Medieval Bhakti Movements in India : Sri Caitanya Quincentenary Commemoration Volume

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. 1. Religion of love: the early medieval phase (c. AD 700-1486)/Bimanbehari Majumdar. 2. The concept of Sahaj in Guru Nanak’s theology and its antecedents/Niharranjan Ray. 3. Guru Nanak’s concept of God/G.S. Chhabra. 4. Guru Nanak and the Bhakti movement: convergence and divergence/Manorama Kohli. 5. Earliest references to the Bhakti concept/G.V. Saroja. 6. The medieval Bhakti movement: its influence on Jainism/Jagdishchandra Jain. 7. Baba Shaikh Farid: a Harbinger of Hindu-Muslim unity/M.S. Ahluwalia. 8. Nature and roots of Islamic Bhakti movement and Syed Ashraf Jahangir Samnani/Hamid Afaq Qureshi. 9. Medieval Bhakti movements in Gujarat/Manjula Bhattacharyya. 10. Narasimha Mehta: Saint-Poet from Gujarat/Uma S. Deshpande. 11. Saint Prannath and the Pranami Sect/P.S. Mukharya. 12. Pranami Sampradaya of Bundelkhand/Bhagwan Das Gupta. 13. Influence of Islam and Sufism on Prannath’s religious movement/Hafiz Md. Tahir Ali. 14. The life and mission of Karaikkal Ammaiyar/N. Jagadeesan. 15. Religion and social change in Tamil Nadu (c. AD 600-1300)/R. Champakalakshmi. 16. The Dasa-bhakti of the Alvars/Suniti Kumar Pathak. 17. Bhaktism in medieval Tamilnad/N. Subrahmanian. 18. A note on the Bhakti movement in Tamilnad/R. Meena. 19. The Bhakti movement in Kerala/K.K. Kusuman. 20. Medieval Maharashtra and Muslim Saint-Poets/Narayan H. Kulkarnee. 21. Vaisnavism in medieval Orissa/Prabhat Mukherjee. 22. Sankaradeva and Assam Vaisnavism/Satyendranath Sarma. 23. Medieval Bhakti movements in India: Sri Deva Damodara/Sarat Chandra Goswami. 24. Bhakti movement and Aniruddhadeva of Assam/S. Dutta. 25. The Bhakti movement of Assam in historical perspective/N.N. Acharya. 26. Social perspective of Caitanyaism/Bhaskar Chatterjee. 27. For that sacred taste: the Rasa problem in the works of Rupa Gosvamin/Neal Delmonico. 28. Post-Caitanya Vaisnavite sects in Bengal/Sachin Majumdar. 29. Keshub and Caitanya: Brahmo Evangelism and the indigenous modernization of Vaisnavism in Bengal/David Kopf. 30. Tulasidasa: Ramacaritamanasa and Bhakti/Pranabananda Jash. Bibliography. Index.

"Although some aspects of the medieval bhakti movements are known or have been viewed by the historians from their own angles of vision, much remains to be known, understood and interpreted. The present volume, issued on the occasion of the Quincentenary of Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanya, is an attempt to understand a little more of the medieval bhakti movements of India. The contributors to the volume who have enthusiastically agreed to participate in this project are all specialists in their own fields and their valuable papers are expected to throw new light on many hitherto unknown or known features of the great historical movement, the far-reaching consequences of which are very much lively in the heart of the Indian masses even today. The contributors to this volume are Bimanbehari Majumdar, Niharranjan Ray, G.S. Chhabra, Manorama Kohli, G.V. Saroja, J.C. Jain, M.S. Ahluwalia, H.A. Qureshi, Manjula Bhattacharyya, Uma S. Deshpande, P.S. Mukharya, B.D. Gupta, Hafiz Md. Tahir Ali, N. Jagadeesan, R. Champakalakshmi, S.K. Pathak, N. Subrahmanian, R. Meena, K.K. Kusuman, N.H. Kulkarnee, Prabhat Mukherjee, S.N. Sharma, Sarat Chandra Goswami, S. Dutta, N.N. Acharya, Bhaskar Chatterjee, Neal Delmonico, Sachin Majumdar, David Kopf and Pranabananda Jash. A detailed bibliography containing list of books and articles used by the contributors in preparing their papers and also other works pertaining to the bhakti concept has also been supplied. This handy volume has been edited by N.N. Bhattacharyya with an informative introduction." (jacket)