Bhakti & Sufi Movements and Indian Art & Culture

The single most useful idea in this chapter is the split between Nirguna and Saguna bhakti. Nirguna saints worshipped a God without form or attributes — no idol, no incarnation, no temple needed. Saguna saints worshipped God with form and qualities — usually as Rama or Krishna, with image, story and temple. Sort every saint into one of these two boxes and half the questions answer themselves.

Ramananda (14th–15th century, based at Varanasi) is the bridge. He carried the southern devotional tradition into the north, preached in the local language instead of Sanskrit, and accepted disciples irrespective of caste. He himself worshipped Rama and Sita (so, Saguna), yet tradition names among his disciples the great Nirguna voices — Kabir the weaver, Ravidas the cobbler, Sena the barber, Dhanna the farmer, Pipa the Rajput. One teacher, both streams.

• Kabir (15th century, Varanasi) — a weaver (julaha), the fiercest voice of the movement. His dohas (couplets) mocked both temple and mosque, pandit and mullah. His verses are collected as the Bijak (with its parts Sakhi, Sabad, Ramaini), and a large number are also included in the Guru Granth Sahib. His mixed, earthy dialect is called Sadhukkadi. He died at Maghar.
• Guru Nanak (1469–1539) — born at Talwandi (now Nankana Sahib). He taught "Ik Onkar" (God is One), rejected caste, idol worship and empty ritual, and built two lasting institutions: sangat (congregation where all sit together) and langar (common kitchen where all eat together). He settled at Kartarpur. He is the first of the ten Sikh Gurus, and his compositions (including the Japji) open the Guru Granth Sahib, compiled by the fifth Guru, Arjan Dev, in 1604.
• Ravidas (Raidas) — a leather-worker of Varanasi and contemporary of Kabir. Around forty of his hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib. His imagined city of "Begampura" — a land without sorrow, without tax, without high and low — is one of the earliest visions of social equality in Indian literature.
• Namdev (c. 13th–14th century) — a tailor of Maharashtra, devotee of Vitthal of Pandharpur, who sang abhangas in Marathi. He stands with one foot in each stream: devoted to a deity, yet insistent that God is one and caste is meaningless. His hymns too are in the Guru Granth Sahib.

Saguna bhakti split into two families: Ram-bhakti (Rama as the ideal king and husband) and Krishna-bhakti (Krishna as child, friend and beloved). Between them they produced the greatest poetry written in Indian languages before the modern age.

• Chaitanya's philosophy is Achintya Bheda Abheda ("inconceivable difference and non-difference"); he made the maha-mantra and street kirtan the core of worship, and his life is recorded in the Chaitanya Charitamrita of Krishnadasa Kaviraj. He spent his later years at Puri.
• Vallabhacharya's son Vitthalnath (Gusainji) organised the Ashtachhap — eight poet-devotees of the Pushtimarg, of whom Surdas is the greatest.
• In Assam, Shankaradeva's Satra (monastery) and Namghar (prayer hall) are still the centre of village life, and the Sattriya dance born in those satras is today one of India's eight classical dance forms.

Sufism (tasawwuf) is the mystical, inward side of Islam. Where the theologian asks what the law demands, the Sufi asks how to love God until the self disappears. A Sufi order is a silsila — a chain of teachers running back to the Prophet. The teacher is the pir or shaikh, the disciple is the murid. Sufis were broadly of two kinds: ba-shara (working within Islamic law) and be-shara (unbound by it) — and almost all the famous Indian orders are ba-shara.

• Khanqah — the Sufi hospice: part monastery, part guest house, part free kitchen, open to all castes and creeds. This openness is why so many non-Muslims became devotees of Sufi saints.
• Sama — mystical music and dance used to reach ecstasy. The Chishtis permitted sama; the orthodox Naqshbandis opposed it. From sama grew qawwali.
• Dargah — the tomb-shrine of a saint, where the annual death anniversary, the urs, is celebrated. Zikr is the remembrance of God's name; fana is annihilation of the self in God; wahdat-ul-wujud is the doctrine of the "unity of being".
• The Chishtis refused state service and land grants, living on unasked-for offerings (futuh); the Suhrawardis freely accepted wealth and state office. That contrast is a favourite comparison question.

The two movements ran on the same rails. Both insisted God is one; both put a living teacher (guru / pir) at the centre; both preferred love and music to law and ritual; both used the people's language; both attracted followers across religious lines. Amir Khusrau, disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya, is the perfect symbol: a Persian poet titled "Tuti-i-Hind" (Parrot of India) who wrote in Hindavi, and to whom tradition credits the growth of qawwali and the khayal style. It is this shared ground that produced India's composite culture — and later inspired Kabir's and Nanak's appeal to both communities.

India's performing arts trace back to the Natya Shastra of Bharata, the oldest treatise on drama, dance and music. The Sangeet Natak Akademi recognises eight classical dance forms. Learn them state-wise — that is exactly how the question is asked.

Indian temples come in three schools, and you can tell them apart from a photograph. Look at the tower over the sanctum and look for a gateway.

• Stupa — a solid hemispherical mound built over relics. Its parts: anda (dome), harmika, chhatra (umbrella), medhi, pradakshina path and the railing (vedika) with torana gateways. Great examples: the Great Stupa at Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh, begun under Ashoka), Bharhut, Amaravati, and the Dhamek Stupa at Sarnath.
• Chaitya — the rock-cut prayer hall, apsidal in plan with a stupa at the far end and a horseshoe-shaped chaitya window in front. See Karle, Bhaja, and caves 9, 10, 19, 26 at Ajanta.
• Vihara — the monastery where monks lived: a courtyard ringed by cells. Nalanda in Bihar is the grandest vihara complex ever built in India.
• Ajanta (Maharashtra) is famous for its paintings (on a plaster ground, in the tempera technique) and is entirely Buddhist; Ellora (Maharashtra) is famous for sculpture and has Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves together — including the monolithic Kailasa temple (Cave 16), cut out of a single rock under the Rashtrakutas.
• In Bihar, the Barabar caves (Jehanabad district) are the oldest rock-cut caves in India, of the Mauryan period, and the Lomas Rishi cave there carries the earliest imitation of a chaitya arch in stone.

• Mughal painting — begun under Humayun, who brought the Persian masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad; it flourished under Akbar (illustrated Hamzanama, Akbarnama, Razmnama), reached its peak of naturalism under Jahangir (bird and animal studies by Ustad Mansur, portraits by Abul Hasan), and declined under Aurangzeb.
• Rajasthani (Rajput) painting — schools of Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Marwar, Kishangarh (home of the famous Bani Thani) and Amber–Jaipur; themes of Krishna-leela, Ragamala and Baramasa, with flat bright colour.
• Pahari painting — the hill schools: Basohli (bold colour and beetle-wing green), then Guler and above all Kangra (delicate, lyrical, Gita Govinda themes), plus Chamba and Garhwal.
• Patna Kalam (Patna school) — a late offshoot of Mughal painting in Bihar. Artists who moved to Patna painted ordinary people at everyday work — vendors, artisans, festivals — rather than emperors, and often for European patrons.

India has over forty UNESCO World Heritage Sites — cultural, natural and one mixed. The first four were inscribed in 1983: the Ajanta Caves, the Ellora Caves, Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal. Bihar has exactly two, and both are Buddhist. Learn them cold — they are the surest culture question in the paper.

Bihar's living culture is best read through its festivals — and here one festival stands far above the rest.

• Chhath Puja — the state's greatest festival, a four-day worship of the Sun god (Surya) and Chhathi Maiya, held on Kartika Shukla Shashthi (six days after Diwali); a spring Chaiti Chhath is also observed. Its four stages are Nahay-Khay, Kharna (Lohanda), Sandhya Arghya (offering to the setting sun) and Usha Arghya (offering to the rising sun). Thekua is the classic offering. It needs no priest and no temple — devotees stand in the river themselves, which is why it is called a festival of purity, discipline and equality.
• Sama-Chakeva — a folk festival of the Mithila region celebrating the bond of sisters and brothers. Sisters make clay figures of Sama and Chakeva and birds, sing folk songs for days from around Kartika Purnima, and end with a vidai (farewell). It coincides with the arrival of migratory birds in north Bihar's wetlands.
• Sonepur Mela (Harihar Kshetra Mela) — held at Sonepur in Saran district, at the confluence of the Ganga and the Gandak, beginning on Kartika Purnima. Long famous as Asia's largest cattle fair, it grew around the Harihar Nath temple and is now as much a month-long cultural festival as a livestock market.
• Other Bihar festivals worth naming: Pitrapaksha Mela at Gaya (rites for ancestors), Bihula-Bishahari of the Anga/Bhagalpur region, Madhushravani and Jitiya in Mithila, the Rajgir Malmas Mela, and the Shravani Mela, for which kanwariyas lift Ganga water at Sultanganj (Bhagalpur). Bihar Diwas is observed on 22 March.
• Bihar's folk performing arts: Bidesia — the folk theatre created by Bhikhari Thakur, called the "Shakespeare of Bhojpuri" — along with Jat-Jatin, Jhijhiya, Domkach and Paika.