A Storm of Songs

This fascinating book about histories of religious poetry and songs in the Indian vernaculars deals with a number of issues related to research on bhakti (devotion). However, its primary topic is how the idea that Hindu bhakti constituted a single and unitary history developed and attained status as a paradigm among historians of Indian literature and languages as well as in religious studies. A precursor to the bhakti movement paradigm was the idea of the four Vaiṣṇava sampradāyas, first conceptualized by the Rāmānandīs. The author investigates how the four Vaiṣṇava sampradāyas prepared the ground for the idea of a bhakti movement. Other major questions asked are what role bhakti poetry played in the adoption of the vernaculars; bhakti’s relation to politics; whether the bhakti networks of poets are best described as medieval or early modern; and how the paradigm of the bhakti movement was a product of and became employed in the service of nation building in India.

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