Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 120
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Popular Culture Review
seen in the works of Surdas, Mirabai, and Chaitanya. Chaitanya (who, himself, is
considered an incarnation of God or Avtar) spread the Vaishnava movement in
Bengal and in the rest of India and abroad through his followers. Before Chaitanya,
people of Bengal had been influenced by saint-poet-philosophers, like Jayadeva,
Vidyapati, and Chandidas. However, it was Chaitanya who popularized Bhakti
into a forceful religious movement in Bengal and all over India. In Assam, the
Vaishnava movement was led in the sixteenth century by Shankaradeva. In the
fifteenth century, Ramananda visited Benares from South India and established
centers for the worship of Rama deity. His influence was felt in the works of his
disciples, like Kabir and Tulasidasa. Kabir was a Muslim and Tulasidasa was a
Hindu. The contributions of Kabir and Tulasidasa to the Vaishnava tradition and
the Bhakti movement are well-known - through Kabir’s eloquent poetry and the
rendering of Shri Ramacharitamanasa by Tulasidasa. These saint-poet-philosophers, in turn, influenced many new generations of saint-poet-philosophers in In
dia and doused the people with sentiments and feelings of Bhakti.^
Muslim sufis and mystics also had considerable influence on the Bhakti
tradition in India. Like the Bhaktas (devotees), these seekers sought salvation
through passionate and ardent love of God and spoke of a union with the Divine, at
variance with the orthodox view of Islam. Their emphasis on experience, as against
doctrine, made it possible for them to influence and be influenced by the Hindu
saint-poet-philosophers. Three of the most notable saints in this category were
Kabir, Nanak, and Dadu, who provided a more abstract view of God and further
diversified the Bhakti tradition in India.^
The Bhakti movement around Shiva and Shakti somehow remained pri
marily concentrated to the extreme North and in the South and did not spread as
widely in the rest of India. The Vaishnava movement, on the other hand, was more
popular and widely accepted all over India and abroad.^
Navadha Bhakti and Bhakta
As indicated above, Bhakti is conceived as complete and unquestionable
faith and devotion toward the Personal Supreme and His different incarnations
and representations. Bhakti is selfless, non-calculating, unconditional, and it ex
presses itself in all walks of life and at all times. The devotional service provided
in Bhakti is the easiest path for the fulfillment of one’s mundane goals and the
spiritual goals of self-realization and attainment of Moksha, through the causeless
and ceaseless mercy of the Personal Supreme. For a Bhakta, Bhakti becomes ev
erything — a path, a focus, a process, and an end in itself^®
Navadha Bhakti is considered even more sublime and pure. Goswami
Tulasidasa describes Navadha Bhakti as follows in Shri Ramacharitamanasa: