civilizational ardour/origin of bhakti

[Bharat Gupt]

nanda chandran wrote:
>
> S Mathuresan writes :
>
> >nanda candran replies:
> >If classical Sangam age is between anywhere 500 BC to 500 AD, it is the age
> >of the most vigorous philosophical development in Samskrutam literature. It
> >was the age of the later Upanishads, the Buddha, Mahavira, the Astika and
> >the nAstika schools. Where is the basis for your claim?
> >
>
> >>   Exactly. Among the philosophical works like Upanishads, etc.,
> >>we do not find a body of lit. paralleling Sangam works.
>
> The answer to this question is deeply rooted in the history and progress of
> the
> Vedic religion and the caste system itself.

The Origin of Bhakti and God as the Other :
This most intriguing subject need not be seen as a development  within  the
Indian subcontinent only.

Was there no bhakti/devotion among the performers of Vedic yajnas to the
devatas they sacrificed for?  I am sure there must have been.


The process of making the devataas into idols (eikones) starts in which part of the
subcontinent, north or south ?  Before we go on to date Sangam literature and use it as
evidence of bhakti let us pause to see the earliest evidence of idols. They are found
not in South  India but in the Harappan, Greek and Sumerian world.

This leaves us with the option of concluding that:

1. The usual AIT. That Aryans descend from the North. They amalgamate with Minoans of
Crete, take idol worship and temple making from Minoans and make the earliest temples in
north Greece.  In India, the Aryans push down the Harappans to south India who develop
Sangam literature in Tamil but do not make icons or gods or temples (archeological
evidence absent).
                                        OR

2.  That the  Harappans knew  no idolatory, the seals etc, had a legal or secular use.
They had no temples as none seemed to have been excavated. That idol worship prevailed
only in the Meditterranean and the Middle East form the very early times, it became
highly refined as the great art of temple making is seen in Egyptian, Cretan and
Hellenic cultures and in a simpler manifestation in the Mid East. Idol worship had
strong opponents in the Mid East only and hence the quarrel between idolators and
icoclast found in Mid East only.

        Idol worship/bhakti, not just as devotion (which could be felt for amorphic gods
also) but as temple phenomenon, comes to India from the West around 500 bce and takes
the shape of the cult of Vasudev/Krishna, Vishnu, Surya, Rudra, Shiva,  etc.. It is
reconciled with Brahmavaad or Jnaana. This phiolosophic development need not be seen in
terms of Caste, Color or Language. The three streams (Triveni? ) of Yaaga(sacrifice),
Brahmavaaada and its Nastika opposition Aajivaka, bauddha, Jaina etc (no morphe, icon
mental or physical), and bhakti as worship of the ishta contine all over the
subcontinent in various shades and amalgamantions. The Sangam literare is part of that
development.

        Bhakti as worship of the ishta devataa cannot exist , cannot be formulated
without, without icon and temple. If Harappan/Tamil/ Southern orinality of bhakti
is to be established it must connect to archeological remains of idols and temples,
whether from Harappan times or later in the South. Taking all kinds of evidence
together, bhakti of the ishta is older outside India.

 Bharat Gupt
Associate Prof , Delhi Univ.