The Historical Development of The Bhakti Movement in India (Theory and Practice)

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About the Book

'Bhakti' has formed an important part of religious life of the Indian people since the early medieval period. Devotees can be blessed with divine grace or attain union with God through their intense devotion called bhakti. This book attempts to elucidate the concepts of bhakti and traces its development, theoretical as well as historical, in the religious history of India.

This volume is divided in two parts. The first part, 'The Theoretical Framework of Bhakti and its Historical Development', contains seven chapters dealing with various types of theories of bhakti in the Indian traditions. These chapters specifically investigate how the idea of bhakti emerged, took shape and was established in such philosophical schools as Vedanta, Pancaratra, Srivaisnava and Tantras.

The second part, 'The Philosophical Influence of Bhakti and its Popular Acceptance', contains seven chapters focusing on how the idea of bhakti exerted an influence on the Indian religious traditions, or how bhakti was popularly accepted in the Indian cultural contexts. Each chapter deals with the popular devotional movements led by Jnanesvar, Tukaram, Kabir, Tulsidas and Ramalingar with their works in the respective vernacular languages.

About the Author

The late Iwao Shima was a Professor of Indian philosophy at Kanazawa University. He extensively contributed to the various subjects of Indian spirituality including Advaita Vedanta, Tantric and Sakta traditions, Marathi Bhakti movements and renewed phases in Indian Buddhism. He was the inspiring organizer of research projects on Indian devotionalism, the out-come of which is crystallized in this publication.

Teiji Sakata is Professor Emeritus of Takushoku University. He is working on Hindi folktales and medieval Hindi literature. He is an active member of the International Conference on Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages.

Katsuyuki Ida is a Lecturer of South Asian Studies at Kanazawa University. He has been working on medieval Hinduism, focusing mainly on the Tantric practices and Puranic myths.

Preface

This book is the eighth volume of the series, 'Japanese Studies on of the South Asia', published by the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies. The main purpose of this series is to illustrate Japan's contribution to South Asian studies in the international academic world. This volume, entitled Historical Development of Bhakti as a Movement in India: Theory and Practice, is an attempt to elucidate by the the meanings of bhakti in various religious traditions.

In India, bhakti or devotion to God by devotees has been an important part of religious life since the early medieval period. When a devotee humbly worships God, he/she is embraced by divine grace; thus, a devotee can be united with God through bhakti. Taking into consideration the importance of religious commitment of bhakti among the Hindus, we organized this research group to work on its various phases in India and continued researching it from perspectives such as Indian philosophy, Hindu literatures, and modern Indian literatures. As a result, the source materials for our studies are written in various languages, not only in classical Sanskrit but also in such medieval and modern languages as Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, and Tamil.

In order to share our academic efforts and results, several seminars were held at Kanazawa University in Kanazawa City and Takushoku University in Tokyo. At these seminars, all the contributors to this volume presented their draft papers and later revised them on the basis of the suggestions given by the participants. our academic research was financially supported by a Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant 13301-B-17320014), awarded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science during the period 2005-8.

**Contents and Sample Pages**