Saguna Bhakti: Tulsidas, Surdas, the Ramcharitmanas and the Ashtachhap

What Is Saguna Bhakti: Meaning, Features and the God With Form

Difference Between Saguna and Nirguna Bhakti: Meaning and Features

Historians of religion divide the bhakti traditions into two broad streams. Saguna bhakti, devotion to God with attributes, focused on specific deities, Shiva, Vishnu and his avatars, and forms of the goddess, often pictured in human form. Nirguna bhakti was the worship of an abstract, formless God. The word saguna itself means with qualities; Saguna Brahman is the Absolute with qualities.

The two streams also differed in their attitude to the faith around them. Kabir and Guru Nanak rejected all orthodox religions; Tulsidas and Surdas accepted existing beliefs and practices but wanted to make them accessible to all. Figure 1 sets the two side by side.

The nirguna sants, Kabir, whose verses are compiled in the Bijak, Nanak and Ravidas, are taught on the nirguna bhakti page.

Lila, Murti and the Avatar: How Saguna Devotees Saw God

Three ideas made a God with form something a devotee could love and serve. The first is the avatar: Rama and Krishna are forms of Vishnu who came into the world, so their stories are God's own deeds. The second is lila, divine play. Creation is not a task God needed to finish but the outcome of a playful, free nature, and in Vaishnava devotion lila means the deeds of God and his devotees, Krishna's childhood among the cowherds of Vrindavan above all.

The third is the murti, the devotional image of a deity used in worship. Some traditions see it as a symbol of the divine; others hold that after consecration, prana pratishtha, God is truly present in it and receives worship through it. This is why saguna bhakti built temples, served images with food and music, and enacted the lilas as drama and dance, from the Ramlila of Rama to the rasa lila, in which Krishna dances with Radha and the gopis of Braj.

Philosophical Roots of Saguna Bhakti: Ramananda, Vallabha and Nimbarka

North Indian saguna devotion drew on the Vedanta teachers of the south and on teachers who settled in the Ganga valley. The main figures behind the two streams of devotion were:

• Ramananda (fourteenth century): A Brahmin who lived for most of his life in Varanasi and is recognised as the founder of the Ramanandi Sampradaya. Tradition links his ideas to Ramanuja; he accepted disciples without discrimination of gender, class or caste.
• Vallabha (about 1479 to 1530): Founder of the Pushtimarg, the path of nourishing, which worships the youthful Krishna under his philosophy of Shuddhadvaita.
• Nimbarka: Chief proponent of Dvaitadvaita, dualistic non-dualism, and founder of the Nimbarka Sampradaya; born in the south, he spent most of his life in Mathura. His date is disputed, from the twelfth or thirteenth century to as early as the sixth or seventh.

Figure 2 shows how the two streams of north India grew from these teachers to their poets, works and centres.

Their predecessors in the south, Ramanuja and Madhva among them, are taught on the Vedanta acharyas page.

Ram-Bhakti: Tulsidas and the Ramcharitmanas

Tulsidas: Life, Works and the Devotion of Banaras

Born Rambola Dubey, Tulsidas was a Vaishnava saint of the Ramanandi tradition and poet devoted to Rama. He died in 1623; his birth is placed in 1511 by one tradition and around 1532 by other accounts. He spent most of his life in Banaras and Ayodhya, where the Tulsi Ghat on the Ganga is named after him, and he founded the Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple of Varanasi.

He wrote in Sanskrit, Awadhi and Braj Bhasha, and his works divide by language:

The Hanuman Chalisa is forty chaupais in praise of Hanuman; the Vinaya Patrika, a letter of petition, is a set of hymns to Rama and other deities. In the Kavitavali and the Vinaya Patrika Tulsidas writes that his family abandoned him after his birth.

Tulsidas is also credited with starting the Ramlila, the folk-theatre form of the Ramayana. His influence reaches today into the language, the Ramlila stage, Hindustani classical music and popular culture.

The Ramcharitmanas: The Ramayana Retold in Awadhi

Tulsidas began the Ramcharitmanas at Ayodhya in 1574. Its name means the lake of the deeds of Rama, and its chief inspiration is the Sanskrit Ramayana of Valmiki. Tulsidas knew Sanskrit well, but he chose Awadhi, the language of eastern Uttar Pradesh, so that ordinary people could read it, and tradition says the Sanskrit scholars of Varanasi criticised him for writing in the vernacular.

The work matters both as an expression of devotion and as literature. It has been called the greatest book of all devotional literature and the most trustworthy guide to the popular living faith of the Indian people, and it is known in common speech simply as the Tulsi Ramayana or the Manas.

Its standing is international too. In 2024 the Ramcharitmanas, with the Panchatantra and the Sahrdayaloka-Locana, entered UNESCO's Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Regional Register at the tenth meeting of its committee in Ulaanbaatar, on nominations made by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

Krishna-Bhakti: Vallabha, Surdas and the Ashtachhap Poets

Vallabhacharya's Pushtimarg and the Worship of Shrinathji

The Pushtimarg, the path of nourishing, was founded by Vallabha in the early sixteenth century and developed by his son Vitthalnath (1515 to 1586). Its followers worship the youthful Krishna of the Bhagavata Purana and of Govardhan Hill. In Vallabha's teaching the human soul is inseparable from God yet depends on his grace, and liberation comes from Krishna's grace.

Worship takes the form of seva, service of Krishna's image with food, music and art that recreate his day as a youth in Braj. The central image is Shrinathji, Krishna as a seven-year-old child, whose worship Vitthalnath institutionalised. The image was later carried from Govardhan near Vrindavan to Rajasthan, to protect it from Aurangzeb, who in 1665 set out to destroy the temples around Vrindavan, and it now stands in the seventeenth-century temple of Nathdwara, near Udaipur. The sect is strongest in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Surdas, the Ashtachhap and Raskhan: Krishna Poets of Braj

Surdas was a sixteenth-century blind devotional poet and singer of Krishna, whose life is traditionally dated 1483 to 1563, and who wrote most of his songs in Braj Bhasha. His compositions are collected in the Sursagara, the Surasaravali and the Sahitya Lahari. The Sur Sagar, the ocean of Sur, describes Krishna as the lovely child of Gokul and Braj, often through the eyes of the gopis; many of its poems were added later by others writing in his name.

The Pushtimarg counts Surdas as an initiated disciple of Vallabha and the foremost of its eight poets, though modern scholars consider that link unhistorical. His poems remain at the centre of the sect's sung worship.

The Ashtachhap, the eight seals, is the group of eight poets whose Braj Bhasha kirtans are sung in Pushtimarg worship, named after the signature, chap, at the end of each poem: Kumbhandas, Surdas, Nanddas, Paramanandadas, Krishnadas, Chaturbhujdas, Govindswami and Chhitswami. Around them grew a wider devotional and courtly literature in Hindi:

• Raskhan: Syed Ibrahim Khan, a Muslim poet who learned the bhakti path from Vitthalnath, lived at Vrindavan and accepted Krishna as the supreme god; his best-known work is the Premavatika, the forest of love.
• Rahim (1556 to 1627): Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan, one of the nine ministers of Akbar’s court, known for his Hindustani couplets (dohe).
• Keshavdas (1555 to 1617): Poet of the Orchha court, whose Rasikpriya opened the Riti period of Hindi poetry.
• Bihari (1595 to 1663): Author of the Satsai, about seven hundred Braj couplets on Radha and Krishna, the best-known book of the Riti period.

Saguna Bhakti Across India: Rama, Krishna and Vithoba

Saguna Devotion Beyond Awadh and Braj

Krishna-bhakti had a sacred land of its own. Braj, the country around Mathura and Vrindavan on the Yamuna, is where the Bhagavata Purana places Krishna's childhood among the cowherds; Govardhan Hill, about 21 kilometres from Vrindavan, is its sacred centre and is itself revered as a natural form of Krishna. Vallabha in Braj, Sankardev in Assam and Chaitanya in Bengal were the leading Krishna teachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Saguna bhakti was not confined to the Hindi heartland. The same devotion to a God with form took regional shapes elsewhere:

• Mirabai of Rajasthan sang of Krishna as her beloved.
• Chaitanya in Bengal led public sankirtan to Radha and Krishna.
• The Varkari saints of Maharashtra worshipped Vithoba, a form of Krishna, at Pandharpur.

Each of these is taught in full on the regional bhakti page. Figure 3 places the north Indian saguna poets of this page in time.

Significance of Saguna Bhakti: Literature, Ramlila and Temple Culture

Bhakti Literature in Awadhi and Braj Bhasha, Ramlila and Temple Culture

Saguna bhakti wrote its classics in two forms of Hindi. Awadhi carried the Ramcharitmanas and the Hanuman Chalisa; Braj Bhasha, the speech of the country around Mathura, carried the Sur Sagar, the Ashtachhap kirtans, the Vinaya Patrika, Keshavdas's Rasikpriya and Bihari's Satsai. Poets of the court and of the temple wrote in the same language, and Muslim poets wrote in Hindi too: Raskhan sang of Krishna, and Rahim wrote Hindustani couplets (dohe).

The legacy of saguna bhakti is still lived every day. The Ramlila re-enacts the Ramayana in towns across north India; in 2008 UNESCO declared it part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, naming Ayodhya, Ramnagar and Varanasi, Vrindavan, Almora, Satna and Madhubani among its notable traditions, and describing it as bringing people together without distinction of caste, religion or age.

Beyond the Ramlila, the Hanuman Chalisa is recited regularly by Hindus, and the Pushtimarg's seva continues at Nathdwara, with nearly ten thousand padas by thirty to forty poets in its musical liturgy.

The limits are those of its own design. Because it accepted existing beliefs and made them accessible rather than rejecting them, saguna bhakti widened who could worship more than it changed the social order; the sharper challenge to caste and ritual came from the nirguna sants.

Sources

• NCERT: Themes in Indian History II (Class XII), Bhakti-Sufi Traditions
• NCERT: Our Pasts II (Class VII), Devotional Paths to the Divine
• PIB: Ramcharitmanas, Panchatantra and Sahrdayaloka-Locana enter UNESCO's Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Regional Register
• Akashvani News: India's literary heritage enters UNESCO's Memory of World Asia-Pacific Register (14 May 2024)
• Department of Tourism, Government of Rajasthan: Rajsamand (Nathdwara)
• Incredible India (Ministry of Tourism): Nathdwara
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