Many medieval religious movements emphasized mysticism, such as the Cathars and related movements in the West, the Jews in Spain ( see Zohar ), the Bhakti movement in India and Sufism in Islam.

Kabīr ( also Kabīra ) ( Hindi: कब ी र, Punjabi: ਕਬ ੀ ਰ, Urdu: کبير ‎) ( 1440 – 1518 ) was a mystic poet and sant of India, whose writings have greatly influenced the Bhakti movement.

Category: Bhakti movement

it rises to importance in the medieval history of Hinduism, where the Bhakti movement saw a rapid growth of bhakti beginning in Southern India with the Vaisnava Alvars ( 6th-9th century CE ) and Saiva Nayanars ( 5th-10th century CE ), who spread bhakti poetry and devotion throughout India by the 12th-18th century CE.

The Bhagavata Purana is text associated with the Bhakti movement which elaborates the concept of bhakti as found in the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhakti movement reached North India in the Delhi Sultanate and throughout the Mughal era contributed significantly to the characteristics of Hinduism as the religion of the general population under the rule of a Muslim elite.

The Bhakti movement is a Hindu religious movement in which the main spiritual practice is loving devotion among the Shaivite and Vaishnava saints.

The Bhakti movement originated in ancient Tamil Nadu and began to spread to the north during the late medieval ages when north India was under Islamic rule.

The Bhakti movement was counter to the prevalent caste ideology which was dividing Hinduism.

So, the Bhakti movement has its own importance to save Hinduism.

In fact for all of its history the Bhakti movement co-existed peacefully with the other movements in Hinduism.

During the 14th – 17th centuries, a great Bhakti movement swept through central and northern India, initiated by a loosely associated group of teachers or sants.

Ramananda, Ravidas, Srimanta Sankardeva, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vallabhacharya, Surdas, Meera Bai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Namdev, Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram and other mystics spearheaded the Bhakti movement in the North while Annamacharya, Bhadrachala Ramadas, Tyagaraja among others propogated Bhakti in the South.

Ramananda was the leader of the Bhakti movement focusing on Rama as God.

His influence was profound, and he is one of the fathers of the Vaishnava Bhakti movement.

Great leaders of the Vaishnava Bhakti movement in Karnataka like Purandara Dasa, Kanaka Dasa, Raghavendra Swami and many others were influenced by Dvaita traditions.

The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the Maha Mantra (" Great Mantra "), is a sixteen-word Vaishnava mantra which first appeared in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad, and which from the 15th century rose to importance in the Bhakti movement following the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

Category: Bhakti movement

The medieval Hindi literature is marked by the influence of Bhakti movement and composition of long, epic poems.

But this emphasis on poetry theory greatly reduced the emotional aspects of poetry — the main characteristic of the Bhakti movement — and the actual content of the poetry became less important.

Dasa Sahitya is the literature of Bhakti movement composed by devotees in honor of Lord Vishnu or one of his avatars.

He is most known for his composition, the epic poem Gita Govinda, which depicts the divine love of the Hindu deity Krishna and his consort, Radha, and is considered an important text in the Bhakti movement of Hinduism.

In the Bhakti tradition within Hinduism, it is believed that execution of devotional service to God leads to the development of Love for God ( taiche bhakti-phale krsne prema upajaya ), and as love for God increases in the heart, the more one becomes free from material contamination ( krishna-prema asvada haile, bhava nasa paya ).

Many streams of thought flow from the six Vedic / Hindu schools, Bhakti sects and Tantra Agamic schools into the one ocean of Hinduism, the first of the Dharma religions.

See Also: Hinduism -- Hindu scripture -- Samkhya -- Yoga -- Nyaya -- Vaisesika -- Vedanta -- Bhakti -- Cārvāka -- Indian logic

Bhakti ( also spelled Bhakthi, ) in Hinduism and Buddhism is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine.

Bhakti is an important component of many branches of Hinduism, defined differently by various sects and schools.

In Hinduism specifically the name gopi ( sometimes gopika ) is used more commonly to refer to the group of cow herding girls famous within Vaishnava Theology for their unconditional devotion ( Bhakti ) to Krishna as described in the stories of Bhagavata Purana and other Puranic literatures.

Vedanta, Yoga, Bhakti, Tantra are major parts of Hinduism en generale.

He is most known for his composition, the epic poem Gita Govinda, which depicts the divine love of Krishna-an avatar of Vishnu and his consort, Radha, and it is mentioned that Radha is greater than Hari, and is considered an important text in the Bhakti movement of Hinduism.

He later converted to Hinduism under the influence of the Saiva saint Appar with the revival of Hinduism during the Bhakti movement in South India.

Bhakti sects within Hinduism such as the Mahanubhav, Varkari and many others were principle movements within the Hindu fold to openly advocate social justice and equality between men and women.

Hinduism under the Islamic Rulers saw the increasing prominence of the Bhakti movement, which remains influential today.

While all traditions of popular Hinduism continued – including the worship of popular reincarnations of the primordial Shakti – Bhakti tradition attained new prominence ; Bhakti poetry of lasting greatness was composed in northern India under the rule of Muslim emperors.

The reception in England disappointed him, as he records much later in a letter to Max Muller " The British public ought to know how the most advanced type of Hinduism in India is trying to absorb and assimilate the Christianity of Christ, and how it is establishing and spreading, under the name of the New Dispensation, a new Hinduism, which combines Yoga and Bhakti, and also a new Christianity, which blends together Apostolical faith and modern civilisation and science.

Sri Krishna Chaitanya was a notable proponent for the Vaishnava school of Bhakti yoga ( meaning loving devotion to Krishna ), based on the philosophy of the Bhagavata Purana and Bhagavad Gita.

It was initially considered unorthodox, as it rebelled against caste distinctions and disregarded Brahmanic rituals, which according to Bhakti saints were not necessary for salvation.

While many of the Bhakti mystics focused their attention on Krishna or Rama, it did not necessarily mean that the sect of Shiva was marginalized.

The philosophical schools changed the way people thought, but Bhakti was immediately accessible to all, calling to the instinctive emotion of love and redirecting it to the highest pursuit of God and self-realization.

Unlike the Adi Kaal ( also called the Vir Gatha Kaal ) which was characterized by an overdose of Poetry in the Vir Rasa ( Heroic Poetry ), the Bhakti Yug marked a much more diverse and vibrant form of poetry which spanned the whole gamut of rasas from Shringara rasa ( love ), Vir Rasa ( Heroism ).

This was also the age of tremendous integration between the Hindu and the Islamic elements in the Arts with the advent of many Muslim Bhakti poets like Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana who was a court poet to Mughal emperor Akbar and was a great devotee of Krishna.

The Nirgun School of Bhakti Poetry was also tremendously secular in nature and its propounders like Kabir and Guru Nanak had a large number of followers irrespective of caste or religion.

( Basavanna never called himself as GOD, he always called himself as Bhakti Bhandari and he was always treated as ANNA a elder brotherly figure ( Basava ANNA ).

He also had a strong devotional zeal towards his own guru, and suggested the path of devotion, Bhakti yoga, to some of his visitors, as he believed the path of knowledge, Jnana yoga was not for everyone.

This was the time when the Bhakti tradition was fomenting a shift from Sanskrit to the local idiom ( Brajbhasa and Hindi ), and Tansen's compositions also highlight this trend.

He was most inspired by the life of Swami Vivekananda and his four small volumes: Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga and Inspired Talks, and most particularly by Swami Vivekananda ’ s masterful poem, " The Song of the Sannyasin.

Basava () ( also known as Bhakti Bhandari Basavanna () or Basaveshwara (), ( 1134 – 1196 )) was a philosopher, Statesman and a social reformer from present-day Karnataka, India.

Scholarly consensus holds that the text was completed no later than around 1000 CE, when it is mentioned by al Biruni and quoted by Abhinavagupta ; the earliest suggestions of it are the composition of the Vishnu Purana and Harivamsa, and the Vaishnava Bhakti movement in South India, which limit its composition to after 500 CE.

Madhvācārya was one of the important philosophers during the Bhakti movement.

Saint Tukaram ( 1608 – 1645 ) was a prominent Varkari Sant ( Saint ) and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.