The first introduction to use the key Hindu concept of bhakti to explore ideas lying at the centre of Indic ways of philosophical thought and practice.
For two millennia, many Hindu religious worldviews have been characterised by the concepts, experiences, and institutions of bhakti, a Sanskrit word that means loving adoration, unwavering devotion, and meditative attention. Working with primary texts (in Sanskrit, Assamese, Bengali, Braj-Bhasha, and Modern Standard Hindi) and translations (from Tamil, Marathi, and Gujarati), Ankur Barua situates forms of bhakti in their sociohistorical contexts. His approach interrogates Eurocentric notions of philosophy and pluralizes our conceptions of how to philosophize in different intellectual contexts.
Each chapter features translations from the original texts – including scripts of Bollywood movies – to highlight the diversity of styles of bhakti. Combining philosophical theology, intellectual history, and social theory, chapters delineate the multiple ways in which “Hindu” identity has been projected, critiqued, and configured in precolonial and contemporary South Asia. They provide the necessary tools to effectively navigate the vast body of contemporary literature on bhakti.
This book is for anyone looking to understand how the languages of bhakti are intertwined with Hindu ways of thinking.