Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999

114 Popular Culture Review seen in the works of Surdas, Mirabai, and Chaitanya. Chaitanya (who, himself, is considered an incarnation of God or Avtar) spread the Vaishnava movement in Bengal and in the rest of India and abroad through his followers. Before Chaitanya, people of Bengal had been influenced by saint-poet-philosophers, like Jayadeva, Vidyapati, and Chandidas. However, it was Chaitanya who popularized Bhakti into a forceful religious movement in Bengal and all over India. In Assam, the Vaishnava movement was led in the sixteenth century by Shankaradeva. In the fifteenth century, Ramananda visited Benares from South India and established centers for the worship of Rama deity. His influence was felt in the works of his disciples, like Kabir and Tulasidasa. Kabir was a Muslim and Tulasidasa was a Hindu. The contributions of Kabir and Tulasidasa to the Vaishnava tradition and the Bhakti movement are well-known - through Kabir’s eloquent poetry and the rendering of Shri Ramacharitamanasa by Tulasidasa. These saint-poet-philosophers, in turn, influenced many new generations of saint-poet-philosophers in In dia and doused the people with sentiments and feelings of Bhakti.^ Muslim sufis and mystics also had considerable influence on the Bhakti tradition in India. Like the Bhaktas (devotees), these seekers sought salvation through passionate and ardent love of God and spoke of a union with the Divine, at variance with the orthodox view of Islam. Their emphasis on experience, as against doctrine, made it possible for them to influence and be influenced by the Hindu saint-poet-philosophers. Three of the most notable saints in this category were Kabir, Nanak, and Dadu, who provided a more abstract view of God and further diversified the Bhakti tradition in India.^ The Bhakti movement around Shiva and Shakti somehow remained pri marily concentrated to the extreme North and in the South and did not spread as widely in the rest of India. The Vaishnava movement, on the other hand, was more popular and widely accepted all over India and abroad.^ Navadha Bhakti and Bhakta As indicated above, Bhakti is conceived as complete and unquestionable faith and devotion toward the Personal Supreme and His different incarnations and representations. Bhakti is selfless, non-calculating, unconditional, and it ex presses itself in all walks of life and at all times. The devotional service provided in Bhakti is the easiest path for the fulfillment of one’s mundane goals and the spiritual goals of self-realization and attainment of Moksha, through the causeless and ceaseless mercy of the Personal Supreme. For a Bhakta, Bhakti becomes ev erything — a path, a focus, a process, and an end in itself^® Navadha Bhakti is considered even more sublime and pure. Goswami Tulasidasa describes Navadha Bhakti as follows in Shri Ramacharitamanasa:

Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 120