�������Class-VII�Subject- Social Science�Chapter 8 - Devotional Paths To The Divine��

Prepared By: Md. Fayyaz Ahmed

TGT-Social Science

JNV Mandphiya Distt- Chittorharh( Rajasthan) Jaipur Region

Objectives

• highlight the major religious ideas and practices that began during this period�
• understand how Kabir challenged formal religions�
• illustrate how traditions preserved in texts and oral traditions are used to reconstruct history

Overview�

• Ideas of a bhakti (devotion to a single god) developed between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

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• The Nayanars and the Alvars were saint-poets and were prominent in southern India.

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• Shankara, Ramanuja, and Basavanna were prominent thinkers of southern India who shaped the idea of bhakti in the south.

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• Many saints who preached the bhakti of Vitthala, a form of lord Vishnu, emerged from Maharashtra

Overview�

• Nathapanthis, Siddhas, and Yogis were people that renounced the world and meditated to attain salvation.

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• Sufis were Islamic mystics that preached love and devotion to God and rejected the Shariat of Muslim scholars.

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• Sant Kabir was a poet and writer whose ideals and compositions shaped religious ideologies in northern India in the seventeenth century.

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• Guru Nanak established Sikhism to preach worship to one god and love for fellow humans. And his successors turned Sikhism into a huge religion that has millions of followers today.

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The Idea Of A Supreme God�

• Before the 7th century, Buddhist, Jain, and other faiths in the Indian sub-continent believed that all are equal and all have the right to live and to become free.

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• Before the formation of empires, people worshipped different gods and goddesses, but as kingdoms grew into empires, the idea that all living things pass through cycles of birth, rebirth, and karma became widely accepted.

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• One of the beliefs that developed from the 7th century onwards was that human beings are not equal, not even at birth, and social privileges are for those who are born in a higher caste.

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The Idea Of A Supreme God�

• Many people did not believe in this idea and turned to Buddhism or Jainism, where the path to salvation lay through personal effort.

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• Other people followed the idea of a supreme god, where salvation (nirvana, moksha, freedom from birth and death) could be achieved through devotion to one God (bhakti), and this is advised in the Bhagavadgita.

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• Shiva, Vishnu, and Durga became supreme deities, and their myths and legends became a part of Puranic stories.

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• The Puranas introduced methods of worship in local cults, and said that all devotees could get the blessings of the gods, regardless of their caste.

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Nayanars and Alvars�

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• Between the 7th and the 9th centuries, there was an emergence of new religious movements led by Nayanars (saints devoted to Shiva) and Alvars (saints devoted to Vishnu), who came from all castes, including those considered 'untouchables', such as the Pulaiyar and the Panars.

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• They detested Buddhists and Jains and preached that love for Shiva and Vishnu was the path to salvation. They believed in the ideals of love and heroism from the Sangam literature and mixed them with values of bhakti.

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Nayanars and Alvars�

• Nayanars and Alvars wandered from place to place and composed unique poems and music in praise of their deities.

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• Between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, the Chola and Pandya kings built splendid temples around the shrines visited by these saint-poets.

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• Their poems were compiled and their hagiographies (religious biographies) were composed, and even today, they are sources of history for modern researchers.

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Philosophy and Bhakti

Shankara

• Shankara, born in Kerala in the eighth century, was a very influential thinker of India.

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• He was an advocate of Advaita or the doctrine of the oneness of the human soul and the Supreme Soul which is formless and is the Ultimate Reality.

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• He advised people to give up worldly things because they are an illusion or maya, and to follow the path of knowledge because it is the true path of salvation.

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Philosophy and Bhakti

Ramanuja 

• He was born in Tamil Nadu in the eleventh century, and he was highly influenced by the philosophy of the Alvars.

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• He thought that the path to salvation was through intense devotion to Lord Vishnu because the grace of the Lord helps devotees attain permanent bliss (freedom and happiness).

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• He also suggested the theory of Vishishadvaita or qualified oneness which says that even if a soul unites with the Supreme Soul, it remains distinct and under the blessing of the Supreme Soul. This ideology inspired a new form of bhakti in northern India.

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Basavanna's Virashaivism

• The Tamil bhakti movement and temple worship came together to create the Virashaiva movement that began in Karnataka in the mid-twelfth century.
• It was initiated by Basavanna and other virashaivas such as Allama Prabhu and Akkamahadevi. They fought for the equality of all human beings and against the Brahmanical ideas of caste and poor treatment of women.
• They were also against religious rituals and idol worship.

The Saints of Maharashtra

• Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, many saint-poets such as Janeshwar, Namdev. Eknath, and Tukaram, women such as Sakkubai, and the family of Chokhamela from Maharashtra inspired people to follow the bhakti of the Vitthala temple in Pandharpur as well as that of the god that lives in the people's hearts.

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• They rejected all kinds of rituals, unnecessary display of piety, and discrimination on the basis of caste.

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• They rejected the concept of renouncing the world and preferred to stay with their families and serve fellow humans. This was a new form of bhakti where happiness was in sharing the pain of others.

Nathpanthis, Siddhas, and Yogis

• Nathpanthis, Siddhacharas, and Yogis preached renunciation (self-sacrifice), and taught that the path to salvation was through meditation on the formless Ultimate Reality and the oneness of the human soul with it.
• They preached intense training of the mind and body through yogasanas, breathing excercises, and meditation.
• These groups were popular among the 'low' castes and their criticism for the common Vedic religion created a base for a new religion to become a common power in the north.

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Islam and Sufism

• Sufis were Muslim mystics who rejected hypocrisy in religion and emphasised love and devotion to God and compassion for fellow human beings.

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• Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion which believes in submission to one God, rejects idol worship, and preaches collective worship of God.

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• Muslim scholars developed a holy law called the Shariat which the sufis rejected because they wanted union with God just like a lover seeks unity with his beloved.

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• Sufis composed expressive poems and music, and also rich prose that included fables and anecdotes.

Islam and Sufism

• Great sufi saints include Ghazali, Rumi, and Sa'adi who believed that the heart can be trained to look at the world with a different perspective.

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• They used zikr (chanting of a name or formula), contemplation, sama (singing), raqs (dancing), discussion of parables, breath control, etc., under the guidance of a master called a pir.

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• Genealogies of sufis were known as silsilas, and each followed a different method of ritual practice and instruction.

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• After the establishment of the Delhi Sultanante, major sufi centres developed in India, of which the Chishti silsila was one of the most influential.

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Islam and Sufism

• This order has had many thinkers, such as Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki of Delhi, Baba Farid of Punjab, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, and Bandanawaz Gisudaraz of Gulbarga.

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• Sufi masters held assemblies in their khanqahs or hospices where all kinds of devotees came to discuss spiritual matters, solve their worldly problems, or attend music and dance sessions.

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• People mostly associated sufis with magical powers. So their tombs or dargahs became places of pilgrimage for people of all ages and castes to visit and pay their respects.

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New Religious Movements in the North

• Many different kinds of movements influenced each other in North India, and people from different religions and castes thronged to holy places to listen to preachers of new religions.

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• People such as Kabir and Guru Nanak rejected all orthodox religions but people such as Tulsidas and Surdas accepted existing beliefs and made them accessible to all.

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• Tulsidas accepted God in the form of Rama and composed the Ramcharitramanas in Awadhi. This work is important both as a religious book and a literary work.

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New Religious Movements in the North

• Surdas was a devotee of Krishna, and he expresses his devotion with compositions such as the Sursagara, Surasaravali, and Sahitya Lahari.

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• Shankaradeva of Assam was a devotee of Vishnu, composed poems and plays in Assamese, and set up namghars or houses of recitation and prayer.

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• Mirabai was a Rajput princess married into the royal family of Mewar before she became a disciple of Ravidas who was a saint from the 'untouchable' caste. She was a devotee of Krishna and composed many bhajans which became popular among the people of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

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Kabir

• Kabir was brought up in a family of Muslim julahas (weavers) in the city of Benaras.
• He wrote many verses called sakhis and pads which were sung by wandering bhajan singers.
• Many of his writings were later compiled in the Guru Granth Sahib, Panch Vani, and Bijak.
• His teachings rejected major religious traditions and ridiculed external worship in Brahmanism and Islam, the special position of the priestly class, and the caste system.
• He mostly wrote in Hindi, but he also used a cryptic language sometimes.
• He believed in a formless Supreme God and preached that the only path to salvation was through bhakti (devotion).

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Baba Guru Nanak

• Guru Nanak was born in Talwandi, but he travelled for years before he found the Dera Baba Nanak in Kartarpur.

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• Irrespective of their creed or caste, his followers ate together  in a common kitchen known as a langar. And the sacred place/temple he created for worship and meditation was called a dharmasal (now known as a Gurudwara).

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• Before he died in 1539, he appointed a follower called Lena (known later as Guru Angad) as his successor.

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• Guru Angad compiled the work of Guru Nanak and added to it his own script known as Gurmukhi.

Baba Guru Nanak

• The next three Gurus also wrote under Nanak's name, and their work was compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604.

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• Works of Shaikh Farid, Sant Kabir, Bhagat Namdev, and Guru Tegh Bahadur were also added to these compilations.

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• Finally, in 1706, Guru Gobind Singh authenticated the compilation and created the Guru Granth Sahib.

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• Guru Nanak's followers increased in the sixteenth century as people from all castes and occupations joined the community.

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• By the seventeenth century, the town of Ramdaspur developed around a Gurudwara called the Harmandar Sahib and became a self-governing society.

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Baba Guru Nanak

• The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan saw them as a potential threat, and in 1606 he ordered the execution of Guru Arjan.

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• By the seventeenth century, Guru Gobind Singh organised the Khalsa Movement, and the community of Sikhs became a political organisation called the Khalsa Panth.

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• Guru Nanak emphasised the worship of one God and insisted that caste, creed, and gender were irrelevant to attaining salvation.

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• According to him, pursuit of an active life would liberate humans, and he also used the terms nam, dan, and isnan to mean right worship, welfare, and purity of conduct.

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• His ideas today are called nam-japna, kirt-karna, and vand-chhakna, which mean right belief and worship, honest living, and helping others.

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Quiz

10 Questions

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QUESTION 1 / 10

Archana prays every morning and sings bhajans (songs of worship) in the temple. She also meditates on �the name of her favourite god. �What is such devotional worship, directed towards one supreme deity, known as?

(Choose one correct answer)

• 1- shakti 
• 2- bhakti 
• 3- ramti
• 4- gamti

QUESTION 2 / 10

With the growth of new towns, trade, and empires between the 7th and the 17th �centuries, new ideas developed and different groups of people worshipped different �gods and goddesses. Muslims, for example, believed in Allah, and Christians �believed in Jesus. �Which idea became widely accepted during that time?

(Choose one correct answer)

• 1-All living things are immortal.
• 2-All living things pass through countless cycles of birth and rebirth.
• 3-Human beings are superior to God.
• 4-Living things are separate from God.

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QUESTION 3 / 10

Many people believed that their social privileges came from their higher birth in a noble family or in a �higher caste. But many people did not agree with such ideas. In fact, many religions came forward with �the teaching that it was possible to overcome social differences and break the cycle of rebirth through�personal efforts. Who spread these new ideas?

(Choose one correct answer)

• 1-Kabir and the Jains
• 2-Buddha and Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti
• 3-Buddha and the Jains
• 4-Meera bai and Narsinh Mehta

QUESTION 4 / 10

Sagar is listening to his grandmother narrate the story of Mahabharata. In one part, �Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that the devotion to Supreme God can liberate humans �(make them free) from the painful cycle of births and rebirths. �This idea had become popular in the early centuries of the common era. �Which famous Vedic holy book tells us about this concept?

(Choose one correct answer)

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• 1-the Mahabharata
• 2-the Kabir Vani
• 3-the Bhagavad Gita
• 4-the Ramayana

QUESTION 5 / 10�The idea of Bhakti became so popular that even Buddhas and Jains (who spread the new idea that one can build good karma to become free from the cycle of birth and rebirth) adopted it. Which gods were worshipped as supreme deities by the people of the those times and made part of myths and legends?

(Choose one correct answer)

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• 1-Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh
• 2-Parvati, Laxmi, and Sarasvati
• 3-Sita, Gita, and Gayatri
• 4-Shiva, Vishnu, and Durga

QUESTION 6 / 10�In the 7th and 9th centuries, we saw the emergence of new religious movements led by the Nayanars and the Alvars. They came from all castes, including those labelled as 'untouchables', and they worshipped Shiva and Vishnu as a path to salvation. Which famous Tamil literature speaks of the love and heroism of these gods?�

(Choose one correct answer.)

1-the Sangam literature

2-the Narayan literature

3-the Tulsigrast Ramayan

4-the Vishnu Puran�

QUESTION 7 / 10�The Nayanars and the Alvars, groups of people who came from all castes including the 'untouchables', were sharply critical of the Buddhists and Jains. Instead, they followed the ideals of love and heroism as found in the Sangam literature. They travelled from place to place, composing exquisite poems in praise of their deities. Who were the Nayanars and Alvars?

• 1-The Nayanars were saints devoted to Krishna, and the Alvars were saints devoted to Vishnu.
• 2-The Nayanars were saints devoted to Shiva, and the Alvars were saints devoted to the Bhagvad Gita.
• 3-The Nayanars were saints devoted to Buddha, and the Alvars were saints devoted to Mahavira.
• 4-The Nayanars were saints devoted to Shiva, and the Alvars were saints devoted to Vishnu.

QUESTION 8 / 10�Kings and queens often built big temples to display the wealth of their kingdom. Between the 10th and 12th centuries, the Chola and the Pandya kings built temples around many of the shrines visited by famous saints-poets to create a link between the traditions of bhakti and temple worship. The hagiographies of the Alvars and the Nayanars could be successfully used as sources to understand the history of the bhakti tradition. What is hagiography?

• 1-writings of the lives of saints
• 2-study of writing
• 3-study of graphics
• 4-writings on God

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QUESTION 9 / 10�Shankara was one of the most revered Hindu philosophers of India, and he consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta. He taught that the Brahman is the only ultimate reality, and that it is formless. He also taught that whatever we can see, feel, touch, etc., are all illusions. Where was Shankara born?

• 1-present-day Punjab
• 2-present-day Pakistan
• 3-Kerala
• 4-Gujarat

QUESTION 10 / 10�Ramanuja was a Hindu theologist and philosopher born in a Tamil Brahmin family in the village of Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. His doctrine greatly inspired the new tradition of bhakti which developed in north India. According to Ramanuja, which was the best way to attain salvation (permanent freedom and happiness)?

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• 1-intense devotion to Krishna

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• 2-intense devotion to Shiva

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• 3-intense devotion to Vishnu

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• 4-intense devotion to Rama

Interesting Facts�

• The famous Krishna bhajan, "Maiya Mori Main Nahin Makhan Khayo..." was written by Saint Surdas.
• Poetry helps you improve your vocabulary!
• Tulsi Das wrote Hanuman Chalisa when he was imprisoned by Akbar.
• Shiva is called Nataraja, the Lord of (the Cosmic) Dance

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Date Lines�

• the 8th century: start of the evolution of bhakti and Sufi movements
• from the 7th to the 9th centuries: emergence of new religious movements, led by the Nayanars (saints devoted to Shiva) and Alvars (saints devoted to Vishnu) who came from all castes, including those considered “untouchable”
• between the 10th and the 12th centuries: Chola and Pandya kings build elaborate temples around many of the shrines visited by the saint-poets, strengthening the links between the bhakti tradition and temple worship
• the 8th century: Shankara, one of the most influential philosophers of India, is born in Kerala
• the mid-12th century: the Virashaiva movement (initiated by Basavanna and his companions like Allama Prabhu and Akkamahadevi) begins in Karnataka
• from the 13th to the 17th centuries: saint-poets inspire people with their songs in simple Marathi; the most important among them were Janeshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram, as well as women like Sakkubai and the family of Chokhamela, both of whom belonged to the “untouchable” Mahar caste
• from the 11th century onwards: many Sufi saints from Central Asia settle in Hindustan
• after the 13th century: a new wave of the bhakti movement in north India
• the 16th century: the number of Guru Nanak’s followers increases under the leadership his successors
• the beginning of the 17th century: the town of Ramdaspur (Amritsar) develops around the central Gurdwara called Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple)