and to convey the need for internal victory over the passions. His poetry
celebrated the Tamil language and landscape in ways that made him a
forerunner of an eventual Tamil renaissance.^34
While early waves of devotionalism in specific regions reflected local factors,
certain general features might be highlighted. First, there was the use of
vernacular idiom and the landscape of the particular region, suggesting
an increased awareness of regional and linguistic particularities. Second,
there was a selective “brahmanizing” of elements that were part of folk
society. Even when the poets were not brahmans, there was borrowing
of themes from classical myth or symbol, or, conversely, the classicizing of
folk and regional idioms. Finally, there was an implicit dialectic of self and
other, whether Kabı ̄r’s “othering” of the “externals” of both Hindu and
Muslim traditions or Ra ̄mda ̄s’ more explicit “othering” of non-brahmanic
“threats” including that perceived to reside in Islam. At least implicit from
the thirteenth century on was a sense that Islam was part of the landscape
and response was explicit in the case of several (Ekna ̄th, Caitanya, etc.). With
some exceptions (e.g., Ra ̄mda ̄s and some Su ̄fı ̄s), the poets were relatively
apolitical and egalitarian.
Parallel and almost indistinguishable at times to this blossoming of
vernacular devotionalism within “Hinduisim” was the presence, spread,
and interaction of Su ̄fı ̄ pietism. Along with the Chistı ̄ order which influ-
enced Uttar Pradesh and Panja ̄b, there was the Suhrwardı ̄ order which
was common in Sind, and the Firdausı ̄ order in Bihar and Bengal. New
orders also emerged in India such as the Qa ̄dirı ̄s and the Shatta ̄rı ̄s, both
of which were pantheistic in character. Su ̄fı ̄s interacted with “Hindu” streams
of devotion. While they at first sang in Persian, by the fourteenth century
their songs were in some form of Urdu ̄:Amı ̄r Khusrau, who died in 1325;
Valli(1677–1741), who actually composed in the Deccanı ̄ language; Gha ̄lib
(1789–1876),et al. Their g
̄
h
̄azalsbecame a uniquely Indian poetic form
expressed in Urdu ̄ or a dialect thereof, using a rich vocabulary of meta-
phors for the religious experience: a rose was like god; the nightingale or
hummingbird was the poet; the garden was where the poet met god; wine
was like a means by which a new state of being was attained. Often impatient
with the political order, the Su ̄fı ̄ saints rhapsodized about the possibility
of ecstatic union with the divine and of the desirability of being emptied of
the orientations of the self and filled with the fullness of the divine, thereby
becoming the vessel of the divine presence.
Developments in the Late Medieval Period 149