the fourth is devotion that has matured into unalloyed ego-effacing love. At the summit, a perfect devotee such as a gopī would spontaneously and selflessly love Krishna for the sheer delight of this love (prema) and not for the sake of any transactional gain that may result from this affective surrender to Krishna.

In the Vedāntic vision of Vallabha (1479–1531), too, brahman is the Lord Krishna, and individual selves return to their Lord by generating devotional love. This worldview is known as śuddhādvaita or ‘pure non-dualism’, where the Lord is non-different from the world which is ontologically real. The world is produced by the Lord’s non-necessitated and exuberant sport (līlā), and through divine grace (anugraha), the Lord becomes revealed as the lover of the gopīs who are passionately devoted to their divine beloved. However, because of ignorance (avidyā), the jīva generally forgets that its fulfilment lies in rendering self-effacing devotional service (sevā) to the Lord. Vallabha viewed egoism as a delusion which takes human beings away from the Lord, and put forward sevā of the Lord, singing the praises of the Lord, and listening to accounts of the Lord’s līlā as the means through which they can move towards their Lord. A vital theme in the devotional life of the Vallabha tradition is the puṣṭi (‘nourishment’) type of liberation which is independent of any human means – individuals have to depend entirely on the anugraha of their Lord (Marfatia 1967; Barz 1976; Redington 1983).

This theme of the Lord’s gracious outreach is central to the forms of worship of Shiva in the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition, rooted in twenty-eight texts called the Śaiva Ᾱgamas and the twelve Tirumuṟai which are collections of devotional poems of figures such as Appar (c.600 CE), Campantar (c.680 CE), Cuntarar (c.700 CE), and Māṇikkavācakar (c.900 CE) (Dhavamony 1971; Sivaraman 1973; Davis 1992). According to this worldview, the Lord Shiva (pati), the individual self (paśu), and the world with its fetters (pāśa) are distinct. In the form of Sadāśiva, the Lord performs five functions: emanation of the world and its maintenance and absorption, self-concealment of Shiva, and self-revelation of Shiva through grace. Shiva is the efficient cause (nimitta-kāraṇa) who generates the cosmos as the moral stage where individuals will overcome their worldly impediments (mala); but Shiva is not the substantial cause (upādāna-kāraṇa), for the production of the world out of Shiva is believed to implicate Shiva in the limitations of finitude. Because the individual self is encased in worldly bondage, it is not aware of its deep communion with Shiva. Poets such as Appar express both their devotional intimacy with Shiva and their self-abasement before Shiva whose praises they are unworthy to sing.

I don’t know pure Tamil for song,
I can’t make poems.
I knew nothing of science, and the modes of music,
of all the arts that are his own self,
and of his greatness.
He revealed his power and his way
to me, an ignorant man. (Peterson 2014: 236–237)

Invoking the symbolism of conjugal union, these poets speak of Shiva as the bridegroom and the individual self as Shiva’s bride, and proclaim that the love with which they seek communion with Shiva is itself generated and sustained by Shiva’s grace. Thus, Māṇikkavācakar declares:

Like an actor in a play
I imitate your servants
and clamor to enter the inner chamber of your house,
Master,
lord brilliant as a mountain of gems set in gold,
give your grace
so I can love you with love so unceasing
my heart overflows. (Cutler 1987: 161)

The soteriological path starts with a ritual initiation (dīkṣā) through the imposition of mantras by a teacher (ācārya) – some of the constraints on the individual self’s inherent powers of knowledge and agency are removed, and this process has to be carried on throughout one’s life through various daily and occasional observances. The liberated self becomes omnipotent and omniscient like Shiva but remains ontologically distinct from Shiva.

2.2 Vernacular reconfigurations

From around the sixth century CE, Tamil emerged as a major scriptural language for the idioms and subjectivities of bhakti, through the compositions of twelve poets from Vaiṣṇava milieus (Āḻvār) and sixty-three poets and devotees from Śaiva milieus (Nāyaṉār), where Shiva and Vishnu, respectively, are worshipped as the supreme divinity. To the former category belong Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar – and their compositions, collectively known as the Tēvāram (The Garland of God), constitute the central part of the Śaiva devotional canon. In these religious milieus, Tamil is increasingly positioned, in both domestic and temple spaces, as a sociolinguistic medium for divine revelation. Around the eleventh century, the poems of the Āḻvārs are gathered into a compilation of four thousand poems called the Nālayira Divya Prabandham (Divine Collection of Four Thousand). The Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition develops a theological style called ‘dual’ (ubhaya) Vedānta, where the Divine Collection, as the Tamil Veda, is revered as scripturally equivalent to the Sanskrit Veda.

The Bhāgavata-purāṇa was probably composed somewhere in the southern regions of the country, and reflects the intensely passionate styles of bhakti articulated in the vernacular Tamil Vaiṣṇava milieus of the Āḻvārs (800–1000 CE). The poems especially of Nammāḻvār, called the Tiruvāymoḻi, and of Āṇṭāl (Venkatesan 2009) were pivotal in the development of bhakti-animated forms of spirituality that would later be synthesized by Rāmānuja. According to Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition, the first ācārya Nātamuṉi initiated the recitation of these Tamil poems in temples, and in contemporary worship, they are used alongside Sanskrit verses. Highlighting this scriptural status, Nammāḻvār declares:

What can I say of the Lord
who lifted me up for all time,
and made me himself, everyday?
My radiant one, the first one,
My Lord, sings of himself,
through me, in sweet Tamil. (Carman and Narayanan 1989: 234)

Vishnu is declared to be the all-pervasive supreme reality, and all deities to be instruments or attendants of Vishnu with various avatāras such as Krishna (often called Kaṇṇaṉ, the ‘dear one’), Rāma, and others. As the divinity with a supremely beautiful form, Vishnu is both present to the devotee as the deity enshrined in the local temple with a local name and surpasses all human limitations. Vishnu is the destroyer of demonic forces and the reliever of the distress of humanity, and the Āḻvārs repeatedly emphasize recollecting the great deeds of Vishnu, singing the glories of Vishnu, and bowing to Vishnu (Carman and Narayanan 1989: 206). These poems extensively reference the distinctive flora and fauna of the Tamil countryside, as they speak of their agony of separation from, and their quest for union with, Vishnu (Hardy 1983).

O nectar that never satiates!
You cause your servant’s body,
so filled with love for you,
to sway restlessly,
like the waves of a sea
dissolving the shores. (Carman and Narayanan 1989: 216)

Such devotion directed to the supremely personal deity appears also in the Rāmcaritmānas, which is the retelling by Tulsīdās (c.1600) of the epic narrative Rāmāyaṇa (Lutgendorf 1991); the songs of Sūrdās (c.1500; Bryant 1978), who was associated with the Vallabha tradition; and Mīrābāī (c.1500). A common theme is the emphasis on the impermanence of this precarious world and the salvific power of the compassionate Lord who delivers us from our everyday distress.

Invoking Rāma, Tulsīdās sings:

Say Ram, say Ram, say Ram.
you fool!
That name is your raft
on the awful sea of life. (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 165)

Echoing the līlā (exuberant sport) of Krishna and the gopīs, Sūrdās sings:

Thoughts of him stalk me, even in my dreams,
Now that he has gone; and oh, my friend, it hurts
as hard as on the day that [Krishna] left.
Last night, in fact, that cowherd came to my house:
he laughed his laugh and grasped me by the arm.
What am I to do? The night is now my foe.
Will I ever know another wink of sleep? (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 109)

Many of the songs of Mīrābāī are suffused with the sentiment of acute pain in separation (viraha) from the Lord to whom she viewed herself as spiritually wedded (Alston 1980; Mukta 1994; Martin 2002). Thus, she declares:

Go to where my loved one lives,
go where he lives and tell him
if he says so, I’ll color my sari red;
if he says so, I’ll wear the godly yellow garb;
if he says so, I’ll drape the part in my hair with pearls;
if he says so, I’ll let my hair grow wild.
Mira’s Lord is the clever Mountain Lifter:
listen to the praises of that king. (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 138)

The bridal mysticism of Mīrābāī is embodied also in the Sanskrit Gītagovinda of Jayadeva (c.1200), who sketches with exquisite symbolic beauty the līlā of Krishna and the gopīs (Miller 1977; Siegel 1978). The intoxicating power of love of God is articulated with similar vivid imageries by the Bengali poet Caṇḍīdās (c.1300; Bhattacharya 1967). Alongside these sensuous expressions of devotion to the personal Lord (Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna) are forms of nirguṇabhakti where holy individuals (sants) sing praises to the ultimate reality beyond all forms. Whereas Vedic texts are regarded as impersonal (apauruṣeya) and not the compositions of human authors, sants such as Ravidās (c.1300), Kabīr (c.1450–1520), Nānak (1469–1539), and others are viewed as having discovered the truth through their own efforts, so that their message (bānī) is the embodiment of truth (Lorenzen 1996: 156).

The sants often use Vaiṣṇava names for the nirguṇa deity such as Rāma, Hari, and Govinda, and their belief systems are shaped by the doctrine of the salvific power of the contemplative remembrance of the divine name (nām), the emphasis on the purifying telos of the company of saintly people (satsaṅg) and of the pain of separation (viraha) of the human self from the divine lover, and the claim that liberation is accessible to all individuals. However, they do not worship the avatāras of Vishnu, and vigorously reject Vedic scriptural authority and Brahmanical ritual privileges (Schomer and McLeod 1987; Gold 1987). The somewhat shadowy figure of Rāmānanda (c.1500) belonged to the Vaiṣṇava lineage of Rāmānuja, and the Rāmcaritmānas is integral to the everyday life of the Rāmānanda order of renunciants (vairāgīs) established by him. By repeating the name of Rāma, vairāgīs would seek to cultivate supreme bhakti and redirect all their worldly desires towards the Lord. In these milieus, sants provoke their audiences to turn their attention towards the ineffable one which is beyond the impermanent world of transmigratory existence and can yet be apprehended in the interiority of the heart by the true seeker.

Most of the sants belonged to the lower socioeconomic strata and were usually illiterate and had no access to Sanskritic education. They used vernaculars such as Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, and others which were only emerging and were instrumental in shaping them into their present literary forms. Kabīr’s vernacularized style of iconoclasm, which seeks to cut through structural hierarchies and point to the divine hidden within them, is reflected in these lines:

So I’m born a weaver,
so what?
I’ve got the Lord in my heart.
Kabir:
Secure in the arms of Ram,
free from every snare. (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 58)

Such radical statements cannot be easily accommodated at a doctrinal level in some Vaiṣṇava life-worlds, and we will later highlight a powerful tension relating to the significance of sociocultural eligibility (adhikāra) across the social imaginations of bhakti. Vaiṣṇava worldviews are marked by varying degrees of acceptance of socio-ritual distinctions of caste (jāti, varṇa) while articulating spiritual sensibilities regarding the search for the divine in a transient world, and their ethical views emphasize nonviolence, humility, detachment, compassion, and reverence for all. Such expressions of devotional relationality can be found in three contemporaneous figures from the west and the east of the country: the Gujarati poet Narasiṃha Mehtā (c.1414–1480; Shukla-Bhatt 2015), and the Assamese poet Śaṅkaradeva (1449–1569; Neog 1965; Murthy 1973; Chaliha 1978) and his disciple Mādhavadeva (1489–1596). Mehtā composed several lyrics about the life of Krishna among the cowherds, and one of his devotional songs would later become a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘A Vaiṣṇava is said to be one who knows another’s pain’.

The Vīraśaivas or Liṅgāyats, who emerged in the region of Karnataka through the leadership of Basava (1106–1167), were animated by ardent devotion to Shiva. Their literature consists of devotional songs (vacana) in Kannada which critique rigid forms of social hierarchy (Ramanujan 1973; Ishwaran 1992; Michael 1992). Reflecting the tension indicated earlier, it has been argued that Śaiva devotion in Kannada-speaking regions was accommodating towards local Brahmanical institutions (Ben-Herut 2018). The religious cosmology of Vīraśaivism states that the world of finite entities is real, and real as the cosmic power of Shiva (Śakti-viśiṣṭādvaita). The twelfth-century Vīraśaiva poet Akka (‘elder sister’) Mahādēvi regarded herself as wedded to the Lord Shiva, and her vacanas articulate a bridal mysticism reflective of the songs of Āṇṭāl and Mīrābāī.

I love the Handsome One:
he has no death
decay nor form
no place or side
no end or birthmarks.
I love him O mother. Listen […]
So my lord, white as jasmine, is my husband.
Take these husbands who die,
decay, and feed them
to your kitchen fire! (Schelling 2011: 48)

A few centuries later, the Vārkarīs appeared in the region of Maharashtra. Their founder was the thirteenth-century saint Jñāneśvara, who produced an influential rendering in Marathi (often called the Jñāneśvarī) of the Bhagavad-gītā. The movement consists of numerous poets in Marathi from across the caste continuum such as Cokhāmeḷā (c.1300), Nāmdev (c.1300), Eknāth (1533–1599), Tukārām (c.1608–1650), and others (Nemade 1980; Lele 1981; Israel and Wagle 1987; Callewaert and Lath 1989; Mokashi-Punekar 2002; Novetzke 2008). The supreme deity is Vishnu who is worshipped in the form of Viṭhobā in a temple in Pandharpur, to which Vārkarī devotees travel on annual pilgrimages on foot with palanquins (pālkhī). The devotional songs and performances (kīrtan, abhaṅg) of Nāmdev, Eknāth, and others are alternately directed towards Rāma as an avatāra of Vishnu and the transcendental divine beyond forms addressed as ‘Rāma’. From around the thirteenth century onwards, the Mahānubhavs developed a religious cosmology in which liberation is effected through bhakti to the one supreme God (parameśvara), whose incarnations include Krishna (Feldhaus 1983).

3.1 Bhakti and gendered aesthetics

By working with the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, the Caitanya and the Vallabha traditions characterize the pathway to the Lord with aesthetic idioms and subjectivities. Theological commentators in the Caitanya tradition read the narrative of the gopīs as a window into the supramundane dance between Krishna and the cosmological powers (śakti) who became manifested on earth as the gopīs who loved Krishna selflessly. Human beings should emulate their supreme bhakti, and on their journey towards the summit of unwavering love (prema), their lives would be structured by the regulations of vaidhi-bhakti and the spontaneous expression of rāgānuga-bhakti. The former is developed by following scriptural injunctions such as resorting to a spiritual guide, following the ways of saintly people, living in places of pilgrimage, circumambulating an image of Krishna, and so on. It will develop into the latter, which is a spontaneous attraction and unalloyed attachment to Krishna. For cultivating this rāgānuga-bhakti, a devotee would vicariously participate in the sentiment of a particular celestial attendant or companion of Krishna by meditatively imagining the līlā between Krishna and the attendant or companion (Wulff 1984). They envision the world as a dynamic stage on which the central hero (nāyaka) is Krishna, and they play out their roles by relating themselves to Krishna. By actively participating in these theodramatic narratives, they would move from their corporeal identity to their true spiritual body (siddha-rūpa), which is similar to the bodies of the attendants or companions of Krishna.

In one such form of visualization (līlā smaraṇa), devotees meditatively imagine themselves as a handmaiden (mañjari) to Rādhā, Krishna’s eternal consort, and construct a siddha-rūpa that is inwardly female. They memorize the details of the heavenly realm, including the locations of Rādhā’s house, Krishna’s house, and the various bowers around the pond where they meet. They learn about the eternal līlā of Krishna and Rādhā during each of eight divisions of the day, and visualize these activities in their spiritual body (McDaniel 1989: 49). A certain devotee from the early eighteenth century, Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābā, who had the siddha-rūpa of a gopī serving Rādhā, once became so absorbed in the service of placing bangles on Rādhā’s arm that it seemed to bystanders that he had become unconscious for around three hours. However, when he ‘awoke’ he claimed that from the perspective of his ‘līlā-time’ only a few moments had passed (Haberman 1988: 92). A contentious debate emerged over whether such imitation of the characters of the divine script, through the cultivation of a fine-tuned feminine subjectivity, was to be strictly mental or whether practitioners should put on the clothes and ornaments of these supramundane characters. The option that was condemned by a council in Jaipur in 1727 was that practitioners should transform their physical bodies to conform to those of the gopīs, the female exemplary models (Haberman 1988: 98).

This discipline of enacting the selfless love of the gopīs is modulated by the language of aesthetic enjoyment (rasa). The tradition of Sanskrit aesthetics views an ‘abiding emotion’ (sthāyī-bhāva) as a latent state in the mind of the aesthete which is evoked and then developed, through the words or events in a poem or play, to the aesthetic awareness of rasa. The Nāṭya-śāstra mentions eight abiding emotions: rati (love), hāsya (gaiety), śoka (pathos), krodha (anger), utsāha (enthusiasm), bhaya (fear), jugupsā (disgust), and vismaya (astonishment). To these correspond eight rasas: śṛṅgāra (erotic), hāsya (comic), karuṇa (pathetic), raudra (furious), vīra (heroic), bhayānaka (terrible), bībhatsa (disgust), and adbhuta (marvellous). According to the template of aesthetic motifs developed by Rūpa Gosvāmin and Jīva Gosvāmin, the abiding emotion of love of Krishna is developed – through practices such as hearing about the productive joyfulness (līlā) of the Lord – to the awareness of bhakti-rasa. This love (prema) of Krishna is manifested in five types of bhakti-rasa which are arranged in an order of increasing intimacy: śānta (peacefulness), dāsya (devotional service), sakhya (friendship), vātsalya (parental love), and mādhurya (erotic love). The first is the mental equipoise that results from an identification with the transpersonal brahman which, according to the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, is not the ultimate reality but a partial manifestation of Krishna. The second is the service offered by devotees who view Krishna as their master; the third is the loving devotion of individuals who regard Krishna as their friend; and the fourth is the parental concern that a devotee exercises towards the infant Krishna. The highest state is mādhurya-bhakti, which is the self-effacing love of the gopīs for Krishna (Chakravarti 1969: 218).

On the journey towards this spiritual summit, the landscapes of Krishna’s eternal Vrindavan are reimagined affectively in the interior spaces of the ‘heart’ – body, mind, and senses. For Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas, the birthplace of Caitanya (in the Nadia region of the state of West Bengal) is sacred geography – it is said to be a veiled (gupta) Vrindavan, the playground of Krishna and Rādhā. Through the cultivation of specific spiritual techniques, the celestial presence of Rādhā-Krishna is said to become manifest (prakaṭ) in worldly domains, whether these are the interiorized spaces of the mind-heart (manas), the sensory surfaces of the body, or specific physical landscapes in the world. In an ethnographic study, Sukanya Sarbadhikary (2015) notes that the three distinct groups of Vaiṣṇava bābājīs (celibate renouncers), sahajiyās, and members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISCKON) have developed spiritual techniques which are overlapping in certain respects and disjointed in others. The sahajiyās state that they do not only imaginatively witness, as the bābājīs claim, the pastimes (līlā) of Krishna and Rādhā, but experience them affectively in their bodies configured as a sacred place. While ISCKCON, established by Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977), does not reject the significance of rāgānuga devotion, it reserves the cultivation of such subjectivities for the spiritually adept. Rather, one should serve Rādhā-Krishna by living in, developing, and beautifying the land of Nadia, which is the worldly manifestation of the transcendental Vrindavan (Sarbadhikary 2015: 23).

These theodramatic styles of bhakti are enacted also in the region around Varanasi, in north India, which is transformed into the sacred geography of the epic narrative Rāmāyaṇa during the festivities associated with Rām Līlā. The pilgrims walk barefoot and act out specific parts of the Tulsīdās narrative, whether as citizens of Ayodhya who follow Lord Rāma to the forest or as wedding guests of the four brothers. There are no clear distinctions between ‘audience’ and ‘actors’, for people not only witness the drama but themselves participate in the narratives that are unfolding around them (Hess 1983: 179–180). The neighbouring region of Mathura and Vrindavan is the epicentre of rich traditions of devotional songs (kīrtan) which reenvision the land of Krishna’s childhood and youth as suffused with sacred power (Hein 1972; Entwistle 1987). In the Samāj Gāyan form of singing in the temples in the Rādhā Vallabha tradition, trained musicians sing, during the rāsa-līlā season in mid-October, from two Braj Bhāṣā versions of the motif of the dance of the gopīs, one by Harirām Vyās (c.1560) and the other by Nandadās (c.1580). The participants assume the roles of Krishna and the gopīs, and the musical performance progresses through their interactive play, which is not simply a meditation on the eternal dance but a vicarious participation in its transcendental movements (Beck 2013b: 197; Pauwels 1996).

In the southern lands, Āṇṭāl presents herself as a cowherd girl who sets out to wake up Krishna, viewed as a manifestation of Vishnu. According to hagiographies, Āṇṭāl did not get married to a human husband, seeking union with her divine Lord alone. Such feminine – or feminized – pathways of bhakti characterize many dimensions of the Vallabha tradition too. The performance of devotional service to Krishna can culminate in the development of a state of mind which is characterized by an intense longing for Krishna (mādhurya-bhāva). Here devotees alternate, in their passionate devotion (vyasana) for Krishna, between moments of union and separation, and they gradually attain a mental state called sarvātmabhāva where they are so completely immersed in Krishna that they see the entire world as an expression of Krishna (Saha 2013: 140–141).

A central focus of ritual life in these Vallabha contexts is the cultivation of maternal love (vātsalya bhava) for the infant Krishna through the offering of different kinds of food to the icon in the temple; and the icon, in turn, showers the food with nourishing grace (puṣṭi) which sustains the devotees (Toomey 1990: 167–168). The word used for these temples is not the usual mandir but haveli, which are large mansions with rooms, balconies, and courtyards that evoke in the minds of devotees the land of Vraj, where Krishna was raised by his foster parents. There are eight viewings (darśan) of Krishna at different times of the day, starting from the awakening of the child Krishna through Krishna taking out the cows to graze to Krishna being put to sleep in the evening. The deity is awakened with gentle music around three in the afternoon, and an hour later some food is offered to Krishna before he goes out to the pastures. During the early evening viewing, a lamp is waved in front of Krishna, who has returned from the fields, so as to ward off evil influences. The devotees take great care to ensure the comfort of the icon of Krishna during these viewings. For instance, before sunrise, the doors are kept closed so that the child Krishna is not rudely awakened by the devotees. During the hot weather, small fountains are set up in front of the icon; sandalwood, known for its cooling properties, is applied to the icon which is now dressed in light clothing; and the icon is offered foods such as milk, yoghurt, and mangoes. At the Annakūṭa festival, which is celebrated to mark the episode when Krishna took the form of the mountain Govardhan and received food from the residents of Vraj, a likeness of the mountain is prepared with boiled rice and placed before the icon. These food offerings are later distributed among the devotees in the form of prasād, which has been infused with the grace (puṣṭi) of Krishna (Saha 2013: 145).

According to the Vallabha tradition, the poet Paramānand (c.1500) was initiated into this ‘pathway of grace’ (puṣṭi-mārga) by Vallabha who taught him the tenth chapter of the Bhāgavata-purāṇa. By repetitively hearing Paramanānd’s songs at different times during the day in the constant (nitya) cycle, and at different points during the festival (utsava) cycle, devotees would meditatively begin to see the līlā in the spiritual worlds of which Paramānand himself is said to have had revelations (Sanford 2008: 12). While the earthly Vrindavan is manifest to everyone, for those whose sensorium has been purified through devotion to Krishna everything becomes an occasion of active remembrance of Krishna. By adopting the persona of a gopī, a devotee would undergo the pain of separation, while reenvisioning every aspect of the physical world – the birds, the skies, the trees – as vivid signifiers of Krishna’s veiled presence.

Oh friend, what should I do now?
After my eyes fell upon the son of Nanda, I can’t remain apart from
him for even the blink of an eye […]
Neither night nor day passes easily for me; the house and
the courtyard are no longer pleasant.
The lord of Paramānand laughs, he has stolen my mind. (Sanford 2008: 96)

Some of these theoaesthetic motifs are expressed in forms of temple worship (pūjā) directed to the icon of the deity who is said to be affectionate toward devotees. Such devotional affectivity is modulated by the full gamut of the human sensorium – pūjā is ritually performed by pouring water, ringing bells, chanting hymns, singing songs, and burning incense. The food placed before the image is ‘consumed’ by the image, and these transfigured offerings (prasād) are partaken of by the devotees who have gone to ‘see’ the image; the heart of pūjā is constituted by this reciprocation of glances. In this way, the divine reality (brahman) is ritually invoked to make a finite object a suitable habitation so that devotees can have a vision (darśan) of the divine (Eck 1998).

Especially in the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition of Rāmānuja, one of the five forms of Vishnu is arcāvatāra, which is a manifestation of Vishnu worthy of worship in a temple. In the Veṅkaṭeśvara (Vishnu) temple in Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh, the deity is ‘awakened’ early in the morning with the recitation of Sanskrit verses, so that the deity can ‘receive’ pilgrims who have gathered for a vision. Various texts delineate the ritual processes through which an image-maker (śilpin) consecrates a block of wood or a piece of metal. The crucial moment is the establishment of life-breath (prāṇa) in the image through the recitation of a mantra. The eyes are the last to be painted, and the initial glance of this ‘awakened’ image should fall on sweets or a mirror before it touches the devotees who will view the image.

3.2 Bhakti and the pedagogy of the oppressed

Given that the ‘vision’ of the Lord encompasses all reality, these bhakti-suffused cosmological visions would seem to contain an egalitarian edge that cuts through caste-based claims of eligibility (adhikāra) based on occupational style, endogamous grouping, and ritual purity. Indeed, many figures associated with the bhakti-shaped worlds of Hindu social existence are women and individuals from the lower end of the caste spectrum (Mullatti 1989; Chandramohan 2016). For instance, among the sixty-three Śaiva poets and devotees (Nāyaṉār), nine are from the lower castes (Śūdra) and three, including Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, are women. In the Nām-ghoṣā, a text of fundamental importance in the everyday life of Assamese Vaiṣṇavas, Mādhavadeva envisions subservience to Krishna as the locus of a spiritual egalitarianism:

I do not belong to the four castes nor to the four [stages of life]. Neither am I pious, giving gifts and visiting sacred places. But surely do I become the servant of the Lotus-Feet of the Lord of the Gopis, the Lord who is the Ocean of fullness of joy. (Das 1957: 322)

At the same time, one should not think in terms of one response on the part of all bhakti-animated visions regarding how devotional self-surrender to the Lord may interrogate, challenge, or undermine structural hierarchies. The hagiographies of bhakti saints from the lower castes are sometimes ambivalent in their rejection of Brahmanical privileges – even as they claim that bhakti transcends boundaries of caste, they may affirm some notions of caste purity and social hierarchies (Burchett 2009; Keune 2021). Movements associated with Caitanya, Tulsīdās, and others can be regarded as social revolutions to the extent that the equalitarian language of bhakti threatens the cultural prestige and ritual privilege of Brahmin priests; however, this language did not, generally speaking, animate or call for a wholesale dissolution of social hierarchies. While Caitanya was regarded as God who had descended to the world to rescue, in particular, women and the lower castes (Śūdra), the movement was not concerned directly with socioeconomic transformation or structural alteration of the ritual economy, but with the cultivation of hospitality to fellow Vaiṣṇavas and the offering of alms to people in need. The Caitanya devotees usually accepted certain social restrictions relating to varṇāśrama-dharma, such as devotees of different jātis not intermarrying or interdining, for the sake of maintaining social order and avoiding misunderstanding with wider traditional contexts. Thereby, they maintained a combination of ‘egalitarian affectivity’ with fellow devotees in settings such as festivals and ‘inegalitarian functionality’ in mundane situations (O'Connell 1993: 23).

Such bhakti movements were often integrated back into Brahmanical norms and subjectivities, for their emphasis lay not so much on effacing caste-based distinctions as on generating enclaves where socioeconomic inequality or sociocultural hierarchy would be regarded as irrelevant to the spiritual goal. From a low-caste position, Ravidās declares:

A family that has a true follower of the Lord
Is neither high caste nor low caste, lordly or poor.
The world will know it by its fragrance. (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 2004: 25)

From a similar caste-location, Cokhāmeḷā deconstructs the notion of ritual pollution:

Five elements compound the body impure; all things mix, thrive in the world.
Then who is pure and who impure?
The body is rooted in impurity.
From the beginning to the end, endless impurities heap themselves.
Who is it can be made pure?
Says Chokha, I am struck with wonder, can there be any such beyond pollution? (Mokashi-Punekar 2002: 57)

Such rejections of caste-rooted hierarchies, Brahmanical ritualism, and Brahmanical authority sometimes proceeded alongside the redescription of one’s ‘Brahmin’ status in terms of one’s devotion to the Lord. The Bhāgavata-purāṇa (7.9.10) declares that a ‘dog-eater’ (a socioritual outcaste) whose psychic affectivities are dedicated to Vishnu is superior to a Brahmin who has turned away from Vishnu; elsewhere, the Bhāgavata-purāṇa (7.11.1–35) defends the idealized classification of four social groups and stages of life (varṇāśramadharma). Vīraśaiva theologians regarded Vīraśaivas as true Brahmins (aprākṛta), whereas the other Brahmins through birth were only natural Brahmins (prākṛta); Basava himself would refer to Vīraśaivas as of ‘high birth’ (kulaja). The Siddhāntaśikhāmaṇi (c.1200 CE), a handbook of Vīraśaiva doctrine, states: ‘The person in whom devotion is steadied, whether a foreigner or someone of high caste, is dear to Śiva and a Brahmin; not dear to Śiva is someone devoid of devotion’ (Zydenbos 1997: 530).

For a strident rejection of all terminologies and subjectivities of caste, we may turn to the songs of the Bauls, the wandering minstrels of Bengal. The Bauls – whose songs interweave various forms of Vaiṣṇava bhakti – believe that the divine essence lies hidden in the ‘person of the heart’, which is beyond all distinctions of caste, social mores, and cultural conventions (Urban 1999). The songs of Rāj Khyāpā (1869–1946) highlight a distinction between the inner perspective (antaraṅga) of the ‘I’, which is free from distinctions of pure and impure, and the external perspective (bahiraṅga) which is the world of hierarchy, discrimination, and ranking. The focus lies in the experience of the here-now (bartamān) and not knowledge gained through ritual practices or social orthodoxies (Openshaw 2005).