Bhaktism

Madeleine Biardeau states, as does Jeanine Miller, that Bhakti movement was neither a reform nor a sudden innovation, but the continuation and expression of ideas to be found in Vedas, Bhakti marga teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the Katha Upanishad and the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.[19][119]

John Stratton Hawley describes recent scholarship which questions the old theory of Bhakti movement origin and "story of south-moves-north", then states that the movement had multiple origins, mentioning Brindavan in north India as another center.[120] Hawley describes the controversy and disagreements between Indian scholars, quotes Hegde's concern that "Bhakti movement was a reform" theory has been supported by "cherry-picking particular songs from a large corpus of Bhakti literature" and that if the entirety of the literature by any single author such as Basava is considered along with its historical context, there is neither reform nor a need for reform.[76]

Sheldon Pollock writes that the Bhakti movement was neither a rebellion against Brahmins and the upper castes nor a rebellion against the Sanskrit language, because many of the prominent thinkers and earliest champions of the Bhakti movement were Brahmins and from upper castes, and because much of the early and later Bhakti poetry and literature was in Sanskrit.[121]Further, states Pollock, evidence of Bhakti trends in ancient southeast Asian Hinduism in the 1st millennium CE, such as those in Cambodia and Indonesia where Vedic era is unknown, and where upper caste Tamil Hindu nobility and merchants introduced Bhakti ideas of Hinduism, suggest the roots and the nature of Bhakti movement to be primarily spiritual and political quest instead of rebellion of some form.[122][123]

John Guy states that the evidence of Hindu temples and Chinese inscriptions from 8th century CE about Tamil merchants, presents Bhakti motifs in Chinese trading towns, particularly the Kaiyuan Temple (Quanzhou).[124] These show Saivite, Vaishnavite and Hindu Brahmin monasteries revered Bhakti themes in China.[124]

Scholars increasingly are dropping, states Karen Pechilis, the old premises and the language of "radical otherness, monotheism and reform of orthodoxy" for Bhakti movement.[10] Many scholars are now characterising the emergence of Bhakti in medieval India as a revival, reworking and recontextualisation of the central themes of the Vedic traditions.[10]