Bhakti-Sufi Traditions

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT History Class XII (Themes in Indian History Part II), Chapter 6.

Why did people start singing to God in their own language?

Picture a Tamil village around the sixth century. A wandering singer arrives, sits under a tree and sings a hymn in Tamil, the language everyone speaks, about a god who lives in a nearby shrine. Nobody needs a priest to translate. Centuries later, in a Delhi hospice, a master's disciples talk with him in Hindavi, and singers perform at his tomb. This chapter (c. eighth to eighteenth century) is about the moment when religion left the Sanskrit and Persian of scholars and entered the speech of peasants, weavers, merchants and women.

It also changes what a historian can use as evidence. Much of this chapter rests on compositions of poet-saints, who mostly expressed themselves orally in regional languages. Disciples compiled them after the poet's death, often setting them to music. These traditions were fluid: later generations added to the message and sometimes dropped ideas that seemed awkward in a new setting. Historians therefore also use hagiographies, biographies of saints written by followers, which may not be literally accurate but show how devotees saw their lives.

A mosaic of beliefs: gods meet gods

By this period the most striking feature is the growing visibility of many gods and goddesses in sculpture and texts. Vishnu, Shiva and the goddess were worshipped in many forms. Historians see two processes at work. One was the spread of Brahmanical ideas, as in the Puranas written in simple Sanskrit verse so that women and Shudras, kept away from Vedic learning, could hear them. The other was the Brahmanas accepting and reworking the beliefs and practices of other social groups. Many beliefs took shape through a continuous dialogue between "great" Sanskritic Puranic traditions and "little" traditions found throughout the land.

Two views. For the exam: the terms "great" and "little" traditions were coined by the sociologist Robert Redfield in the twentieth century to describe peasant societies: peasants followed rituals that came from dominant groups such as priests and rulers (great), and also local practices (little), and both changed through interaction. Another reading: scholars accept the importance of these categories and processes but are often uncomfortable with the hierarchy the words suggest, which is why the textbook puts them in quotation marks.

Difference and conflict. Vedic and Puranic traditions looked very different. The old Vedic gods Agni, Indra and Soma became marginal, and the glimpses of Vishnu, Shiva and the goddess in Vedic mantras have little in common with Puranic mythology. Yet the Vedas stayed authoritative. Those who valued Vedic sacrifice and chanted mantras often condemned practices that went beyond them, while Tantric followers frequently ignored the Vedas. Devotees often presented their chosen deity, Vishnu or Shiva, as supreme, and relations with Buddhism and Jainism were often tense. Bhakti has to be understood against this background. Devotional worship already had a history of almost a thousand years, ranging from routine temple worship to ecstatic trance.

What is bhakti?

Poet-saints became leaders around whom communities of devotees gathered. Brahmanas stayed important intermediaries in many forms of bhakti, but these traditions also made room for women and the "lower castes", considered ineligible for liberation in the orthodox Brahmanical framework. Historians classify bhakti into two broad kinds.

South India: the Alvars and Nayanars

Some of the earliest bhakti movements (c. sixth century) were led by the Alvars, those "immersed" in devotion to Vishnu, and the Nayanars, leaders who were devotees of Shiva. They travelled from place to place singing hymns in Tamil. In their travels they identified certain shrines as the abodes of their gods, and large temples were later built there, becoming pilgrimage centres where singing the saints' compositions and worshipping their images became part of temple ritual.

Attitudes to caste. Bhaktas came from very different backgrounds, from Brahmanas to artisans and cultivators and even castes considered "untouchable". The Alvar Tondaradippodi, himself a Brahmana, wrote that Vishnu likes devoted servants, even if born outcaste, more than the Chaturvedins (Brahmanas versed in the four Vedas) who lack allegiance. The Nayanar Appar asked rogues who quote the law books what use their gotra and kula were, and told them to bow to Shiva.

Two views. For the exam: some historians suggest that the Alvars and Nayanars started a movement of protest against the caste system and Brahmana dominance, or at least tried to reform the system. Another reading: the movement may have aimed more at reforming the system than at overthrowing it. Brahmanas remained important intermediaries in many forms of bhakti, and calling the Alvars' anthology the Tamil Veda claimed for it a standing equal to the four Sanskrit Vedas.

Women. Andal, a woman Alvar, saw herself as the beloved of Vishnu, and her verses are still sung. Karaikkal Ammaiyar, a Shiva devotee, adopted extreme asceticism to reach her goal, and her compositions were preserved in the Nayanar tradition. She even described herself as a female demoness wandering a forest, which broke the usual ideal of feminine beauty. These women gave up social obligations but did not join an alternative order or become nuns, so their very existence challenged patriarchal norms.

Relations with the state. Pallava and Pandya states arose in the Tamil region (c. sixth to ninth centuries CE). Buddhism and Jainism, long supported by merchants and artisans, got only occasional royal patronage. One major theme in Tamil bhakti hymns, especially of the Nayanars, is opposition to Buddhism and Jainism.

Two views. For the exam: the hostility to Buddhists and Jainas in the hymns is explained by historians as competition for royal patronage. Another reading: what is certain is that the powerful Chola rulers (ninth to thirteenth centuries) backed Brahmanical and bhakti traditions with land grants and temples for Vishnu and Shiva, so the rivalry was bound up with who received the support of the state.

The Cholas built some of the most magnificent Shiva temples at Chidambaram, Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram, and the period saw splendid bronze images of Shiva. Both Nayanars and Alvars were revered by the Vellala peasants, so rulers tried to win that support too. Chola kings introduced the singing of Tamil Shaiva hymns in temples, organised them into the Tevaram, and an inscription of about 945 shows that Parantaka I consecrated metal images of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar in a Shiva temple, to be carried in procession during their festivals.

Pause and predict: why would a Chola king want to be seen honouring poet-saints loved by peasants?

Check your answer: the saints sang in the language of the people and were revered by the Vellala peasants. By building temples to recreate their visions and by sponsoring their hymns, the kings claimed divine support and status and won popular backing.

Karnataka: Basavanna and the Virashaivas

In the twelfth century a movement led by Basavanna (1106 to 68), a Brahmana who was a minister at the court of a Kalachuri ruler, began in Karnataka. His followers are the Virashaivas (heroes of Shiva) or Lingayats (wearers of the linga). They worship Shiva as a linga, and men usually wear a small linga in a silver case on a loop over the left shoulder. The wandering monks, the jangama, are revered.

Lingayats believe that at death the devotee merges with Shiva and does not return to the world, so they do not cremate their dead as the Dharmashastras prescribe, and bury them instead. They challenged caste and the "pollution" attributed to certain groups by Brahmanas and questioned the theory of rebirth, which won followers among those marginalised in the Brahmanical order. They also encouraged practices the Dharmashastras disapproved of, such as post-puberty marriage and the remarriage of widows. We know the tradition through vachanas (sayings) composed in Kannada by women and men of the movement. One vachana of Basavanna contrasts people who pour milk on a stone serpent but chase a living one and who give food to a god's image but turn away a hungry servant of god.

Two other developments of this period: many ideas of the Tamil bhaktas, especially the Vaishnavas, were taken into the Sanskritic tradition, culminating in the Bhagavata Purana, and bhakti traditions developed in Maharashtra in the thirteenth century.

North India: why no Alvars here?

In north India Vishnu and Shiva were worshipped in temples, often built with rulers' support. Yet historians find nothing like the compositions of the Alvars and Nayanars until the fourteenth century. Some point to the rise of several Rajput states in which Brahmanas held important positions, performing secular and ritual functions, and there seems to have been little or no attempt to challenge their position directly.

At the same time, other leaders outside the orthodox Brahmanical framework were gaining ground: the Naths, Jogis and Siddhas. Many came from artisan groups, including weavers, who were becoming more important with organised craft production, new urban centres and long-distance trade with Central and West Asia. They questioned the authority of the Vedas and spoke the languages of ordinary people, but could not win the support of ruling elites.

A new element was the coming of the Turks, which led to the Delhi Sultanate (thirteenth century). It weakened many Rajput states and the Brahmanas tied to them, and brought marked changes in culture and religion. The arrival of the sufis was a significant part of these changes.

Islamic traditions in the subcontinent

Contact with lands beyond the seas and mountains was ancient. Arab merchants visited the western coast ports in the first millennium CE, and from the seventh century these regions became part of what is often called the Islamic world. In 711 an Arab general, Muhammad Qasim, conquered Sind, which became part of the Caliph's domain. In the thirteenth century the Turks and Afghans set up the Delhi Sultanate, later followed by the Deccan Sultanates, and then the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century.

Theoretically, rulers were to be guided by the ulama (scholars of Islamic studies), who were to ensure they ruled according to the shari'a. The shari'a, the law governing the Muslim community, evolved from the Qur'an, the hadis (traditions of the Prophet), qiyas (reasoning by analogy) and ijma (consensus of the community). In a land with many people who were not Muslims, the situation was complex. So the category of zimmi (protected people, from the Arabic zimma) developed for followers of revealed scriptures, such as Jews and Christians, living under Muslim rule. They paid a tax called jizya and gained the right to be protected. In India this status was extended to Hindus too. Rulers often followed a flexible policy: several gave land and tax exemptions to Hindu, Jaina, Zoroastrian, Christian and Jewish religious institutions. Akbar and Aurangzeb both made such grants. A farman of Akbar in 1598 allowed Jesuit padris to build a church at Khambat (Gujarat), and a letter of Aurangzeb of 1661 to 62 sent a Jogi a gift of cloth and twenty-five rupees.

These universal features were overlaid with variety from sectarian affiliations (Sunni, Shi'a) and the local customs of converts. The Khojahs, a branch of the Ismailis (a Shi'a sect), spread ideas from the Qur'an through local literary forms, notably the ginan, devotional poems (from Sanskrit jnana, knowledge) in Punjabi, Multani, Sindhi, Kachchi, Hindi and Gujarati, sung in special ragas. Arab Muslim traders on the Malabar coast adopted Malayalam and local customs such as matriliny and matrilocal residence. Mosques show the same blend: all face Mecca, with a mihrab (prayer niche) and a minbar (pulpit), but roofs and building materials vary, as in a thirteenth century Kerala mosque with a shikhara-like roof, a brick mosque in Bangladesh and the wooden Shah Hamadan mosque in Srinagar (built 1395).

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the terms Hindu and Muslim as labels for religious communities did not gain currency for a long time. In reality: in Sanskrit texts and inscriptions between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, the word musalman was virtually never used. People were identified by region: Turushka for Turks, Tajika for people from Tajikistan, Parashika for Persians. Turks and Afghans were sometimes called Shakas or Yavanas, and a general term for migrants was mlechchha, indicating they did not follow caste norms and spoke languages not derived from Sanskrit. It could be derogatory, but it rarely marked a separate religious community of Muslims opposed to Hindus.

Sufism: love of God, not law alone

In the early centuries of Islam, a group of religious-minded people called sufis turned to asceticism and mysticism in protest against the growing materialism of the Caliphate. They criticised the dogmatic definitions and scholastic methods of the theologians who interpreted the Qur'an and sunna (the Prophet's traditions). They stressed salvation through intense devotion and love of God, by following His commands and the example of the Prophet, whom they saw as a perfect human being, and they read the Qur'an in light of personal experience.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the word "Sufism" is an English word coined in the nineteenth century, and Islamic texts use tasawwuf. In reality: historians offer several derivations for tasawwuf: from suf (wool), for the coarse woollen clothes sufis wore, from safa (purity), or from suffa, the platform outside the Prophet's mosque where close followers gathered to learn. The origin of the word is still debated.

By the eleventh century Sufism was a well-developed movement. Most silsilas were named after a founder: the Qadiri after Shaikh Abd'ul Qadir Jilani, while the Chishti took its name from the town of Chisht in central Afghanistan. Initiates took an oath of allegiance, wore a patched garment and shaved their hair. After the shaikh died, his dargah became the centre of devotion, and people believed saints in death were united with God and nearer to Him than in life.

Outside the khanqah. Some mystics took a radical path. They scorned the khanqah, took to mendicancy, observed celibacy and ignored rituals. Known as Qalandars, Madaris, Malangs, Haidaris and by other names, they were called be-shari'a because they defied the shari'a, in contrast to the ba-shari'a sufis who followed it.

The Chishtis in India

Of the sufi groups that came to India in the late twelfth century, the Chishtis were the most influential because they adapted well to the local environment and took up features of Indian devotional traditions.

Life in a khanqah. Shaikh Nizamuddin's hospice (c. fourteenth century) stood on the Yamuna at Ghiyaspur on the outskirts of Delhi, with small rooms and a big hall, the jama'at khana, where inmates and visitors lived and prayed. The Shaikh lived in a small room on the roof. There was an open kitchen, the langar, run on futuh (unasked-for charity), and from morning to late night people of all kinds, from soldiers and slaves to poets, merchants and Hindu jogis, came for discipleship, amulets for healing or the Shaikh's intercession. Visitors included the poets Amir Hasan Sijzi and Amir Khusrau and the court historian Ziyauddin Barani. Practices like bowing before the Shaikh, offering water to visitors, shaving the heads of initiates and yogic exercises show attempts to absorb local traditions. He appointed successors to set up hospices elsewhere, which spread Chishti teachings.

Ziyarat and qawwali. Pilgrimage to sufi tombs is common across the Muslim world, an occasion for seeking spiritual grace (barakat). The most revered shrine of the five great Chishti saints is that of Khwaja Muinuddin, called Gharib Nawaz (comforter of the poor). The earliest textual references to his dargah belong to the fourteenth century. Muhammad bin Tughlaq (ruled 1324 to 51) was the first Sultan to visit, and the earliest construction to house the tomb was funded in the late fifteenth century by Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji of Malwa. The shrine lay on the trade route linking Delhi and Gujarat, so it drew many travellers.

By the sixteenth century it was very popular, and the spirited singing of pilgrims bound for Ajmer inspired Akbar to visit. He went fourteen times, sometimes two or three times a year, till 1580, to seek blessings for conquests, vows and the birth of sons. In 1568 he gave a huge cauldron (degh) for cooking for pilgrims and built a mosque in the compound. In 1643 the Mughal princess Jahanara wrote of her pilgrimage to Ajmer in her biography of the Shaikh, the Munis al-Arwah. An eighteenth century visitor, Dargah Quli Khan, noted that people of all faiths visited the shrine of Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli, calling the Shaikh the lamp of the entire country.

Part of ziyarat is music: qawwals perform mystical chants to evoke divine ecstasy. Sufis remember God through zikr (reciting the Divine Names) or through sama' (mystical music). Sama' was central to the Chishtis and shows their interaction with local devotional traditions. Amir Khusrau (1253 to 1325), poet, musician and disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya, gave the Chishti sama' a unique form by introducing the qaul, a hymn sung at the opening or closing of qawwali. At Nizamuddin's shrine, qawwals still start with the qaul.

Languages. The Chishtis in Delhi spoke Hindavi, the language of the people. Baba Farid composed verses in the local language that were included in the Guru Granth Sahib. Others wrote long poems (masnavis) using human love as an allegory for divine love, such as the prem-akhyan Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jayasi, about Padmini and Ratansen, king of Chittor, whose trials symbolise the soul's journey to God. Near Bijapur, short poems in Dakhani (a variant of Urdu) were attributed to Chishti sufis of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sung probably by women at household tasks, as lullabies (lurinama) or wedding songs (shadinama). The sufis there were probably inspired by Kannada vachanas and the Marathi abhangs of the Pandharpur sants, and so Islam gradually gained a place in Deccan villages.

Sufis and the state. The Chishti tradition prized austerity and distance from worldly power, but not total isolation. Sufis accepted unsolicited grants, and Sultans set up charitable trusts (auqaf) for hospices and granted tax-free land (inam). The Chishtis used donations at once on food, clothes, living quarters and ritual needs instead of hoarding them, which raised the shaikhs' moral authority. Kings also needed legitimation. When the Turks set up the Delhi Sultanate, they resisted the ulama's insistence on the shari'a as state law because they feared opposition from their mostly non-Muslim subjects, and turned to sufis, who drew authority directly from God. Rulers also wanted tombs near sufi shrines, since the auliya were believed to intercede with God. But there were conflicts, for instance over rituals like prostration and kissing the feet, and titles like sultan-ul-mashaikh for Nizamuddin. In 1313, Nizamuddin declined a local ruler's gift of two gardens and land, recalling that Fariduddin once took money for dervishes from a future Sultan but told him to give the land deeds to others.

Pause and predict: why would a Sultan seek the blessing of a sufi shaikh when he already had the ulama?

Check your answer: the ulama pressed for the shari'a as state law, which the Turks feared would provoke their mostly non-Muslim subjects. Sufis drew their authority directly from God, were popular with ordinary people and were believed to intercede with God, so their support gave rulers legitimacy.

New devotional paths in the north

Kabir (c. fourteenth to fifteenth century) is an outstanding example of a poet-saint of this setting. His verses survive in three overlapping compilations: the Kabir Bijak (kept by the Kabirpanth in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh), the Kabir Granthavali (associated with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan) and many compositions in the Adi Granth Sahib. All were compiled long after his death. His poems use several languages and dialects, including the sant bhasha of nirguna poets, and ulatbansi (upside-down sayings) like "the lotus which blooms without flower", which hint at the difficulty of describing Ultimate Reality in words.

Kabir drew on varied vocabularies for the Ultimate Reality: Islamic (Allah, Khuda, Hazrat, Pir), Vedantic (alakh, nirakar, Brahman, Atman) and yogic (shabda, shunya). He used the sufi concepts of zikr and ishq to express the Hindu practice of nam-simaran, and some poems use monotheism and iconoclasm to attack polytheism and idol worship. One poem says God has many names (Allah, Ram, Karim, Keshav, Hari, Hazrat) and asks how there can be two lords of the world, comparing the names to gold shaped into different rings.

Two views. For the exam: later hagiographies argued over whether Kabir was born Hindu or Muslim. Vaishnava hagiographies said he was born a Hindu but raised by a poor Muslim family of weavers (julahas), recent converts, and was initiated by a guru, perhaps Ramananda. Another reading: the verses attributed to Kabir use the words guru and satguru but name no preceptor, and historians say it is very hard to show that Ramananda and Kabir were contemporaries without giving one or both improbably long lives. These hagiographies were composed from the seventeenth century, about 200 years after Kabir, and show how many groups claimed his legacy.

Baba Guru Nanak (1469 to 1539) was born in a Hindu merchant family at Nankana Sahib near the Ravi in Punjab, trained as an accountant, studied Persian, and spent most of his time with sufis and bhaktas, travelling widely. His hymns point to nirguna bhakti. He rejected sacrifices, ritual baths, image worship, austerities and the scriptures of both Hindus and Muslims. For him the Absolute (rab) had no gender or form, and the way to the Divine was to remember and repeat the Divine Name. He composed hymns called shabad in Punjabi and sang them in various ragas while his attendant Mardana played the rabab.

He organised followers into a community with rules for congregational worship (sangat), appointed Angad as his successor, and the practice of choosing a preceptor continued for nearly 200 years. He did not wish to establish a new religion, but after his death his followers consolidated their own practices and distinguished themselves from both Hindus and Muslims. The fifth guru, Guru Arjan, compiled Nanak's hymns with those of four successors and of Baba Farid, Ravidas and Kabir in the Adi Granth Sahib (gurbani). In the late seventeenth century the tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, added the compositions of the ninth, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and this scripture became the Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Gobind Singh also laid the foundation of the Khalsa Panth and defined its five symbols, and under him the community became a socio-religious and military force.

Mirabai (c. fifteenth to sixteenth century) is perhaps the best known woman poet of the bhakti tradition. Her biography is reconstructed from bhajans attributed to her, which were passed on orally for centuries. According to these, she was a Rajput princess from Merta in Marwar, married against her wishes into the Sisodia clan of Mewar. She defied her husband, refused the role of wife and mother, and recognised Krishna as her lover. Her in-laws tried to poison her and she left the palace to live as a wandering saint. According to some traditions her preceptor was Raidas, a leather worker, which would show defiance of caste norms. She attracted no sect, but her songs are still sung by women and men, especially the poor and those considered "low caste", in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Shankaradeva, in late fifteenth century Assam, led Vaishnavism through the Bhagavati dharma, based on the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavata Purana, which stressed absolute surrender to Vishnu and recitation of the Lord's names (naam kirtan) in congregations of the pious (sat sanga). He encouraged satra (monasteries) and naam ghar (prayer halls), which still flourish. His major composition is the Kirtana-ghosha.

How historians know: kinds of sources for sufi traditions

Hujwiri was carried across the Indus as a captive in 1039, settled in Lahore, and wrote the Kashf-ul-Mahjub in Persian. His tomb-shrine is a site of pilgrimage and he is revered as Data Ganj Bakhsh, "Giver who bestows treasures". Tazkira authors often tried to prove the precedence of their own orders, and many details are implausible, but they remain valuable to historians.

Timeline: major religious teachers

Cause and effect: why devotion in people's languages spread

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Through the Eyes of Travellers gives outsiders' views of the same centuries, including Al-Biruni's reading of caste, while Thinkers, Beliefs and Buildings is where the idea of devotion to a chosen deity first appears with Vaishnavism and Shaivism.
• Next: An Imperial Capital shows how Vijayanagara rulers built the great temples of this devotional age.
• Later link: Peasants, Zamindars and the State covers the Mughal world in which Akbar and Jahanara honoured the Chishtis.