Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 119
Bhakti as Popular Movement
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bodies, or animate and inanimate objects with spiritual powers — the love, devo
tion, loyalty, and zeal of the follower and the seeker always remained the same.^
As the Bhakti movement flourished, it created a new mediator between
man and God - the “Guru” in the place of the “Vedic Acharya” (Acharya is one
who actually practices what he preaches). The centers of learning shifted from
sacrificial grounds to pilgrimage and sacred bathing places. Instead of the altars,
there emerged temples with personable and lovable deities presiding in them. Dur
ing the Middle Ages, the Bhakti movement particularly flourished and became
very popular. The Muslim sufi tradition in India also helped the Bhakti movement
and to this day the Bhakti tradition remains strong and popular all over India."^
The Three Main Traditions
From quite early times, the Bhakti movement in India centered around
three main deities: 1) Vishnu and His incarnations (the sustainer of the world), 2)
Shiva (the destroyer of the world), and 3) Shiva’s consort Shakti. The Shiva and
Shakti movements were pre-Vedic and of non-Aryan origins and hymns to Shiva
are considered to be the earliest. The Vaishnava tradition also is quite old and one
finds references to the Vaishnava sect and hymns to Vishnu in the Vedas and in
Mahabharata epic. Rama and Krishna are the two most glorified deities in the
Vaishnava tradition and they stand identified as the Supreme Personality of
Godhead, just as Shiva and Shakti are the Supreme Person for their followers.
Besides Rama and Krishna, the Vaishnavas also accept eight additional incarna
tions of Vishnu according to the Puranic accounts, within which Buddha is also
included.^
In South India, the Vaishnava movement found its early origins in the
writings of the Alvar saint-poet-philosophers, who lived between the sixth and
ninth centuries A.D. There were twelve Alvars in all, eleven men and one woman.
Most of the Alvars belonged to the lower castes and this fact probably hindered a
rapid growth of the Vaishnava movement for some time. Later, the writings of the
Alvar saint-poet-philosophers were accepted as of great religious significance and
Ramanuja, in particular, recognized these works as the “Vedas of the Vaishnavas.”
The followers of the Alvars (notably, Nathamuni, Alvandar-Yamunacharya, and
Pilley-Lokacharya) provided further impetus to the Vaishnava movement and the
works of Ramanuja and Madhva provided the movement with the needed philo
sophical and intellectual bases.^
Along the Western coast, great saint-poet-philosophers, like Jnanadeva,
Namadeva, and Tukarama, aroused the love of the masses for Vishnu from the
thirteenth century onward. In the fifteenth century, Vallabacharya, a spiritual de
scendant of the Alvars, went to Mathura in North India and provided a new life to
the Vaishnava movement through the worship of Krishna deity. His influence is