Bhakti Movement in South India : What were the main features of bhakti religion? To what extent did the tradition of bhakti draw upon earlier religious practices and culture and to what extent did it mark a fundamentally new departure?

 Understanding the emergence of bhakti 

The bhakti movements were an important force in the religious history of South India between the 7th and 12th centuries. The saints of South India are largely unknown outside the region, but they were the first to experience the intense love of God that marked bhakti religion. There were two streams to the movement -- Shaiva and Vaishnava -- and they left behind hymns of tremendous beauty which dealt with human love and the love of God and reached out to all sections of society alike.

To understand South Indian bhakti in south  India 

• In the sixth century CE, the Chalukya, Pandya and Pallava dynasties rose to power,they dominated politics in the region: waging war, upholding Brahmanical hierarchies, and patronizing art and culture.
• The new dynasties used inscriptions to make grand statements about their power. While kings gave grants to brahmanas and temples, in return, brahmanas and temple priests asserted the king‟s divinity and his right to rule. 
• The spread of land grants led to the expansion of the kingdom as well as the extension of agriculture into dryland areas and forests. The heterodox faiths, Buddhism and Jainism, began to decline; they were replaced by the passionate devotion of the bhakti saints and a temple religion which provided a new set of myths and a new world view.

The roots of bhakti in South Indian religion

• classical texts such as the Paripatal praise the gods Murugan and Mayon in terms which anticipate the early medieval hymns. 
• Similarly, the sixth century poem, the Tirumarukarrupattai („Guide to the Lord Murugan‟) advises devotees to approach the Lord and seek his grace. Each of the six parts of the poem describes a sacred site of Murugan or one of his temples.
•  In the earliest Tamil poems, Murugan was the heroic deity of the mountains, presiding over acts of love and war. But now he becomes a God to whom the devotee must offer worship.

A.K. Ramanujan argues that the bhakti movements “used whatever they found at hand, and changed whatever they used.” (Ramanujan 1981, 104) Elements of the different religious traditions, of Sanskritic and folk culture were all reworked and transformed under the influence of bhakti.

The saints of South India 

• There were two major streams to Tamil bhakti -- the Alvars and Nayanars -- who expressed their devotion to Vishnu and Shiva respectively. Tradition tells us about the names and careers of some important saints. 

The Alvars 

• The term 'Alvar' means „one who is immersed in God‟. 
• The bhakti of the first three Alvars -- Poykai, Putam and Pey -- was a simple devotion.
•  a rendering of divine grace after they experienced Vishnu‟s presence while sheltering from a storm. Later, they came to be worshipped as amshas or incarnations of Vishnu. 

The Nayanars 

• There were 63 Nayanars or Shaivite saints. The term „Nayanar‟ means a „leader', in the sense of God‟s chosen apostle. 
• While the early Nayanars led a life absorbed in Shiva, later saints began to propagate Shaiva bhakti, bringing them into conflict with the Buddhists and Jains. 

Important features of bhakti

1. The love of God :The poems of the saints are marked by neither ritual prescriptions nor orthodox learning. Theirs was a personal experience of God, an ecstatic knowledge, a deep-rooted love.For instance:Repeatedly, the poets address their chosen deity with the question: How can I find you? How shall I recognize your form? For the Nayanars and Alvars, the Lord was both an impersonal absolute as well as a close associate.
2. Old rituals and new The bhakti saints thought little of orthodox religion, stressing the futility of ritual acts. Appar says that there is no need to bathe in the Ganga or chant the Vedas, no need to perform strict tapas or fetch water from tirthas: “One thing alone will to your rescue come / seeing everywhere the Lord Supreme.”
3. The local God in the local language:

• The saints travelled across the land, singing the glory of hundreds of places. Origin myths of temples often associated themselves with the God‟s heroic acts and miraculous deeds. Subsequently, sacred sites -- whether mountains, water bodies, or shrines -- were renamed with the prefix „tiru‟ meaning „holy or auspicious‟
• Of all literary languages, Tamil was perhaps the best placed to express the new religious devotion since it possessed an old and well-developed literary tradition. The hymns are close to spoken Tamil and can be understood even today.

How incorporative was bhakti religion? 

• The idea of the bhakta kulam or a „community of believers‟ cut across boundaries and became a spiritual and social force.
•  Historians, however, continue to argue over the extent to which bhakti created space for socially marginalized groups, whether lower castes or women.
• The idea of the bhakta kulam provided a sense of oneness, as groups of saints walked together, singing hymns and preaching their faith.
• The love of God was paramount in the saints' lives, human emotion was also a part of their existence. It is this humanness of their character, Vidya Dehejia argues, which enabled the ordinary devotee to identify with the saints.
• The bhakti movement broke down the grihasthasanyasa (householder-renunciant) divide for men, in actual practice it did not do so for women

women in Bhakti:

• The inclusion of women within the bhakti tradition marked an important departure from Brahmanical Hinduism where women were debarred from spiritual attainment and the ascetic life. 
• While bhakti created space for the self-expression of women, the extent to which gender boundaries were dissolved needs a closer look. 
• The bhaktins may have freed themselves from the social norms of behaviour, but they still lived within the confines of their female body.
• the bhakti movements made spiritual attainment possible for women, there is an ambivalence towards the position of women saints and the spaces offered to women were curtailed as time went by.

Example: While Andal and Karaikkal Ammaiyar attained sainthood, the other women mentioned in the sources exist in marginal roles: as devout mothers, sisters and wives who assist the bhaktas.

As Vijaya Ramaswamy points out, the Periya Puranam is filled with references to the bhaktas bartering, selling and making use of their wives so as to further their devotion.

Bhakti and the lower castes:

The presence of lower caste saints has also led some to argue that bhakti represented a rebellion against the Brahmanical caste system. The fact remains, however, that one third of the total number of saints were brahmanas by birth. At the same time, there were also saints drawn from a variety of social situations -- cowherd, fisherman, potter, weaver, merchant, farmer, army commander and untouchable. 

The saints themselves did not maintain caste hierarchies. Although a brahmana, Sundarar loved and married two lower caste women, a clear subversion of orthodoxy. Appar declared in a hymn that he respected neither material wealth nor religious eminence, but would revere a true devotee even if he were an untouchable Pulaya engaged in skinning a cow for its flesh.

The Vaishnava saint Tiruppan Alvar was also an untouchable who spent eighty years of his life singing the praises of Vishnu, standing a mile from the Srirangam temple. Appearing in a dream, Vishnu asked the temple priest to place Tiruppan Alvar on his shoulders and carry him into the shrine. Once inside the sanctum, the saint sang one last song, before merging into the divine image.