shipping God as beyond form and distinction, I recorded this song in 1997 in
western Rajasthan. A member of a very low caste of weavers and leather-
workers himself, the singer regularly performs this song together with the songs
of many other Hindu devotional saints at all-night devotional sessions called
jagarans– the primary form of religious gathering in rural North India. And such
songs, attributed to great devotees of the past, are the central form of devotional
literature in North India in the vernacular languages associated with Hindi.
The devotional movements that begin in the Tamil-speaking region of South
India in the sixth to the ninth centuries of the Common Era sweep through the
Kannada-speaking region in the tenth to the twelfth centuries and up into
Marathi-speaking region in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and then
across the north of India by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to generate a
vast body of literature of both story and song. Regional dialects were taking
shape during this linguistically formative period in the north within a body of
vernacular language – the spoken language of everyday interaction in contrast
to Sanskrit. Called Hindui or Hindi by Muslims settling in the Delhi region,
scholars refer to these emerging regional languages as new Indo-Aryan
(McGregor 1992: 3–9). Fluid in their boundaries, they overlapped sufficiently so
that songs and stories could travel from devotee to devotee and through the
performances of itinerant singers from region to region.
The vernacular traditions of narrative and song in North India belong first
and foremost to the devotional or bhaktistrand of Hinduism, and the sainthood
of the songs’ composers is conferred not by some religious authority or after
rigorous official inquiry but rather through the embrace of subsequent genera-
tions of devotees, who have recorded, performed and expanded the traditions that
surround them. The saints’ exemplary lives and their songs (as well as many
more subsequently composed in their names and styles) guide others on the
bhaktipath and ideally cultivate and elicit the expressed all-encompassing love
for God in those who hear and perform them. The most famous are the weaver
Kabı ̄r with his biting critique, the royal renouncer Mı ̄ra ̄baı ̄, the lover of Kr.s.n.a
Su ̄rda ̄s, the founder of the Sikhs Na ̄nak, Na ̄mdev of the Va ̄rkarı ̄ tradition, the
leather worker Raida ̄s, the Rajasthani devotee of the Lord Beyond Form Da ̄du ̄,
and Tulsı ̄da ̄s, the poet of Ra ̄ma. But there are literally hundreds more.
North Indian devotional literature is situated within a stream of religious
reform. Broadly referred to as the bhaktimovement, it is in fact a series of move-
ments though bhaktior devotion is the defining feature of them all. Bhaj– the
root of the word bhakti– carries multiple meanings, including to apportion, to
share, to bestow, to enjoy, to possess, to experience, to practice, to cultivate, to
choose, to serve, to honor, to adore, and to love (Ramanujan 1993: 103–4 n. 2).
Though translated as “devotion,” bhakti implies a complex and multi-
dimensional relationship between human and divine, including adoration but
also partaking of every form of love possible between human beings, from
parental love to that of lovers. This love is mediated through the body, experi-
enced through the senses, with devotees employing metaphors of sight, sound,
taste, smell, and touch. They even speak sometimes as if they were God, losing
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