The challenge of Islam and popular religion

The advent of Islam in the Ganges basin at the end of the 12th century resulted in the withdrawal of royal patronage from Hinduism in much of the area. The attitude of the Muslim rulers toward Hinduism varied. Some, like Fīrūz Tughluq (ruled 1351–88) and Aurangzeb (ruled 1658–1707), were strongly anti-Hindu and enforced payment of jizya, a poll tax on unbelievers. Others, like the Bengali sultan Ḥusayn Shah ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn (reigned 1493–1519) and the great Akbar (reigned 1556–1605), were well disposed toward their Hindu subjects. Many temples were destroyed by the more fanatical rulers, however. Conversion to Islam was more common in areas where Buddhism had once been strongest—Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kashmir.

On the eve of the Muslim occupation, Hinduism was by no means sterile in northern India, but its vitality was centered in the southern areas. Throughout the centuries, the system of class and caste had become more rigid; in each region there was a complex hierarchy of castes strictly forbidden to intermarry or dine together, controlled and regulated by secular powers who acted on the advice of the court Brahmans. The large-scale Vedic sacrifices had practically vanished, but simple domestic Vedic sacrifices continued, and new forms of animal, and sometimes vegetable, sacrifice had appeared, especially connected with the worship of the mother goddess.

By that time, most of the main divinities of later Hinduism were worshipped. Rama, the hero of the epic poem, had become the eighth avatar of Vishnu, and his popularity was growing, though it was not yet as prominent as it later became. Similarly, Rama’s monkey helper, Hanuman, now one of the most popular divinities of India and the most ready helper in time of need, was rising in importance. Krishna was worshipped, though his consort, Radha, did not become popular until after the 12th century. Harihara, a combination of Vishnu and Shiva, and Ardhanarishvara, a synthesis of Shiva and his consort Shakti, also became popular deities.

Temple complexes

Although early temples in south India may have been made of disposable materials as early as the first few centuries of the Common Era, permanent temple structures appear about the 3rd and 4th centuries, as attested in early Tamil literature. From the Gupta period onward, Hindu temples became larger and more prominent, and their architecture developed in distinctive regional styles. In northern India the best remaining Hindu temples are found in the Orissa region and in the town of Khajuraho in northern Madhya Pradesh. The best example of Orissan temple architecture is the Lingaraja temple of Bhubaneswar, built about 1000. The largest temple of the region, however, is the famous Black Pagoda, the Sun Temple (Surya Deula) of Konarak, built in the mid-13th century. Its tower has long since collapsed, and only the assembly hall remains. The most important Khajuraho temples were built during the 11th century. Individual architectural styles also arose in Gujarat and Rajasthan, but their surviving products are less impressive than those of Orissa and Khajuraho. By the end of the 1st millennium ce the south Indian style had reached its apogee in the great Brihadeshwara temple of Thanjavur (Tanjore).

In the temple the god was worshipped by the rites of puja or archana (reverencing a sacred being or object) as though the worshipers were serving a great king. In the important temples a large staff of trained officiants waited on the god. He was awakened in the morning along with his goddess; washed, clothed, and fed; placed in his shrine to give audience to his subjects; praised and entertained throughout the day; and ceremoniously fed, undressed, and put to bed at night. Worshipers sang, burned lamps, waved lights before the divine image, and performed other acts of homage. The god’s handmaidens (devadasis) performed before him at regular intervals, watched by the officiants and lay worshipers, who were his courtiers. The association of dedicated prostitutes with certain Hindu shrines may be traceable to the beginning of the Common Era. It became more widespread in post-Gupta times, especially in south India, and aroused the reprobation of 19th-century Europeans. Through the efforts of Hindu reformers, the office of the devadasis was discontinued. The role of devadasi is best understood in the context of the analogy between the temple and the royal court, for the Hindu king also had his dancing girls, who bestowed their favors on his courtiers.

Parallels between the temple and the royal palace also were in evidence in the Rathayatras (Chariot Festivals). The deity was paraded in a splendid procession, together with the lesser gods of the minor shrines, in a manner similar to that of the king, who issued from his palace on festival days and paraded around his city, escorted by courtiers, troops, and musicians. The deity rode on a tremendous and ornate moving shrine (ratha), which was often pulled by large bands of devotees. Rathayatras still take place in many cities of India. The best-known is the annual procession of Jagannatha (“Juggernaut”), a form of Vishnu, at Puri in Orissa.

The great temples were—and still are—wealthy institutions. The patrons who endowed them with land, money, and cattle included royalty as well as men and women from several classes of society. As early as the 5th century, Kulaprabhavati, a Cambodian queen, endowed a Vishnu temple in her realm. The temples were also supported by the transfer of the taxes levied by kings on specific areas of the nearby countryside, by donations of the pious, and by the fees of worshipers. Their immense wealth was one of the factors that encouraged the Ghaznavid and Ghūrid Turks to invade India after the 11th century. The temples were controlled by self-perpetuating committees—whose membership was usually a hereditary privilege—and by a large staff of priests and temple servants under a high priest who wielded tremendous power and influence.

In keeping with their wealth, the great walled temple complexes of south India were—and still are—small cities, containing the central and numerous lesser shrines, bathing tanks, administrative offices, homes of the temple employees, workshops, bazaars, and public buildings of many kinds. As some of the largest employers and greatest landowners in their areas, the temples played an important part in the economy. They also performed valuable social functions, serving as schools, dispensaries, poorhouses, banks, and concert halls.

The temple complexes suffered during the Muslim occupation. In the sacred cities of Varanasi (Benares) and Mathura, no large temple from any period before the 17th century has survived. The same is true of most of the main religious centers of northern India but not of the regions where the Muslim hold was less firm, such as Orissa, Rajasthan, and south India. Despite the widespread destruction of the temples, Hinduism endured, in part because of the absence of a centralized authority; rituals and sacrifices were performed in places other than temples. The purohitas, or family priests who performed the domestic rituals and personal sacraments for the laypeople, continued to function, as did the thousands of ascetics.

Sectarian movements

Before the Muslim invasion of the subcontinent, the new forms of south Indian bhakti had spread beyond the bounds of the Tamil-, Kannada-, and Telugu-speaking areas. Certain Vaishnava theologians of the Pancharatra and Bhagavata schools gave the growing Vaishnava bhakti cults a philosophical framework that also influenced some Shaivite schools.

Several Vaishnava teachers deserve mention, including Ramanuja, a Tamil Brahman of the 11th century who was for a time chief priest of the Vaishnava temple of Srirangam, and Nimbarka, a Telugu Brahman of the 12th or 13th century who spread the cult of the divine cowherd and of Radha, his favorite gopi (cowherdess, especially associated with the legends of Krishna’s youth). His sect survives near Mathura but has made little impact elsewhere. More important was Vallabha (Vallabhacharya; 1479–1531), who emphasized the erotic imagery of the Vaishnava doctrine of grace and established a sect that stressed absolute obedience to the guru (teacher). Early in its existence the sect was organized with a hierarchy of senior leaders (gosvami), many of whom became very rich. The Vallabhacharya sect, once very influential in the western half of north India, declined in the 19th century, in part because of a number of lawsuits against the chief guru, the descendant of Vallabha.

The Shaiva sects also developed from the 10th century onward. In south India there emerged the school of Shaiva-siddhanta, still one of the most significant religious forces in that region and one that, unlike the school of Shankara, does not accept the full identity of the soul and God. A completely monistic school of Shaivism appeared in Kashmir in the early 9th century. Its doctrines differ from those of Shankara chiefly because it attributes personality to the absolute spirit, who is the god Shiva and not the impersonal brahman.

An important sect, founded in the 12th century in the Kannada-speaking area of the Deccan, was that of the Lingayats, or Virashaivas (“Heroes of the Shaiva Religion”). Its traditional founder, Basava, taught doctrines and practices of surprising unorthodoxy: he opposed all forms of image worship and accepted only the lingam of Shiva as a sacred symbol. Virashaivism rejected the Vedas, the Brahman priesthood, and all caste distinctions. It also consciously rejected several religious and social conventions, such as the ban against the remarriage of widows, and practiced burial rather than cremation of the dead.

Shaivism underwent significant growth in northern India. In the 13th century Gorakhnath (also known as Gorakshanatha), who became leader of a sect of Shaivite ascetics known as Nathas (“Lords”) from the title of their chief teachers, introduced new ideas and practices to Shaivism. The Gorakhnathis were particularly important as propagators of Hatha Yoga, a form of Yoga that requires complex and difficult physical exercises and that has become popular in the West. These yogis, who are still numerous, influenced the teachings of several of the bhakti poets.

Bhakti movements

The poets and saints (highly respected ascetics who were at times believed to be incarnations of a deity) of medieval bhakti appeared throughout India. Although all had their individual genius, the bhakti lyricists shared a number of common features. Unlike Sanskrit authors, mainly well-educated members of the Brahman class whose learning and status shaped their outlook, bhakti poets were not restricted to a single language or class. They brought to their poetry a familiarity with folk religion unknown or ignored in the Sanskrit texts. The use of the spoken language, even though it was formalized, made possible the expression of an unmediated vision that needed no further context; thus, the lyrics are intensely personal and precise. These works illustrate the localistic and reformist tendency evidenced throughout India in the vernacular literatures, especially in Tamil, Bengali, and Hindi. (See below Vernacular literatures.)

It is possible that the presence of rulers of alien faith in northern India and the withdrawal of royal patronage from the temples and Brahmanic colleges encouraged the spread of new, more popular forms of Hinduism. The psychological effect of the Muslim conquest may also have predisposed the people to accept the powerful teachings of the poets.

Much has been said about the synthesis of Hinduism and Islam in the period of Muslim dominance. Numerous Muslim social customs were adopted, and Persian and Arabic words entered the vocabularies of Indian languages. The teachings of such men as Basava and Kabir may have been influenced by Muslim observances and social customs. A still greater synthesis took place among the Muslims, most of whom were Indian by blood. In Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Marathi there is much poetry, written by Muslims and commencing with the Islamic invocation of Allah, which nevertheless betrays strong Hindu influence. Some works, such as Umaru Pulavar’s Tamil Sira puranam (late 18th–early 19th century), which provides a detailed life of the Prophet, display the strong literary influence of Kamban’s Iramavataram (c. 9th–11th century), a rendering of the Ramayana in Tamil. While these works were strikingly similar in literary strategy and arrangement of chapters, there was no theological syncretism in the Sira puranam. However, there are texts in northern India that proclaim Krishna as being in the line of the prophets of Islam and as the teacher of the unity of God. Much mystical poetry, though written by authors with Muslim names, uses Hindu imagery and Hindu terminology. This literature originated in the accommodating character of early Indian Sufism, which, well before Kabir, proclaimed that Muslim, Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, and Hindu were all striving toward the same goal and that the outward observances that kept them apart were false. Some Indian Sufis were greatly influenced by Hindu customs. For example, a school of Kashmiri Sufis—whose members call themselves Rishis, after the legendary Hindu sages of the same name—respect and repeat the verses of Lal Ded, a 14th-century poet and holy woman from Kashmir, and are strict vegetarians.

Tolerant Muslim rulers encouraged syncretic tendencies, which reached their zenith in the reign of Akbar (1556–1605). Taking a great interest in the religion of his Hindu subjects, Akbar tried to establish a single, all-embracing religion for his empire. Although his efforts failed, they influenced India for more than 50 years after his death. Orthodox Muslim theologians complained about the growth of heresy, however, and the emperor Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707) did all in his power to discourage it. Popular Muslim preachers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries worked to restore orthodoxy. Thus, syncretic tendencies were somewhat reduced before the imposition of British power in the mid-18th century. Furthermore, British rule emphasized the distinctions between Hindu and Muslim and did not encourage efforts to harmonize the two religions.