Bhakti–Sufi Traditions — Changes in Religious Beliefs and Devotional Texts

Some of the earliest bhakti movements, from about the sixth century, were led by the Alvars — literally those who are "immersed" in devotion to Vishnu — and the Nayanars — literally leaders who were devotees of Shiva. They travelled from place to place singing hymns in Tamil in praise of their gods, and in the course of their travels identified certain shrines as abodes of their chosen deities; large temples were later built at many of these sacred places. Tradition counts 12 Alvars and 63 Nayanars, who came from a range of castes, including those considered "untouchable". The Alvars' compositions were compiled in the Nalayira Divyaprabandham ("Four Thousand Sacred Compositions"), frequently described as the Tamil Veda, a claim to equal standing with the Sanskrit Vedas. The Nayanars' hymns were compiled in the Tevaram.

• Women devotees: Andal, a woman Alvar, composed verses in which she expressed her love for Vishnu as a beloved; Karaikkal Ammaiyar, a devotee of Shiva, adopted extreme asceticism. Their compositions challenged patriarchal norms.
• Relations with the state: Chola rulers supported Brahmanical and bhakti traditions, making land grants and building splendid temples for Shiva at Chidambaram, Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram; they also had metal sculptures of the Nayanar saints made, and some sought to claim divine support by having Tamil hymns sung in temples.
• The Virashaivas (Lingayats): in twelfth-century Karnataka a new movement was led by Basavanna (1106–68), a Brahmana and a minister in the court of a Kalachuri ruler. His followers, the Virashaivas ("heroes of Shiva") or Lingayats ("wearers of the linga"), worship Shiva in the form of a linga, and men usually wear a small linga in a silver case on a loop strung over the left shoulder. They challenged caste and the idea of pollution, questioned the theory of rebirth, and encouraged practices disapproved of in the Dharmashastras, such as post-puberty marriage and the remarriage of widows. Their compositions in Kannada are called vachanas.

Kabir (c. fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) is one of the most outstanding poet-saints. His verses have been compiled in three distinct but overlapping traditions: the Kabir Bijak, preserved by the Kabirpanth (the path of Kabir) in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh; the Kabir Granthavali, associated with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan; and many of his compositions are found in the Adi Granth Sahib. Kabir described the Ultimate Reality using many terms drawn from different traditions — Allah, Khuda, Hazrat and Pir from Islam, and Alakh (the unseen), Nirakar (formless), Brahman and Atman from Vedantic traditions — and attacked both Hindu and Islamic ritual. His poems use a style called ulatbansi (upside-down sayings), which inverts everyday meanings to express the elusiveness of reality. Whether he was born a Hindu or a Muslim, and whether Ramananda was his teacher, are matters the sources do not settle; later hagiographies make claims about both.

• Guru Nanak (1469–1539) was born at Nankana Sahib, near the river Ravi. He advocated a form of nirguna bhakti, rejected sacrifices, ritual baths, image worship and austerities, and set up a community of followers at Kartarpur, on the Ravi. His hymns, together with those of his successors, were compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604 in the Adi Granth Sahib; compositions of other figures such as Kabir, Baba Farid, Ravidas and Namdev were also included. Guru Gobind Singh later added the compositions of the ninth guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and laid the foundation of the Khalsa Panth in 1699.
• Mirabai (c. fifteenth–sixteenth centuries) is perhaps the best-known woman poet of the bhakti tradition. According to biographies reconstructed from the songs attributed to her, she was a Rajput princess from Merta in Marwar, married against her wishes into the Sisodia clan of Mewar; she defied her husband and recognised Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu, as her lover. Her guru, the tradition holds, was Raidas, a leather worker — a defiance of caste norms.
• Shankaradeva, in the late fifteenth century, was one of the leading proponents of Vaishnavism in Assam. His teachings, known as the Bhagavati dharma because they were based on the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Purana, focused on absolute surrender to the supreme deity, in this case Vishnu; he encouraged the setting up of namghars, houses for the recitation and prayer of the name.

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, and were critical of dogmatic definitions and scholastic methods of interpreting the Quran. By the eleventh century Sufism had evolved into a well-developed movement with a body of literature. Sufis organised communities around the hospice, or khanqah, controlled by a teaching master known as a shaikh, pir or murshid, who enrolled disciples (murids) and appointed a successor (khalifa). A silsila — literally a chain — was a continuous link between master and disciple, stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad. When a shaikh died, his tomb-shrine, the dargah (a Persian term meaning court), became the centre of devotion, and pilgrimages were made there, particularly on his death anniversary, the urs (marriage, signifying the union of his soul with God).

• Ba-sharia and be-sharia: some mystics initiated movements based on a radical interpretation of Sufi ideals, ignoring rituals and observing extreme austerities — the qalandars, madaris, malangs and haidaris. They were called be-sharia, in contrast to the ba-sharia Sufis who complied with the sharia.
• Ajmer: the most revered shrine is that of Khwaja Muinuddin, popularly known as "Gharib Nawaz". The earliest textual references to it date to the fourteenth century; Muhammad bin Tughlaq was the first Sultan to visit it, and Akbar visited it fourteen times, sometimes two or three times a year.
• Music and language: the Chishtis practised sama', musical recitation, to evoke divine ecstasy. Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), the great poet, musician and disciple of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya, gave a unique form to the Chishti sama' by introducing the qaul (Arabic for saying), a hymn sung at the opening or closing of qawwali. The Chishtis also adopted local languages such as Hindavi.
• Sources: Sufi texts include treatises such as the Kashf-ul-Mahjub of Ali bin Usman Hujwiri, a Persian work on Sufism written in the eleventh century; malfuzat, the conversations of Sufi saints — such as the Fawa'id-al-Fu'ad, a collection of conversations of Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya compiled by the poet Amir Hasan Sijzi; maktubat, collections of letters; and tazkiras, biographical accounts of saints.