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A Storm of Songs
A S t o rm o f S o n g s
90
India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement

J o h n S tratt o n Haw l e y

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2015
 Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

First Printing

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Hawley, John Stratton, 1941– author.
A storm of songs : India and the idea of the bhakti movement / John Stratton Hawley.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-18746-7
1. Bhakti—Social aspects—History. I. Title.
BL1214.32.B53H42 2015
294.509—dc23
2014026466
To my academic patit-­pbvan, who have rescued me when fallen:

Aditya Behl
Shrivatsa Goswami
Monika Horstmann
Rachel McDermott
Rupert Snell
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Transliteration and Pronunciation xiii

Introduction 1

1. The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 13

2. The Transit of Bhakti 59

3. The Four Sampradbys and the Commonwealth of Love 99

4. The View from Brindavan 148

5. Victory in the Cities of Victory 190

6. A Nation of Bhaktas 230

7. What Should the Bhakti Movement Be? 285

Notes 343
Bibliography 381
Index 423
 Acknowledgments

And the last shall be first. As I come to the end of the decade-­long project
that has resulted in the book before you, I have the pleasure of thanking
some of the people and institutions who have made it possible. Not all, by
any means: how could I possibly record the full extent of the kindnesses
and conversations that have gone into the making of this book? If you
remember such a conversation and do not find your name in the list below
or in the text and its notes, please accept my silent thanks.
I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
American Institute of Indian Studies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
and Barnard College for grants that made it possible for me to travel to
India, and to Barnard for the leaves that allowed me to accept them. I am
also indebted to the Leonard Hastings Schoff Fund of The University
Seminars at Columbia University, which has provided support for aspects
of the book’s publication. Members of the University Seminar on South
Asia discussed the final chapter with me on September 15, 2014.
In India I have been the recipient of many kindnesses from the India
International Centre, the Sri Caitanya Prema Samsthana, the Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts, the Nehru Memorial Library, the Indira
Gandhi Center for the Arts, the National Museum, Prof. Seniruddha Dash
and the staff of the New Catalogus Catalogorum, the Indian Institute for
Advanced Study, the Oriental Institute of Baroda, the Rajasthan Oriental
Research Institute, the Vrindaban Research Institute, the City Palace
library and museum in Jaipur, Rabindra Bhavan and the Hindi Bhavan at
Shantiniketan, Vrajesh Kumarji Maharaj and his staff at the Sarasvati
Vibhag Library in Kankroli, and numerous other manuscript collections
x Acknowledgments

across the country. The Indian Council of Philosophical Research, the

Indian Council of Historical Research, and the Kanakadasa Adhyayana
Peeta and Kanakadasa Samshodhana Kendra of Mangalore University
have made it possible to engage with colleagues at Tirupati, Banaras, and
Mangalore. Students and faculty at a number of universities and colleges
will recognize sections of this book and, I hope, detect their contribu-
tions to it: Banaras Hindu University; the College of William and Mary;
Harvard University; Indiana University; McGill University; Northwestern
Michigan University; Oxford University; Princeton University; Smith
College; SOAS, University of London; the State University of New York at
Stony Brook; the University of Toronto; the University of California,
Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of
Florida; the University of Mysore; the University of Pennsylvania; the
University of Texas at Austin; the University of Venice; and Wellesley
College. Behind the names of each of these institutions lie not only the
funds that made it possible to visit them, but the deeply valued friends who
arranged it all and have kept in touch from then until now. In many cases—​
but hardly all—​my endnotes are my witness. Individual scholars who work
apart from institutions such as these have also played important roles. I
think especially of Shyam Manohar Goswami and K. G. Subrahmanyam,
whose guidance and expertise have been crucial.
A special word of thanks goes to friends, students, and colleagues (these
categories overlap!) who have read all or portions of the book in draft and
provided me with invaluable comments and criticism: Justin Ben-­Hain,
Patton Burchett, Allison Busch, Margaret Case, Bharati Jagannathan,
Linda Hess, Joel Lee, Rembert Lutjeharms, Christian Novetzke, Francesca
Orsini, Heidi Pauwels, Srilata Raman, Ajay Rao, Davesh Soneji, Ramya
Sreenivasan, Shiv Subramaniam, Anand Venkatkrishnan, and my consum-
mate, brilliant editor-­wife, Laura Shapiro. I am also indebted to the won-
derful circle of friends and colleagues who responded to the book as a
whole at the Madison South Asia meetings in 2014. Then there are those
who played a special role in helping me interpret languages I cannot read
or cannot read as well as I ought to be able to do: Purushottam Agrawal,
Gil Ben-­Herut, Hena Basu, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, Abhijit Ghosh,
Brian Hatcher, Jon Keune, Joel Lee, Gurinder Singh Mann, Rachel
McDermott, Vasudha Narayanan, Christian Novetzke, Stefano Pellò,
Dalpat Rajpurohit, Neelima Shukla-­Bhatt, and my daughter Nell. To
 Acknowledgments xi

Robyn Beeche, Isabelle Lewis, and Neeraja Poddar I am grateful for pho-
tography and cartography and the expertise that those two words only
barely suggest. Students in graduate seminars at Columbia have helped me
think through many of the issues that presented themselves along the way.
These students are also my teachers, and there is nothing to compare with
the week-­in week-­out warmth they have offered over the years as we argued
and probed and appreciated and expanded one another’s worlds.
Rupert Snell and David Shulman provided excellent, detailed, and
helpfully divergent feedback as readers for Harvard University Press.
Sharmila Sen and Heather Hughes at the press have been superb in their
various capacities, as have Anne Sussman and Kathleen Richards. Perhaps
Sharmila will remember that moment over a cup of coffee at Burdick’s
when she asked me whether there was a next book in my queue and went
on to wonder, to my amazement, why she shouldn’t publish it.
I dedicate the book to a Gang of Five without whom I could not have
made it to this day—​old friends, deep friends, scholars to the core.
 Transliteration and Pronunciation

Words from many Indian languages come together in this book, and I
hope to honor the transliteration practices that are standard for each.
Speakers of the languages that stretch across northern India from Gujarat
to Bihar tend to drop the sheva that is assumed as part of a Sanskrit syl-
lable unless another vowel is indicated. I will do the same, and invariably
so if the sheva falls at the end of the word (Skt. Tulasidbsa > Hindi
Tulsidbs). Medial shevas are more difficult. If audible in speech, then I
retain the medial a (Nandadbs, not Nanddbs); otherwise not. Bengali,
also a member of this Indo-­A ryan group, does retain the final sheva in
speech (often as o rather than a), but because in this book Bengali terms
so frequently arise in contexts where Hindi words are also being dis-
cussed, I transliterate them uniformly, dropping the final a as I would for
the much more frequent Hindi.
The Dravidian languages of south India uniformly pronounce their
implied a’s, so in that case I retain them. I write the name of the Kannada
poet Kanakadbsa in that way rather than as it would be pronounced in
Hindi (Kanakadbs or Kanakdbs). Similarly, if a word is Sanskrit and is
being discussed in a context where Sanskrit is to the fore—​rather than as
an object of Hindi speech (Rbm, sampradby)—​I retain all vowels (Rbma,
Sampradbyapradipa). I also follow the standard transliteration scheme for
Tamil names, but Tamil terms borrowed from Sanskrit are retained in that
form (bhakti, not patti). Actually, the word bhakti is special: since it has
become common in many European languages I write it without diacritics.
By extension I do the same for bhakta (the person affected by bhakti)—​
after the fashion of such ordinary words as karma, guru, and dharma.
xiv Transliteration and Pronunciation

Other words and names, especially those designating places and lan-
guages, have also acquired standard anglicized forms, and these usually
do a fair job of representing the ways such words are actually pronounced
(Krishna, Mathura, Chaitanya, Brajbhasha, Babur, Chamar). I retain
these ordinary usages even if they diverge from the more “correct” form
of transliteration that appears in more technical contexts (Krsnadbs,
Mathurb Mbhbtmya, Caitanyacaritbmrta, bhbsb, cambr). In the case of
less well-­known names (Galtb, Navadvip) I display the appropriate dia-
critics. The Indian administrative system has settled on Vrindaban and
Varanasi to designate the cities I call Brindavan and Banaras. I prefer the
latter spellings since they are closer to local usage and ordinary pronun-
ciation (brindbvan, banbras)—​and in certain contexts, they too are offi-
cial (Brindavan Gardens, Banaras Hindu University). If this seems an
unruly thicket, well, it is. My hope is that the conventions I have adopted
will enable readers to “pronounce” the trees in this forest and recognize
that they do in fact belong in the same wood.
Some special difficulties remain. The t that appears in formal Tamil
transliteration sounds more like the English d than a t. Hence the name of
the poet-­saint NantaNbr is pronounced Nandanar, and Antbl sounds
roughly like Andal. The Tamil c, as in CekkiLbr, is a sibilant, so it sounds
like the English s (Sekkilar). When one moves to Indo-­A ryan languages
such as Hindi and Sanskrit, however, that same lone c should be pro-
nounced as if it were the English ch. Hence the spelling Chamar has his-
torically been used to render the Hindi term formally transliterated as
cambr. Finally, it is well to remember that a century ago it was common
practice to render the neutral Hindi, Punjabi, or Bengali a with the English
u, as in Punjab and Keshub. In both these words the u should be pro-
nounced like the u in “punch” or “but.” Normally I would employ a in
such instances, but because Punjab and Keshub have become conventional
I retain them.
A Storm of Songs
 Introduction

“ S w eet M erc y ”

May 10, 1933, on the third day of Gandhi’s fast against untouchability

   Raidas, the sweeper, was tanner by caste

    whose touch was shunned by the wayfarers
     and the crowded streets were lonely for him.
Master Ramananda was walking to the temple
            after his morning bath,
   when Raidas bowed himself down before him from a distance.
   “Who are you, my friend” asked the great Brahmin
    and the answer came,
    “I am mere dust dry and barren,
        trodden down by the despising days and nights.
   Thou, my Master, art a cloud on the far away sky.
   If sweet mercy be showered from thee
           upon the lowly earth,
   the dumb dust will cry out in ecstacy of flowers.”
    Master took him to his breast
      pouring on him his lavish love
     which made a storm of songs
       to burst across the heart
         of Raidas, the sweeper.

A storm of songs: that is how Rabindranath Tagore described the poetic

output of the important sixteenth-­century saint Ravidbs—​or Raidbs, as
he is also called.1 Ravidbs was a Dalit (the word means “oppressed”), a
member of the vast underclass of Indian society that did and still does
its dirty work and was until recently called Untouchable. In Tagore’s
2 A Storm of Songs

imagination it was the touch of a Brahman, albeit a uniquely unconven-

tional Brahman, that stirred the parched dryness of Ravidbs’s life situa-
tion into a welcome storm of songs. These were bhakti songs, songs of
deeply felt religious emotion. They were the medium though which
Ravidbs was no longer isolated, exiled, but a living, breathing member of
India’s religious whole.
“Bhakti,” as usually translated, is devotion, but if that word connotes
something entirely private and quiet, we are in need of other words. 2
Bhakti is heart religion, sometimes cool and quiescent but sometimes
hot—​the religion of participation, community, enthusiasm, song, and
often of personal challenge, the sort of thing that coursed through the
Protestant Great Awakenings in the history of the United States. It evokes
the idea of a widely shared religiosity for which institutional superstruc-
tures weren’t all that relevant, and which, once activated, could be his-
torically contagious—​a glorious disease of the collective heart. It implies
direct divine encounter, experienced in the lives of individual people.
These people, moved by that encounter, turn to poetry, which is the nat-
ural vehicle of bhakti, and poetry expresses itself just as naturally in song.
There is a whole galaxy of bhakti poets who have been moved to song
in the course of Indian history, and their songs are still sung today,
everywhere across the subcontinent and in all its major languages. In
Hindi there’s Kabir and Surdbs, Ravidbs and Mirbbbi. In Tamil there’s
NammbLvbr and Antbl. In Marathi, Nbmdev and Tukbrbm. In Punjabi,
Bbbb Nbnak, who became the first of the Sikh Gurus. All of these are bhakti
poets. They come from both sexes and all social stations. They are under-
stood to be the voice of the people’s religion, broadly, and they are held to
have had a distinctive history, one that bound them together as a group.
In Tagore’s picture of the encounter between the Brahman and the Dalit,
the touch of Rbmbnand and his words of searching friendship initiated
Ravidbs into that great company. The storm of songs that broke across his
heart made him a part of a larger monsoon that has been called the bhakti
movement.
This book is about the idea of the bhakti movement. In its final, fully
articulated form, the bhakti movement idea coalesces in the twentieth
century, in Tagore’s own lifetime, but it refers to a much deeper past. It
says that all the poets we have just mentioned were woven together in a
single fabric of shared identity before God that extends throughout India’s
 Introduction 3

long medieval period (ca. 500–1700 c.e.)—​this despite the fact that their
regional languages might initially have seemed to separate them. Singers
travel, they go on tour, and then as now people living in India could speak
more than a single language, so it was actually no mystery that these
bhakti poet-­singers and others who sang their songs after them could be
understood as they moved around. As they traveled, we are told, they
shaped a history that made India’s many regions connect at a grass-
roots level.
Sanskrit too could be understood all over India—​it was India’s refined
supralocal language, like Latin or Greek, but you had to be educated to
take in its meanings. These bhakti poets fashioned a different kind of
translocal movement, one that spoke the mother tongue—​or rather, the
mother tongues. And there was a pattern to it. Among India’s regional
languages, Tamil, which is spoken in the far south, was the first to be
written down. Tamil was pictured as being the root of the bhakti move-
ment, and indeed, we know that Tamil bhakti poets were already active in
the sixth and seventh centuries. But they were just the beginning. As the
great poet and critic A. K. Ramanujan once said, these Tamil poets lit a
fuse that refused to go out before it had ignited the whole subcontinent,
first sparking poetry in the neighboring region of Karnataka, then
spreading northward to Maharashtra and Gujarat until finally it ignited
the Hindi-­or Urdu-­speaking regions of north India and beyond. 3
The rope of this fuse extended from the sixth century to the sixteenth
or seventeenth—​a full millennium. Thus the bhakti movement performed
its work of national integration both in space and in time—​“from region
to region, from century to century,” as Ramanujan put it, “quickening the
religious impulse.”4 Spatially, it knit together India’s many regional litera-
tures. Temporally, it formed a bridge that spanned between the classical
period and its modern counterpart. Socially, it put Dalits in touch with
Brahmins.
But what about the hundreds of millions of Muslims who live in South
Asia? Are they too a part of this picture? As many told the story, the
answer was a wholehearted yes. Kabir, indisputably one of the greatest of
India’s bhakti poets, had a Muslim name. Particularly in west and north
India, Sufi poets too became part of this religion of the heart, and they too
traveled. Some who tell the bhakti movement story have made the case
that other religious sensibilities were also involved—​Buddhist, Jain,
4 A Storm of Songs

Christian—​but the question of Muslims’ participation in the great sweep

of the bhakti movement is key. Certain ideologues, both Hindu and
Muslim, have wanted to deny this common bhakti religiosity in favor of a
Hindu-­Muslim split they hold to be intractable, perennial. This kind of
thinking provided the basis for the bloody partition of South Asia into
India and Pakistan at the moment of their independence in 1947, and later
it justified the demolition of the great Babri Mosque in Ayodhya when
armies of militant Hindus attacked it on December 6, 1992. The slogans
heard from loudspeakers on that day proclaimed that Hinduism was
India’s real religion and that the god Rbm, who was born in Ayodhya and
ruled from there in righteousness, was its paradigmatic king. Though it
too appeals to a Hindu majority, the idea of the bhakti movement makes
a very different claim—​that India’s true religion lies beyond the reach of
business-­as-­usual organized religion, whether the organizing is done by
Hindu Brahmins or Muslim qbzis. This bhakti religion is higher, deeper,
available to all without exception; it forms the central thrust of Indian
religious history, its core reality.
Of course, other answers have also been given to the question, “What
is India’s real religion?” Some have said it is local religion, the religion of
India’s villages and its village-­like urban enclaves—​an array of demigods,
family gods, and specific practices that can never fully translate into
regional or national forms. Others have pointed to the tantric side of
things—​mantras, yantras, and yogic self-­transformation. Still others have
emphasized spirit mediums, possession, and healing practices—​realms of
religious action that defy the borders established by polite, public religion.
But with each of these there remains the question of whether it is India’s
real religion—​the religion of the nation as such, something not just dis-
persed through the national religious consciousness but serving to
strengthen it by connection and make it resilient. The claim has been that
bhakti alone performs this function. Outsiders like the great linguist
George Grierson sometimes confused it for personal monotheism, and
modern-­day Hindus have often followed suit, but in the idea of the bhakti
movement we have the affirmation that the nature or number of the deity/
deities concerned is secondary. 5 What matters is the heartfelt, intrinsically
social sense of connectedness that emerges in the worshipper. That socially
divine sense of connectedness traces a pulmonary system that makes the
nation throb with life.
 Introduction 5

The word “bhakti” is notoriously hard to translate. The Sanskrit term

bhakti is an action noun derived from the verbal root bhaj-­, meaning
broadly “to share, to possess,” and occupies a semantic field that embraces
the notions of belonging, being loyal, even liking. References to bhakti by
the grammarian Panini reveal this range of meanings in the fourth cen-
tury b.c.e., but suggest that even then the word’s most important usage
was in the domain of religion. Panini speaks of “bhakti to Vbsudeva,”
that is, Krishna. Typically such devotion is shared with other bhaktas
(that is, those touched by bhakti), to the extent that it has sometimes been
said that the most basic bhakti of all is bhakti to one’s fellow bhaktas.
This strengthens the hand of those who would reach for a word like “par-
ticipation” in an effort to convey in English what bhakti is all about.6
Despite the human focus, a conviction about the deep and sometimes
surprising, even upsetting agency of God in creating communities of
bhaktas is also part of the picture. Across the whole span of north India
today, one of the most common designations for divinity is bhagavbn,
which means in its Sanskrit origins “one who shares out” and thus desig-
nates the giver of blessings. The greatest of these blessings is often said to
be the presence of God per se. In reviewing this nexus of Sanskrit mean-
ings J. A. B. van Buitenen has said, “The vast concept of sharing allowed
of specialization, and meanings developed in two directions: offering
someone else a share in something; and accepting or adopting something
as one’s allotted share. The latter usage evolved further into ‘declaring for,
choosing for.’ It is the last of these meanings that governs later uses of the
word bhakti.”7 True enough, but van Buitenen could also have gone on to
say that the former usage is the one that gives us the word bhagavbn in
modern vernacular parlance: God who shares.
In an important article, John Cort, a scholar of Jainism, has quoted this
passage and questioned its preoccupation with etymology. Cort’s objection
is twofold. First, the search for a unitive etymology obscures the fact that,
as he says, “Bhakti is not one single thing.” Second, it downplays the fact
that bhakti is “primarily what bhaktas have said it is” rather than being
some primordial entity enshrined in ancient Sanskrit usage—​the sort of
thing that only scholars have access to.8 Cort urges us instead to under-
stand bhakti as being a spectrum extending from “sober veneration” at one
extreme (the Jain register) to “frenzied possession” at the other, this being
a defining feature of much early south Indian Hindu bhakti.9 Better still, he
6 A Storm of Songs

says, “we need to think in terms of mutually interpenetrating fields of influ-

ence” when we consider the historical sweep of bhakti in South Asia.10
Only this will enable us to perceive the complex patterns of relationship
that connect Jains, Buddhists, Vaishnavas, Shaivas, and many others—​and
not only along vectors suggested by the labels we have just adopted.
I applaud everything Cort has just said, yet I do see a problem. What
are we to say when bhaktas themselves insist on the notion that bhakti is
a single thing, something with a single, unitary history? That, in fact, is
precisely what began to happen at a certain point in Indian history, and
the power of that notion is very much with us today. We encounter it not
only in English but in other languages widely used in India. To be sure,
there are significant variations by language and region, but almost always
one finds the idea that bhakti exerted a unifying force over Indian history
and culture that lasted from the sixth century at least until the sixteenth,
and did so in an arc that swept from south to north.
This bhakti movement idea has become so widespread that nowadays
it functions as historiographical common sense. We meet it in textbooks
used in India at all levels and in many languages, in books about Hinduism
and South Asian history that are produced abroad, on the Internet, in
repositories of collective wisdom that range from the Encyclopedia
Britannica to Wikipedia, in school curricula and examinations, in man-
uals that prepare candidates to compete for positions in the Indian
Administrative Service, on television and All India Radio, and in count-
less conversations between real live people, whether bhaktas or skeptics
or some mixture of both. As an idea about history, thus, this idea has
itself become an important fact of Indian history. The guiding themes of
the bhakti movement are believed to present a formidable challenge to the
ritually oriented Vedic traditions preserved by the Brahman caste that
have so often been seen as lying at the core of Hindu religion.11 To wit,

(1) The bhakti movement is characterized by the singing of devotional

songs composed in vernacular languages by poets who have
attained the status of saints.
(2) It celebrates a sense of the mutual companionship on the part of
many of these poet-­saints.
(3) It displays a tendency to consider both sexes and all strata of
society as potential devotees.
 Introduction 7

(4) It trumpets the cultivation of personal experience as against

external or ritual punctiliousness, or at least clearly prioritizes the
former in relation to the latter.12

None of these defining themes can pass the test of Brahmanical, Vedic
r­ eligion—​or rather, to put it the other way around, all of them contest the
authority of Brahmanical or upper-­caste ideas, practices, and institutions.
The bhakti mirror shows Brahmanical Hinduism in a cruel light—​or rather,
some would say, shows it for the cruel thing it actually is. No wonder, then,
that on more than one occasion the servants of Brahmanical religion have
reached for that bhakti mirror and tried to change its angle of vision, co-­
opting bhakti and making it their own. And yet, there is more to the story
than co-­optation. Other Brahmin actors felt the bhakti impulse deeply
enough to train its mirror willingly on the regressive habits associated with
the class to which they themselves belonged. This is what Rbmbnand is said
to have done, displaying the progressive, dissenting disposition that in
Tagore’s vision made him ready to embrace Ravidbs. For Brahmins such as
these, as for all the others, bhakti was liberation—​a genre of performed
self-­knowledge that enabled them to situate themselves in the broader social
and political fabric in genuinely new ways. If bhakti was a movement, as its
historiographical devotees insist, they were a part of it.13
How could they not be? For many who have told the story of the
bhakti movement, bhakti appears as an independent, living being, some-
thing that rides above distinctions of power and status with an agency all
its own—​a persuasive, at times overwhelming presence that can move
through history and shape it to its own ends. To see things thus is to chal-
lenge a major way in which Hindus have conceptualized the religious
heritage that makes them who they are: sanbtana dharma, the idea that
Hinduism, often interpreted not as a doctrinal system but as a way of life,
is uniquely stable, reliable, unmoving; something perennial and eternal.14
Bhakti, by contrast, feels to Hindus like something that characteristically
moves, travels, and develops. In the image of the bhakti movement we
meet a bhakti that is organic and has a life of its own. It is capable of
change and development; indeed, it has moved history.
One of the most significant ways in which it has moved history, say
partisans of the bhakti movement idea, is by prioritizing vernacular
speech, giving ordinary people the literary and musical voice they craved.
8 A Storm of Songs

According to the bhakti movement paradigm, it was the radical percep-

tion that the legitimate demands of religion had to be expressed in speech
people could actually understand—​and that they themselves generated—​
that brought India’s vernacular languages to the fore in the millennium
that began in 500 c.e., challenging the hegemony of Sanskrit. This is a
further implication of the first item on the four-­point list we have offered
just above.
This view of history—​that bhakti is about deep social reform, that its
natural vehicle is vernacular speech, and that bhakti therefore generated
the turn from Sanskrit to the vernaculars in the course of Indian history—​
has recently come under a withering attack in the writings of Sheldon
Pollock. Pollock argues that the first expressive uses of Indian vernacular
literatures (or at least those to which we have access through written
records) occurred not in some independent realm of bhakti but in court
settings and with political or aesthetic, not religious, intent. In his master-
work The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, Pollock states:

If the vernacular polity created in southern Asia during the first five cen-
turies of the second millennium remains obscure as a structure for exer-
cising power, there is no doubt that the vernacularization project was
initiated (in many cases) and prompted and practiced (in most cases) by
those who exercised such power. This judgment is . . . ​​completely at odds
with scholarly opinion, which holds that religious consciousness and
especially the religious movement now called devotionalism (bhakti) con-
stituted the engine of the vernacular revolution . . . ​​The standard interpre-
tation, then, of the relationship of religion and vernacularization,
especially the bhakti axiom, rests on a foundation of both general and
particular imprecision. We seem to have been misled by yet another
Protestant presupposition . . . ​​about the role of the Reformation in the
growth of vernacular languages. In addition, substantial and long-­term
primary evidence, such as that supplied by the development of Kannada,
demonstrates positively that the general consensus is erroneous. These
data also suggest, more broadly, that a religious transformation of ver-
nacular culture and consciousness, where it does occur, is typically sec-
ondary to, and only made possible or necessary by, a foregoing political
transformation.15

In pursuing this challenge to “scholarly opinion”—​that is, the bhakti

movement idea—​Pollock elaborates a new framework for understanding
how “the vernacular millennium” came to be in India. Delving into the
 Introduction 9

specifics of dynastic history and literary formation across what he calls

the Sanskrit cosmopolis, he shows how each major regional vernacular
developed independently, though according to a pattern that was often
loosely shared from region to region. The principal drive, in each case,
was a ruler’s desire to mobilize the specificities of Place (Pollock capital-
izes “place” in deference to the particular literary history of the term devi)
in the service of greater political cohesion and the desire on the part of
him and his courtiers to perform the same work of cohesion in the literary
realm, as well.16 This knowledge/power way of framing things may not
relegate bhakti entirely to the sidelines in each case, but certainly it sets
bhakti on a playing field where other concerns tend to be dominant.
Pollock is often at pains to show how the religious register has been over-
emphasized in earlier treatments of vernacularization, and he does not fail
to point out that even when the vernacular option was there, some bhakti
authors continued to choose Sanskrit as their medium.17
Pollock’s challenge to the existence and agency of the bhakti move-
ment is a major one, and we will need to consider its implications before
we conclude (in Chapter 7). For the moment, though, let us just take it as
a further impetus to understanding how this mistaken idea—​from
Pollock’s point of view—​gained the sort of traction that makes it neces-
sary for him to beat it back. How did the idea of the bhakti movement
become such an important intellectual force? Where did it come from?
When? Under what circumstances, political and otherwise? In what lan-
guages and owing to the efforts of what groups and individuals? To answer
these questions is the task that lies ahead. In doing so, we will see how the
idea of the bhakti movement is itself a product of history.
We will begin with the twentieth century, when the idea of the bhakti
movement fully crystallized. The mid-­t wentieth century was, of course,
the moment in which India gained its independence, and in compelling
ways the magnet of independence was crucial for shaping the notion of
the bhakti movement. Yet there was a colonial background as well, par-
ticularly in the writings of British intellectuals such as George Grierson
and J. N. Farquhar. So was this idea indigenous or not? Conceptually,
was it a product of Indians or others? Linguistically, was it a child of
English or something that emerged from one of India’s homegrown lan-
guages, perhaps Hindi? In Chapter 1 we start at the end of the bhakti move­
m
­ ent story—​seemingly the moment of its triumph—​and delve into such
10 A Storm of Songs

discontents as these, ultimately coming to rest on Hazariprasad Dvivedi,

the brilliant Hindi literary critic who was more than any other person
responsible for giving us the idea of the bhakti movement in its present,
canonical form.
Then we move back, searching for the foundations on which this per-
suasive historiographical edifice rested, not so much at the level of fact but
of concept. In Chapter 2 we investigate what we might call the inner
master narrative of the master narrative of the bhakti movement: the story
of how bhakti, lovingly portrayed as a hypostatic female being, made the
historic transit from south to north. This tale has an encompassingly lit-
erary sensibility—​it emerges in a celebration of that great Vaishnava text,
the Bhbgavata Purbna—​but it also has a real-­world edge. We will see how
this earlier kernel of the bhakti movement story, like its more fully devel-
oped twentieth-­century cousin, makes sense only in light of a major
emerging political formation. This time it is not the creation of the Indian
nation in a contest with the British, but the consolidation of the Mughal
state four centuries before. That means, of course, that this was not a
southern idea, as might seem dictated by its content, but a northern one.
The early modernity of Mughal rule proves crucial to another major
constituent of the bhakti movement story, as well. This is arguably the
central lode in the ore, and it occupies the three central chapters of our
book. I speak of the motif of the four sampradbys (Skt. sampradbya), four
traditions of teaching and initiation that were later believed to have pro-
vided the central channels of communication by means of which the
bhakti movement flowed from south to north. Here we have a different
version of the story of south-­moves-­north, but once again we discover that
it is northern in its origins and not southern. Again the Mughals are
involved, but now we can see much more clearly the imprint of their chief
collaborators, the Kachvahas of Amer. We will bring this complex into
view from two vantage points—​fi rst Galtb, in the immediate vicinity of
Amer (Chapter 3); then Brindavan, much closer to the center of Mughal
power (Chapter 4). Then finally we will see what happened to the concept
of the four sampradbys as the Mughal star began to fade but that of the
Kachvahas remained bright (Chapter 5). After the death of the emperor
Aurangzeb, the Kachvaha Raja Jaisingh II (r. 1699–1743) envisioned a
new sort of imperium, whose core he laid out in the planned city of Jaipur,
built to be his capital. In his efforts to control the religious politics that
 Introduction 11

swirled around him, Jaisingh seized upon the concept of the four sam-
pradbys, giving this early formulation of the bhakti movement narrative
its first chance to carry institutional weight in what we so perilously call
the real world.
The impact of the concept of the four sampradbys was long-­lasting, as
we discover when we return to twentieth-­century developments in Chapter
6. At this point we are equipped to engage Tagore and his circle with new
seriousness, moving eastward from the Mughal/Kachvaha axis marked
by Galtb, Brindavan, and Jaipur to Bengal, which had by then become the
headquarters of British power. There we set up shop in Shantiniketan, the
little town where Tagore established the utopian educational institution
he called Vivva Bhbrati, “India’s, the World’s” or in a different sense “All
of India.” As that title suggests, we will feel the magnetism of the modern
nation-­state, even if Tagore himself had reservations about the concept.
More important for our story, actually, is Hazariprasad Dvivedi, who came
from a village northeast of Banaras and would return to Banaras not once
but twice in the course of his professional career. Yet it was as a member
of the faculty at Shantiniketan that Dvivedi first articulated his under-
standing of the bhakti bndolan, the Hindi analogue to English’s “the
bhakti movement.” As we learn in Chapter 1, Hindi’s national aspirations
were crucially important as the concept of the bhakti movement began to
take on lasting form. We see this again in Chapter 6, but discover that the
Bengali background also made a difference. In surprising ways we find
that the great Bengali reformer Rammohan Roy, founder of the Brahmo
Samaj and the man frequently dubbed “the father of modern India,” also
has a role to play in our story—​not personally but through his successors.
As we move through these several articulations of the bhakti move-
ment idea—​the crystallized modern form and its prototypes—​we will
also have to deal with what is left out, marginalized, or downright oth-
ered. Where are Muslims? Where are Dalits? Where are independent com-
munities such as the Sikhs, who are often claimed to be a part of the
bhakti movement and who sometimes make that claim themselves? And
what about the south? The north, we will see, is the prime mover, but at
what point does the south become an active participant in generating the
great narrative that casts this region in such a crucial role?
We will touch upon each of these issues as we move along, but they
take center stage in our final chapter, “What Should the Bhakti Movement
12 A Storm of Songs

Be?” There we will also have to face one last question, the ultimate one.
Does an awareness of the historical contingencies that have produced the
idea of the bhakti movement mean we have to consign it to the dustbins of
history, or can we take that very historical embeddedness as a sign that
this is a concept worth saving? What in good conscience can be salvaged
from a story that is in a certain sense dated but that continues to mean so
much to so many? Chapter 7 brings us up to the present day, showing how
this great monsoon of an idea keeps sending out squalls and downpours—​
a storm of songs to the last.
 1
90
The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents

The Bhakti Archive

The bhakti archive of India—​its corpus of vernacular religious songs

ready to be sung at any moment—​provides the country with a sense of
shared richness that has no peer. Individual gems of Sanskrit poetry may
be cut finer, but vernacular bhakti digs deeper into the national soul.
Bhakti poems in many Indian languages are sung and recited in homes, in
the bazaar, in temples, on cassettes and CDs, in movies, in singing groups,
in the fields, on the job. They are on the tongues of millions of individual
Indians as they face a personal challenge or feel a moment of joy. They
utter humor and protest, suffering and satisfaction; they bring to mind
beloved realms of story; they are addressed to many gods, to one god, or
none. And there are life stories of the singers to match.1
This living bhakti archive was an immense resource in the cause of
national integration. It led everywhere—​a gorgeous, finely woven fabric
just waiting to be donned by the new nation-­state. But why did it need to
be narrativized to do so? Why did these expressions of bhakti, coming
from all around the subcontinent and from many points in time, need to
be consolidated into a single, seemingly definitive narrative as the first
decades of the twentieth century progressed?
At a certain level the answer is simple. Nations need histories, as has
been stressed in a spate of scholarly studies pioneered by Benedict
Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition. 2 Yet the Indian situation was more
14 A Storm of Songs

specific: Indians required a particular kind of history. Taught in British

schools, their intellectual leaders were conditioned to expect a broad his-
toriographical scheme that followed a tripartite progression from ancient
to medieval to modern.
That framework proved hard to displace. What was easier to do was to
reshape the medieval that lay at its core. Rather than assigning the long
period between classical Gupta splendor and the latter-­day greatness of
British modernity to a long intervening lull in which Islamic polities were
dominant, as British historians had done, their Indian counterparts worked
to make the middle period more distinctively their own. The British largely
told the story of their country’s rise to power in India as a benevolent alter-
native to a weakened Mughal state. Both regimes were foreign in origin,
imposing themselves almost necessarily over the weak, balkanized mass
that was India itself. Nationalist historians could not accept this. They
required a sense of the medieval that gave indigenous coherence to this
crucial period, even if its political impact was less than clear. Not only must
it serve as a realm that could be interpreted as resisting a rule that was ulti-
mately foreign (some granted that the Mughals eventually became quite
domesticated), it had to have sufficient internal coherence to give birth at
the same time to a distinctly indigenous modernity. It had to presage the
independent Indian state and prepare its way. Appropriately narrativized,
bhakti could do this job—​and without overly alienating Indian Muslims,
many of whom could be seen as forming part of the broader bhakti domain.
After all, it was India—​and specifically Indian bhakti—​that made Indian
Islam so different from what was to be seen in the Middle East.3
And so the stage was set, but before we pull back the curtain we need
to introduce ourselves briefly to the songs themselves. To do that, suppose
we start with Ravidbs, whom we have already met. In the poem by which
he is perhaps best known—​attested already by the end of the sixteenth
century—​Ravidbs speaks, so to speak, with his body. His makes his leath-
erworker’s stigma a part of the poem and shares it with his Lord, whose
good name ironically depends on it. He wonders what the difference
between them is anyway:

You and me, me and you: What difference does it make?

It’s like gold and a golden bracelet, water and a wave.
You who have no limits, if I didn’t sin
how could they call you Redeemer of Fallen Men?
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 15

You’re Leader, Controller, the one who rules within,

but lords are known by their people, people by their lord.
This body: I’m praying. Turn your thoughts to me.
Ravidbs: Who else can explain what this mixing means?4

In another poem, similarly, Ravidbs makes his lowly caste occupation

serve as the specific theater of bhakti, turning the things of this world on
their head:

I’ve never known how to tan or sew,

though people come to me for shoes.
I haven’t the needle to make the holes
or even the tool to cut the thread.
Others stitch and knot, and tie themselves in knots
while I, who do not knot, break free.
I keep saying Rbm and Rbm, says Ravidbs,
and Death keeps his business to himself. 5

Where do such poems come from? Not just from the experience of a
particular individual—​the usual explanation—​but from long-­shared
genres and a deep history of oral intertextuality. Tagore was exploring
this reality in “Sweet Mercy” when he attributed Ravidbs’s inspiration to
Rbmbnand, a Vaishnava ascetic of the most expansive sort who was
reputed to have been the great messenger between southern and northern
bhakti traditions. If we let this hagiographical link be our cue, we can
quickly see the kind of thing Tagore could have had in mind. The great
ninth-­century poet NammbLvbr, artistic paragon of the Sri Vaishnava
sampradby to which Rbmbnand is held to have belonged, gave us the fol-
lowing meditation on the mystery of the self’s elusive dual/nondual
involvement with the Lord, the sort of thing that was exposited by Ravidbs
in “You and Me.” Here are NammbLvbr’s Tamil words in A. K. Ramanujan’s
translation:

You dwell in heaven

stand on the sacred mountain
sleep on the ocean
roll around in the earth

yet hidden everywhere

you grow
invisibly:
16 A Storm of Songs

moving within
numberless outer worlds

playing within my heart

yet not showing your body

will you always play hide and seek?6

If we look elsewhere in the great treasury of south Indian bhakti

poetry, we can also find precedents for “I’ve never known how to tan or
sew.” One interesting example is provided not by a Dalit poet simultane-
ously announcing and renouncing his stigmatized body and caste occupa-
tion, but by a woman poet who implicitly announces her gendered body
while at the same time renouncing what the world thinks has to go with
it: a decent regimen of garbing. This is the voice of the twelfth-­century
Kannada Shaiva poet Mahbdeviakkb, who insisted on going about in
public with no clothes:

People,
male and female,
blush when a cloth covering their shame
comes loose.
     When the lord of lives
lives drowned without a face
in the world, how can you be modest?

When all the world is the eye of the lord,

onlooking everywhere, what can you
cover and conceal?7

The four poems we have just heard, with their intriguing pair of paral-
lels, provide us with only a tiny sample of the echoes that sound across the
range and depth of India’s bhakti archive, but even this sliver suggests the
power of the resource upon which some of the architects of independent
India hoped to draw as they advanced the cause of national integration by
appealing to this countrywide bhakti legacy. And the more we know
about this archive, the stronger seems its appeal. Beyond poems of contes-
tation like these, and beyond the much broader genus to which they
belong—​poems that appeal to personal experience—​lies a vast repertoire
of bhakti compositions that open onto a different sort of narrative experi-
ence: widely known stories that appear in the Mahbbhbrata or Rbmbyana,
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 17

or tales of Krishna such as those that occupy a great swath of the Bhbgavata
Purbna. We generally think of the epic texts where these tales appear as
having been composed in Sanskrit, and the shoe certainly fits in the case
of the Bhbgavata Purbna, but these have vernacular analogues as well—​
not just because the Sanskrit epics were translated into regional languages
in the course of the second millennium c.e. but because the stories they
contained had always had lives in the languages people actually spoke.
In Hindi a distinction is commonly made between nirgun and sagun
aspects of bhakti poetry—​“without attributes” and “with attributes.”
These terms derive from a long-­standing theological contrast between
two ways of conceiving divinity—​apophatic and world-­infusing—​and the
contrasting stances that devotees must cultivate to approach the Deity in
these very different modes. In regard to bhakti poetry, however, the con-
trast comes to have a related meaning: a contrast between the poetry of
ordinary life (“attributeless” in this sense: lacking the plot of a divine nar-
rative) and poetry that situates itself in the charmed (“attributeful”) realm
of divine play or lilb—​stories of how Rbm and Sitb, Krishna and Radha,
Shiva and Shakti, or a host of other divine figures lived their lives for a
time as earthly beings. Bhakti poets speaking every major Indian lan-
guage have piped into these lilbs, creating a polyglot repository of devo-
tional story that can be heard from one end of the country to the other.
Poems of this sort complement poems we can imagine as reflecting the
individual experience of Ravidbs, NammbLvbr, Mahbdeviakkb, or any
number of other poet-­saints.
We can work back from sixteenth-­century north India in this mode
too, just as we earlier did with Ravidbs. We might begin, for example,
with a poem of Surdbs in which he assumes the persona of a cowherding
woman (gopi) who is concerned about a friend—​perhaps Radha—​who
has been deserted by Krishna and is left forlorn. He must have chased off
after another beauty, she suspects. Despite the fact that Surdbs speaks
through this woman of Braj, he must also register his own identity, as the
Hindi genre in which he works demands, and he does this by “signing”
what would originally have been an oral composition in the final verse:

Hand on her cheeks, Mother, arm around her knees,

she’s writing lines with her fingernails.
She sits with her worries and thoughts, lovely woman,
and contemplates his Love-­god’s mouth and clothes.
18 A Storm of Songs

Her eyes fill with tears. She heaves a set of sighs.

Herder girl, she damns the way so many days have passed
With the lotus-­eyed one so far off in Mathura,
whose virtues even thousand-­hooded serpents do not know.
Kbnh has made a lie of the time he said he’d come.
If at night she sees more lightning, friend,
   how will she survive?
Surdbs’s Lord has come in a flash and gone,
a dancing street performer—​
   many costumes, many roles.8

We do not have to search long to find a parallel for this poem from the
earlier south. Take NammbLvbr. In the poem that follows, unlike that of
Surdbs, the personal presence behind the female persona he adopts is not
indicated by an overt signature, but his identity is well understood by
those who hear him, since his poems have been so carefully collected and
are often performed in a liturgical moment where his role as an exemplary
devotee is being celebrated. Here he speaks as a longing gopi:

Evening has come,

but not the Dark One.

The bulls,
their bells jingling,
have mated with the cows
and the cows are frisky.

The flutes play cruel songs,

bees flutter in their bright
   white jasmine
and the blue-­black lily.

The sea leaps into the sky

and cries aloud.

Without him here,

what shall I say?
how shall I survive?9

In songs such as these, bhakti poets of all regions and periods bivouac
on the broad plain of shared Hindu narrative, and there are analogues
from the Sufi side of things as well. Those Sufis tended also, however, to
celebrate the fact that the world itself is structured as a testament to the
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 19

imprint of its Creator. A Hindu poet who takes an interest in the fabulous
domain of story—​a sagun poet—​may also stop to marvel at how the
world is positivity shot through with divinity in its own terms, even before
we discover a narrative line to expound and embroider that fact. Thus
Tulsidbs, another sixteenth-­century figure from north India, spoke for
many when he said,

Knowing the whole world to be infused with Sitb and Rbm,

I make my obeisance, pressing palm to palm.10

This couplet comes from the opening sections of Tulsi’s renowned

Rbmcaritmbnas (Spiritual Lake of the Acts of Rbm), which he composed
in the Avadhi dialect of Hindi, following the pattern of earlier Sufi epics.
In many ways their impact on him is clear.11 Whether he was also aware
of other vernacular Rbmbyanas that had been composed throughout the
subcontinent before he attempted his own, we do not know, but by now it
will come as no surprise that a Tamil Rbmbyana composed by KampaN
preceded Tulsi’s by four centuries. In recasting the Rbmbyana as an Avadhi
text, Tulsidbs drew not only on other vernacular versions but also on a
plurality of Sanskrit ones. The borders between spoken languages and
Sanskrit are not firm in this arena: both could give expression to senti-
ments and stories such as these. And the same could be said of the very
porous borders separating “secular” eroticism—​the poetry of court or
courtesan—​from the narratively embedded “divine” love poetry we have
just been considering. Such connections—​between languages and periods,
between religious communities both Muslim and Hindu, and between
sacred registers and secular—​all served to enhance the value of bhakti as
a resource in the cause of national integration, and to suggest that it had
been doing that work for centuries.

The Great Integrators

To see how this vast bhakti archive was specifically marshaled in the ser-
vice of nation-­building, we can do no better than to turn to a moment at
the end of 1964 when Indira Gandhi, then the minister of information
and broadcasting of the central government of India, called upon the great
Sanskritist V. Raghavan to deliver the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial
Lectures in New Delhi. In these high-­profile lectures, Raghavan took on
20 A Storm of Songs

the task of showing “the great role of consolidation” that had been played
over the course of centuries by India’s poet-­saints.12 Unlike the hollow
“conferences and resolutions” that resounded in the public life of his own
day, said Raghavan, these agents and exemplars of the bhakti movement
had been able to achieve the real integration—​the emotional integration—​
upon which the territorial integration of India had relied and would con-
tinue to rely.13 Here was the idea of the bhakti movement full force.
In his first of his two Patel Lectures, Raghavan took his listeners on a
long and loving historical circumambulation of India, which, using tradi-
tional Hindu terms, he called a “pradakshina-­ybtrb of Bhbrata in the com-
pany of the saints.”14 It began and ended in Tamilnadu, in the far south,
and it proceeded in a clockwise direction, as any pradaksinb must by
definition do, keeping the object of veneration—​in this case, India itself—​
on one’s right. In achieving this full circle, Raghavan did have to let chro-
nology take second place to geography at one important point—​when he
had arrived at Bengal, in the east. He had led his hearers from the Tamil
poet-­saints of the sixth through eighth centuries up the west coast through
Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Sindh (thirteenth through seventeenth centu-
ries), into the Himalayas as far as Kashmir (Lblded, fourteenth century),
down to the Punjab (Nbnak and the Sikh Gurus, sixteenth century and
following), across the Gangetic plain to sixteenth-­century Assam
(Samkaradeva, sixteenth century) and into Bengal, where he ended with
the eighteenth-­century Shbkta saint Rbmprasbd. Then he regrouped,
noting that Rbmprasbd had his Vaishnava side too, which gave him his
segue to the ecstatic Chaitanya (ca. 1500) as a predecessor and the much
earlier Bengali poet Jayadev—​a writer of Sanskrit, yes, but with famously
vernacular overtones. Since the Gitagovinda had spawned a series of tra-
ditions of performance and commentary in the Dravidian languages of
the south, that fact allowed him to continue his journey until he arrived
where he had begun, in his own native Tamilnadu. This was a tour de
force—​even to the point of exercising a little force over history to make
the circumambulation come out right—​and it made it seem that Raghavan
himself was but the most recent in the ancient and honorable company of
religious troubadours he described. He called them in his title “The Great
Integrators: The Saint-­Singers of India.”
Dr. Raghavan’s audience far exceeded the group of dignitaries and
educated citizens of the capital who assembled to hear the lectures
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 21
The Bhakti Movement: Three Trajectories

Raghavan’s circumambulation

KASHMIR
Bhakti in the Bhāgavata Māhātmya
Rāmānand’s “shortcut”
In
du
R.

s
R
.

um PUNJAB
Jhel

R
.

vi
Ra
R.
lej
.
aR
Sut Haridvar
Yamun

Brahmaputra R.

Ga
Brindavan ng

S ar
e
u
ay
sR

(G .
BRAJ ha tra R
.

gha
mapu
ra)
R. Brah
ASSAM
s R.

G anges R.
Banaras
Indu

SINDH

a R.
GUJARAT mad
Nar
BENGAL

Tapti
R .
a h ORISSA
M

an
a di
MAHARASHTRA R.
Go
d av Puri
ari
R.
ANDHRA
im
Bh

aR
.
Kri . Bay of Bengal
Arabian Sea sh n na R
a R. ish
Kr
KAR
NAT

Chennai
AKA

eri R.
Kav

Srirangam
Tiruvarur
Thanjavur
DRAVIDA/
TAMILNADU

INDIAN
OCEAN

Map 1. ​The bhakti movement: three trajectories. Courtesy of Isabelle Lewis.

22 A Storm of Songs

KASHMIR
Lālded (14C?)

BRAJ
PUNJAB Sūrdās (16C)
Nānak (15-16C) Hit Harivaṃś (16C)
Harirāmvyās (16C)
Nandadās (16C)
Haridvar Raskhān (16-17C)
Abdul Rahīm Khānkhānā (16-17C)

Brindavan
Amer/Jaipur Galta
Vallabha (15-16C)
SINDH BIHAR ASSAM
Shah Abdul Karīm (16-17C) Vidyāpati (14-15C) Śaṃkaradev
Shah Abdul Latīf (17-18C) Allahabad/Prayag (16C)
Chittor Banaras

Mīrābāī (16C)
Kabīr (15-16C) BENGAL
GUJARAT Ravidās (16C) Jayadev (12C)
Narsī Mehtā Tulsīdās (16-17C) Candīdās (14C?)
(15-16C)

MAHARASHTRA
Jñāndev (13C) Puri
Nāmdev (14C)
Tukārām (17C) Caitanya (16C)
Rāmdās (17C)
Arabian Sea
Bay of Bengal

KARNATAKA
Vīraśaivas (12C): ANDHRA
Basava Annamaya (15C)
Allamaprabhu
Mahādevīakkā Tirupati
Madhva (13-14C) Chennai
Haridāsas (16C):
Purandaradāsa
Kanakadāsa
Srirangam
Tiruvarur
Thanjavur

TAMILNADU
Alvārs (Aṇṭāḷ, 9C)
Nāyanārs (Sundarar, 8C) INDIAN
Rāmānuja (11-12C) OCEAN
Arunagiri (15C)

Map 2. ​Major figures in the bhakti movement narrative according to V. Raghavan.

Courtesy of Isabelle Lewis.
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 23

­themselves. Not only did the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting

subsequently publish these lectures with a seventy-­five-­page anthology of
selected compositions attributed to these singer-­saints—​in English trans-
lation—​but it immediately broadcast large portions of the lectures to all
parts of the country over All India Radio.15 Hence they were heard a
thousand miles away from Delhi in Chennai, for example, where Raghavan
was professor of Sanskrit at the University of Madras, or even further
south in Tiruvarur, where he had grown up.
In his preface to the published version of the Patel Lectures, Raghavan
drew special attention to these origins:

When at school in my native place Tiruvarur—​an ancient centre famed in

the annals of South Indian history, devotion and the arts of music and
dance—​I was drawn into the bhajana-­goshtis which went round the town,
particularly in Mbrgavirsha (December–January), singing devotional
songs in different languages, prayer formulas (nbmbvalis), etc. . . . ​​No one
could be a votary of Karnatak music without coming under the influence
of the religious and spiritual message of the repertoire of that art; nor
could one study the history of Indian music, or even of Indian literature,
without having to study at the same time the devotional movements that
had swept the country.16

Thus we form the impression that Raghavan’s fabled Sanskrit learning

was only incidental to the task at hand—​a second order of creativity.
India’s spoken languages mattered more:

The south Indian institution of Harikathb or Kblakshepa, especially of

Tamilnadu, offers the best illustration, where in the course of a Tamil
discourse, the life of a Telugu, Marathi, Hindi or Bengali saint is
expounded; among the songs sung are Telugu kirtanas of Tybgarbja,
Kannada padas of Purandaradbsa, sbkis, dandis and ovis from
Mahbrbshtra saints, Mirb’s lyrics, as also songs of Kabir and quotations
from Tulasi’s Rbmbyana. In bhajan-­m andirs and special festivals for
kirtan in Tamilnadu, the same wide variety in the recitals of the songs of
the saints from all parts of the land can be heard.17

It wasn’t that Raghavan thought Sanskrit had failed to play a role in

this exuberantly vernacular realm. He specifically spoke of the mutual
influence of “the learned and popular traditions” and noted that there
were times when persons able to move in both mediums offered a spe-
cial service by translating Sanskrit works into the spoken tongue.18 He
24 A Storm of Songs

e­ specially mentioned the Bhagavad Gitb and the Bhbgavata Purbna in

this regard, since their translators (he mentioned Jñbnadev of Maharashtra
and Samkaradeva of Assam) had had a major impact on history.
Furthermore, he reflected, “owing to the one-­sided nature of the records”
we do not know as much as we should about the vernacular literary activ-
ities of many figures whose Sanskrit works are preserved.19 But even more
than this Sanskrit-­to-­vernacular translation activity, Raghavan was inter-
ested in vernacular-­to-­vernacular processes of transmission—​the sort that
he himself had witnessed as a boy growing up in Tiruvarur.
Like others who have told the bhakti movement story, especially in a
quasi-­political context, Raghavan’s purpose was to paint a sweeping pan-
orama of India’s democratic instincts as they had existed before the word
“democracy” was coined. 20 Bhakti, he said, is “a democratic doctrine
which consolidates all people without distinction of caste, community,
nationality, or sex”—​and the bhakti movement is the story of that con-
solidation over the course of centuries. He gives due weight to other fea-
tures of “this song-­literature of the saints”: a shared emphasis on the name
of the Lord and on the guru; a clarity about the true, simple form of wor-
ship; a “reformist zeal and denunciation of sham and deception as also of
empty formalism”; and a “sense of the unity of all paths” and concomi-
tantly a certain “advaitic tone and the preference for monism.” But at the
end of the day he is most pointedly attentive to the bhakti movement’s
socially inclusive nature, and occasionally he makes his case for catholic
diversity in an even stronger way: “The large galaxy of saints from all over
the country is made up largely of those who arose from the non-­literary
classes.” Here then we have a shared formation of consciousness that natu-
rally served, when the time came, to undergird the nation in its current
form. It had great significance in “preparing the ground for centuries for
the evolution of an increasing sense of equality, and in the bringing up of
the masses and educating them in the essential culture of the land.”21
I have already hinted that from its earliest conception the idea of the
bhakti movement was a northern effort to ground its own institutions and
practices in a southern past that it believed to be older and somehow more
authentic than its own. Here too we see the same pattern. The capital,
where Raghavan spoke, was and is located in the far north. Raghavan was
from the south, and carried with him the particular cultural capital of
that region, including especially the prestige of its tradition of unbroken
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 25

Sanskrit learning. Yes, he was emphasizing the vernacular aspect of things,

but few of his listeners would have lost sight of the fact that Professor
Raghavan was probably the world’s most famous Sanskritist. Yes, he
acknowledged that the north had also had a special role to play in gener-
ating the bhakti movement: before he began his historical circumambula-
tion he spoke of the impetus of the Buddhist Siddhas in the east and
northeast, and of the commanding figure of Gorakhnbth, “who popu-
larized Yoga.”22 But his core narrative—​both in its inception and at its
conclusion—​was anchored to a southern base. Anyone in the central
administration concerned about national integration, that well-­funded
cultural shibboleth, would have been pleased to see this southern ingre-
dient stirred so effectively into the broth of a national entity whose capital
and official language (Hindi) were located so far north.
In subsequent chapters of this book, we will delve into the history of
how several premodern formulations laid the basis for the modern idea of
the bhakti movement and were incorporated into it as the twentieth cen-
tury advanced. In each case, we will see, fresh political configurations
served as relevant background for what happened in the realm of ideas.
Here we see the same pattern in spades. After all, it was the daughter of
the nation’s first prime minister who invited Raghavan to give the Patel
Lectures. A narrative that would support the state by drawing India’s
religious minorities into a wide-­tent vision of the bhakti movement—​
especially if it did not bear the Hindu label explicitly—​was clearly what
she sought.23 Such a narrative could be majoritarian without being exclu-
sive. Raghavan’s portrait of “the great integrators” expressed eager appre-
ciation for the hospitality shown by Hindus to other religious groups—​their
“spirit of tolerance” to be found in their songs—​and their tendency to
encompass rather than exclude, and did so without hinting at anything
that could be construed as narrowly brahminical. Impeccably educated,
famously liberal, deeply southern, and patently Brahman, Raghavan was
perfectly suited to the task of putting forth a narrative of Hinduism from
the ground up, Hinduism in a bhakti mode—​Hinduism, in fact, beyond
Hinduism.
He told the story with elegance and clarity. Vaishnava and Shaiva
singer-­saints had been equally important in getting the movement rolling,
both groups being eager to reclaim Tamilnadu against Buddhists and
Jains for “the older faith”—​that is, the “Vedic, Purbnic and devotional
26 A Storm of Songs

path.” Then, by means of a quotation from the Shaiva saint Mbnikavbcakar,

Raghavan pulled the great philosopher-­theologian Samkara into the nar-
rative as a person of great genius and personal charisma, as well as being
a hymnist in his own right. His Vaishnava counterpart Rbmunuja fol-
lowed seamlessly afterward (their deep philosophical differences went
unmentioned), and Raghavan accepted the notion that it was through
Rbmbnand, whom he connects to Rbmunuja as “a follower of the devo-
tional school of Vedanta,” that we came to have “the Bhakti movements
of the north, Kabir, Tulasi and others owing allegiance to him.”24 As we
shall see in Chapter 3, to claim Rbmbnand as a shortcut from south to
north was actually to say quite a mouthful.
Yet this notion of a Sri Vaishnava tradition that connected Rbmunuja
to Rbmbnand and thereby headed directly northward was actually not the
principal focus of the plot that Raghavan wanted to develop. He spent far
more time celebrating a second Sri Vaishnava trajectory—​more literary
and liturgical in tone—​that connected these Tamilians with other parts of
the south in a more elaborate sequence, the first steps along his circumam-
bulatory path. In this more detailed account, we learn how the bLvbrs and
nbyaNmbrs, Vaishnava and Shaiva bhaktas of the sixth through ninth
­centuries respectively, drew from different social groups as well as dif-
ferent regions of Tamilnadu: they were integrators in more than one way.
Later, by good fortune, they were “salvaged and organized” into parallel
Vaishnava and Shaiva devotional anthologies under the helpful umbrella
of royal patronage in the Chola period. Well known in Sri Vaishnava cir-
cles and to the Smbrta Shaiva community into which Raghavan had been
born, these liturgical collections are called the Divyaprabandham and the
Tevbram, and Raghavan was particularly interested in the sheer number
of compositions that were gathered there. He also took note of subsequent
mandates, which came quite soon, that they be regularly performed, and
was pleased to observe that the Tevbram, the Shaiva hymnbook anthology,
is “the earliest corpus of south Indian music compositions.”25
Drawing attention to several particularly significant Tamil composers
and performers of later centuries, he then crossed the border to Karnataka
and there, once again, focused on two distinctive groups of Vaishnava and
Shaiva singer-­saints, the Haridbsas and the Viravaivas. He distinguished
the Haridbsas’ preference for the performance of pada lyrics from the
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 27

“sententious prose” of the Viravaivas: their vacanas.26 Like many others

throughout the twentieth century, Raghavan found the Viravaivas par-
ticularly praiseworthy for challenging caste distinctions—​a crucial “dem-
ocratic” motif, as we have seen—​while the Haridbsas stood out for being
a “popular movement” of a somewhat different kind. Like the Viravaivas,
“the Dbsas also popularized the practice of holy mendicancy, going about
with the tambura on the shoulders, bells on feet, and chiplas for rhythm
on hand, singing the Padas and receiving handfuls of rice (uncha-­vrtti)
from willing householders.”27
At that point Raghavan allowed the momentum of the movement to
swing farther west and north—​through Maharashtra to Gujarat, Sindh,
Kashmir, and Punjab—​before heading south and east again, as we have
seen. In regard to Maharashtra he particularly noted the guru-­pupil asso-
ciation between the bhakta Rbmdbs and the famed the Maratha king
Sivbji, whose daring exploits against the Mughals have been acclaimed as
heralding India’s thirst for independence from the British. (Subsequent
scholarship has thrown both this and Sivbji’s connection with Rbmdbs
into dispute.)28 Raghavan also celebrated the Maharashtrian saints’ use of
the “devotional institution of musical Saokirtan,” which “had far-­reaching
effects.”29 In so saying, he was probably not referring to the public prac-
tice of singing and chanting that Chaitanya championed under that name
in the north and east, though the connection is thought-­provoking, but to
the widely felt influence of the great fourteenth-­century Marathi kirtan
performer Nbmdev. This, he suggested, ultimately connected to the
musical practices adopted at the Maratha court of Thanjavur several cen-
turies later, where his narrative would culminate. 30
In regard to the north, Raghavan quotes George Grierson, the legendary
British scholar-­administrator who directed the Linguistic Survey of India,
to the effect that the words of two men “can still be heard in every village
of Hindustan. These are Tulasi Das [Tulsidbs], the abandoned child of a
beggar Brahman tribe, and Kabir, the despised weaver of Benares.”31 Both
of them, says Raghavan, were pupils of Rbmbnand—​again, that southern
link—​and looking forward, he makes mention of Kabir’s influence over a
number of communities, beginning with the Sikhs and Dbdupathis, com-
munities formed in the sixteenth century, and extending right up to the
Radhasoamis, who began their work three centuries later. 32 Other figures
28 A Storm of Songs

also come in as significant—​the Brajbhasha poet Surdbs, especially, who

is mentioned right after the philosopher-­theologian Vallabhbcbrya. This
is probably not by chance since the poet is normally (if falsely, in my view)
considered to be the philosopher’s pupil. Raghavan also makes a point of
saying that “many of these popular singer-­saints” of north India “became
the apostles of a synthesis and rapprochement, aided by common points
in advaita and Sufism.33 His penultimate step was to move east to Bengal
and Orissa, “the land of Krishna and Shakti,” before turning his atten-
tions again southward, as we have seen.
His circumambulation ended at Thanjavur, deep in the Tamil country
but a place where Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil speakers met in perfor-
mances hosted by the great king Serfoji II (1777–1832). Raghavan was
one of the first scholars to understand the formative role Serfoji played in
bringing north and south together, though he stressed even more the
agency of the poet-­performers themselves at court. Doubling back over
the same terrain in a more thematic fashion in his second lecture, pointing
out shared images and performance practices, Raghavan also laid stress
on the movement of these singer-­saints in a literal sense. Their “genius for
mass-­contact,” he said, and the “vow of austere mendicancy that they
took” meant that they were constantly on the road making pilgrimages. 34
Raghavan was struck by the analogy to the Bhbrat-­d arvan (See India)
tours of his own day, but he emphasized that there was a gap between
these and the deep emotional and moral component that caused the bhakti
singer-­saints to travel in search of “self-­elevation.” Gandhi had remarked
that “our leading men travelled throughout India either by foot or in
bullock carts,” Raghavan recalled, so it is little surprise that eventually,
after paying homage to Samkara as pilgrim and hymnist, he shone his
light on Gandhi himself, who also functioned in these roles. 35 Then
drawing to a conclusion, he stepped back in such a way as to reveal
Gandhi’s global impact, ceding the stage to Arnold Toynbee, who had
given the Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture in Delhi only a few years
before.36 At some length Raghavan quoted Toynbee’s appreciation of
Gandhi’s “inexhaustible spiritual strength.”37 Thus the father of the
nation, with his pilgrimages and his spiritual struggles and his favorite
Vaishnava hymn (Narsi Mehtb’s Vaisnava Janato), emerged in Raghavan’s
portrait as the greatest modern “great integrator” of all—​not just for
India, in fact, but for the whole world.
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 29

The Legacy in English

Raghavan’s lectures marked a high point in twentieth-­century articulations

of the bhakti movement idea, but they built on much that had come before.
Raghavan himself referred to one of these—​the famous little book Rise of
the Maratha Power, written by Mahadeo Govind Ranade, a founder of the
Indian National Congress and judge in the Bombay High Court. It was
published only months before Ranade’s death in 1901.38 In this book, as the
title would indicate, Ranade enters into a discussion of only those “saints
and prophets” who inhabited his own region, Maharashtra; and although
he is comfortable with an idiom that speaks in terms of movements, he does
not trace out a bhakti movement that would encompass all of India or,
indeed, use that phrase. Still, Raghavan found particular value in a sen-
tence that looked out across a wider domain, of which he quoted the first
clause: “It may safely be said that the growth of the modern vernaculars in
India is solely the result of the labors of these saints, and that the provinces,
which showed the most decided tendencies in the way of reform, also
showed the most healthy development of their vernacular literature.”39
This assertion, we recall, is just what has worried Sheldon Pollock, but
for Ranade and Raghavan it was uncontested common ground. Yet in the
prose that immediately precedes the passage Raghavan quotes with such
approval, Justice Ranade says something that would have caused Raghavan
concern: “The struggle between the claims of the classical Sanskrit and
the vernaculars, of which we hear so much in these days, is thus an old
conflict . . . ​​The saints and prophets . . . ​​laid Sanskrit aside as useless for
their work, and spent all their energies in the cultivation and growth of
their mother tongue.”40 Looking back after more than six decades,
Raghavan was at pains to downplay this dichotomy, as Pollock was later
to do. And Raghavan took implicit issue with Ranade’s view that these
“reformists” opposed monastic ways of being since they appreciated “the
sanctity of family-­life.”41 But most intriguing of all their disagreements is
a motif whose importance Pollock particularly flagged. Raghavan was far
less preoccupied than Ranade with drawing out parallels between what
Ranade called bhakti’s “reforms” and—​note the term—​the Protestant
Reformation in Europe.
Ranade had, in fact, introduced all of the themes to which we have so
far drawn attention in the course of assaying a large, overriding ­comparison
30 A Storm of Songs

between the religious and cultural histories of India and Europe. His
argument against Sanskrit, as he spoke for his Maharashtrian “saint and
prophet” predecessors, was against “the thraldom of scholastic learning.”
This he saw as being closely akin to the Protestant reformers’ attempts to
set aside “the oppressive preponderance of the classical Latin in which all
the best books were till then written.”42 And he saw an analogy between
the sense of common humanity that emerged on the pilgrimage from all
parts of Maharashtra to Pandharpur and the sense of shared human dig-
nity that led to the Protestant reformers’ rejection of clerical privilege in
distributing the Eucharist. In this regard, for example, Ranade referred to
the last ritual of the Vbrkaris’ pilgrimage to Pandharpur as the moment
when they observed “the Lord’s Feast.”43 He also analogized polytheistic
worship in India to the image and saint worship of the Roman Catholic
Church, and depicted the bhakti reformers’ deep allegiance to their own
“favorite form of the divine incarnation” as an instinct for true mono-
theism, just the sort of thing that had inspired the activities of the
Protestant reformers, especially the strictest among them. Here and else-
where was a manliness—​he did not shrink from the word44 —​that caused
religion and politics to march together as two sides of a single movement,
in India no less than in the early modern Europe.
Not surprisingly, Ranade allowed the storied bond between Rbmdbs
and Sivbji in the cause of a united “Dharma (religion) of Maharashtra” to
serve as his point of departure as he developed this line of thought. Here
was something special, he said. Because of it and also because of the great
profusion of Marathi saints over a longer period of time, Ranade insisted
that the “similar movement [that] manifested itself much about the same
time” in northern and eastern India—​he mentioned Nbnak, Chaitanya,
Rbmbnand, Kabir, Tulsidbs, Surdbs, Jayadev, and Ravidbs in referring to
it—​could not quite be compared “with the work done by the saints and
prophets of Maharashtra.” The religious movement that had coursed
through Maharashtrian history ever since the time of Jñbndev prepared it
“in a way no other nation in India was prepared, to take the lead in re-­
establishing a united native power in the place of foreign domination.”
The domination he had in mind was “the Mahomedan yoke” that had
spread across India in the wake of successive invasions by “Afghans,
Gilchis, Turks, Usbegs, and Moghuls.” Its answer was the Maratha
Confederacy that began to form around the turn of the seventeenth
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 31

c­ entury and created a political infrastructure that would, in the century

prior to the consolidation of British hegemony, extend from Dvaraka to
Haridvar to Jagannath Puri to Rameshvaram, the four compass points of
“the Indian Continent,” and still served as the foundation of civil order
under Victoria, “the Queen-­Empress of India.”45
Obviously an Elphinstone College education and the career path
Ranade had chosen shine through in what he has to say, and his under-
standing of history also reflects the particular vortex of Marathi nation-
alism that swirled around the Bombay in which Justice Ranade lived.
Raghavan’s formation, though equally elite, had been different, and it
took place at a different time. Both men spoke with enormous confidence
about the special potencies of the religious histories to which they believed
themselves specifically heir—​Maharashtrian on the one hand, Tamilian
on the other. And they promulgated a similar though not exactly equiva-
lent litany of features that would characterize the movements of which
they spoke. These included, in Ranade’s case, a stress on vernacular usage,
a protest against “the old spirit of caste exclusiveness,” an elevation of
“the Shudra classes,” an attention to the status of women, a suspicion of
“rites and ceremonies, and of pilgrimages and fasts, and of learning and
contemplation” in comparison with “the higher excellence of worship by
means of love and faith,” and even “a plan of reconciliation with the
Mahomedans.”46 All this sounds familiar, and finds its place in Raghavan’s
catalogue as well, but for Ranade it is a mainly regional affirmation while
for Raghavan it is national. Or to put more accurately, the nations they
envisioned were not the same size.
For all they shared, the terms had changed significantly between the
time of Ranade and that of Raghavan, and with it the frames in which
they located the religious movements they both sought to describe. Ranade
saw analogies between what had been experienced in Maharashtra and
what had happened elsewhere in India, but they were not part of a single
thrust as they were for Raghavan. For Ranade, in fact, what brought them
parallel to one another was at least as much their synchronicity with what
was happening in Europe as the force of the analogies that could be located
in between religious communities in various parts of India itself. This may
possibly explain the intriguing fact that Ranade identified the first Marathi
reformer, Jñbndev, as belonging to the fifteenth century, when the Prot­­
estant Reformation was beginning to gather steam, rather than to the late
32 A Storm of Songs

thirteenth century, when Jñbndev is ordinarily thought to have flourished.

Ranade’s whole narrative breathes a spirit of comparison with Europe.
Even the distinctiveness that Ranade perceived in pan-­I ndian bhakti, its
shared tendency to contemplate “the bright side of divine Providence,”
came into focus by virtue of its contrast with the darker proclivities of
“the Shemitic religions” that ruled the day in Europe and elsewhere—​
their “awe and trembling” before “a judge who punished more frequently
than He rewarded.”47
As Ranade summoned his powerful English, he clearly imagined
British readers in addition to Indian ones—​this in a way that would have
been far less marked in the case of Raghavan. Raghavan’s Toynbee was an
invited guest, and Toynbee’s point of reference, in turn, was that most
famous of Indians—​Gandhi—​not anyone living in Europe. The nation for
whom Raghavan’s spiritual narrative of national integration was appro-
priate was an entity that was still being imagined in Ranade’s time. As he
laid out “the moral interest” of the story of Maratha resiliency, whose
basis he understood to be distinctively and broadly Hindu, Ranade could
only gesture in the direction of “those who can see far into the future of
the possibilities open to a Federated India.”48 Was that perhaps the reason
why he failed to articulate a unified picture of India’s bhakti past—​a
single bhakti movement rather than a cluster of more or less analogous
“religious upheavals”?49 Does the present dictate the past to such an extent
that he could not?
The intellectual historian Krishna Sharma, whose book Bhakti and
the Bhakti Movement: A New Perspective appeared in Delhi in 1987,
took quite a different view of these matters. To her perception the idea of
the bhakti movement emerged considerably before the achievement of an
independent India, and was the product of exactly the class of people to
whom Justice Ranade was speaking—​Europeans, especially the British
among them, and their Indian protégés. From her point of view the most
important of these were the Indologists. It was their imprint, she argued,
that caused bhakti to be conceived in a thoroughly Vaishnava way, since
the Vaishnava strand in Hindu theology corresponded most comfortably
with Protestant Christian conceptions of God. It was their historicism,
she said, that produced a conception of bhakti as history. Not sur-
prisingly, therefore, it was their understanding of leading motifs in
European history, most notably the Protestant Reformation, that shaped
 The Bhakti Movement and Its Discontents 33

their understanding of what was going on in India at roughly the same

time. This utterly deformed and obscured the theological and historical
realities of India itself.
Krishna Sharma was the first scholar to take a critical look at the idea
of the bhakti movement, and what she found was anathema. Analogies of
the sort Ranade saw between Indian bhaktas and their contemporary
Christian cousins deserved to be subjected to a much closer inspection
than they had typically been given, and the whole preoccupation with
these purported analogies ought to be summarily rejected once their for-
eign origins and biases had been made clear. All that seemed manly,
hopeful, and virtuous to Ranade seemed submissive and deeply regretful
to Sharma. The idea of vernacular religious movements, as in Ranade, or
of a single bhakti movement, as for Raghavan, historicized something
that was actually timeless in her view. Even if one wanted to move for-
ward with a national “history of religion” for India, the sort of thing
Raghavan was so clearly attempting, what would be the point in doing so
if that history turned out to be alien to the core?
Sharma put her finger on a fundamental problem—​the historicization
of bhakti in the way that subsequently came to be accepted as fact—​and
let us make clear just who she thought she was exposing by blowing the
whistle in this way. The likes of Ranade and Raghavan were actually not
her primary targets; they do not even appear in her index. Rather it was
the great Indologist Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837–1925) and an
impressive array of Europeans whose methods and assumptions, if not
always their conclusions, Bhandarkar shared. Principal among these were
Horace Hyman Wilson, Albrecht Weber, Franz Lorinser, and Monier
Williams, whose works most relevant to the subject at hand had been
published between 1828 and 1877. 50 Last but not least on this list of invid-
ious European eminences was a man we have already mentioned because
he was cited so appreciatively by Dr. Raghavan: George Grierson (1851–
1941), author of The Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan (1889)
and later director of the Linguistic Survey of India. According to Sharma
it was the personalist, monotheist, Protestant Christian conception of
deity these men shared that led them to conceive—​or rather, miscon-
ceive—​of bhakti in the way they did, and it was especially Grierson who
historicized this conception in such a manner as to give us “the bhakti
movement”: “By establishing a link between the medieval bhaktas and the
34 A Storm of Songs

Vaishnava acharyas, Grierson was able to describe the whole phenom-

enon of the medieval religious resurgence as the Bhakti movement in terms
of Vaishnavism.”51
Indian thinkers, says Sharma, never found the strength to challenge
this “artificial formulation.”52 By her lights Ranade and Raghavan would
have to belong to the group whom she implicates in this charge, and I am
sure she would have been eager to be seated subversively in the auditorium
of All India Radio as a member of the Delhi audience that heard Raghavan
give his lectures in the last month of 1964. But that was impossible. She
was on research leave from her teaching position in the history department
of Miranda House at the time—​away in London, at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, deeply involved in writing the thesis that would
emerge two decades later, with only minor revisions, as her book. 53
Let us return to the matter of Grierson, Sharma’s bête noire. Grierson’s
writings on bhakti did indeed have enormous influence, as Sharma
observed, but so far as I can determine, and contrary to what she implies
more than once, Grierson never made use of the concept of the bhakti
movement as such. It is odd that she does not seem to recognize this fact,
since on other occasions she carefully notes that European Orientalists
made use of formulations that were closely similar to the idea of the bhakti
movement without being precisely the same.54 But she is strangely uncrit-
ical when it comes to Grierson, her ultimate target, the man who took
“the theories put forward by the aforesaid authors” and finally “bound
[them] together in a neat system.”55
What Grierson actually says on the subject was most influentially
articulated in the entry he wrote on “Bhakti-­Mbrga” for a volume of
James Hastings’s widely circulated Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
that was published in 1910. There the famous linguist indeed spoke about
“the greatest religious revolution that India has ever seen,” but he called
this transformation “the Bhbgavata reformation of the Middle Ages” or
“the Bhbgavatism of the reformation.”56 Considering the impact that his
words would have, both on those who largely accepted them and on those
who just as firmly rejected them, it is worth hearing in considerable detail
what Grierson had to say:

It was in Southern India that the lamp of Bhbgavatism was kept burning
[after the time of the Bhagavad Gitb], though with but a feeble light, and
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all the charm inherent in it. It is there that one ought to watch the
apparently whirl-like course, though in reality regulated by the beat
of the music, in which the man sustains and carries away his
companion, while she yields to the spell with a vague expression of
happiness tending to enhance her beauty. It is difficult to conceive
elsewhere the fascination of the waltz. As soon as its strains rise
upon the air, the features relax, the eyes become animated, and a
thrill of delight runs through the company. The graceful gyrations of
the dancers, at first somewhat confused, gradually assume
accurately timed movements, while the spectators whom age
condemns to immobility beat time and rhythm, mentally joining in
the pleasure which is bodily denied to them.
The pen fails to reproduce that enchanting scene of beauteous
women covered with flowers and diamonds, yielding to the
irresistible strains of the harmony, and being carried away in the
strong arms of their partners until sheer fatigue compelled them to
pause. The pen fails to reproduce the magnificent sight, to which
daylight streaming through the windows put an end.
 CHAPTER II
The Drawing-rooms of the Comtesse de Fuchs—The Prince
Philip of Hesse-Homburg—George Sinclair—The
Announcement of a Military Tournament—The Comtesse
Edmond de Périgord—General Comte de Witt—Letters of
Recommendation—The Princesse Pauline—The Poet-
functionary and Fouché.

Among the most distinguished women of Austrian society was

the Comtesse Laure de Fuchs, of whom the numerous visitors to
Vienna during the Congress have preserved the most delightful
recollection. Graceful and witty, she conveyed the highest idea in her
own person of the courtesy of her country. Foreigners considered it
a signal honour to be admitted to her receptions. In 1808 and 1812,
I, and the few Frenchmen who were in Vienna at this period, met
with the most cordial welcome on her part. Among those who
composed her most intimate circle, all the members of which were
friends, special mention ought to be made of the Comtesse
Pletemberg, her sister, the wife of the reigning comte of that name;
the Duchesses de Sagan and d’Exerenza, and Madame Edmond de
29
Périgord, a niece, by marriage, of Prince de Talleyrand. They were
all three born Princesses de Courlande, and were called the Three
Graces. In addition to these, there were the Chanoinesse Kinski,
belonging to one of the most illustrious families of Hungary; the Duc
de Dalberg, one of the French plenipotentiaries; Marshal Walmoden,
30
the three Comtes de Pahlen, the Prince Philip of Hesse-Homburg,
the Prince Paul Esterhazy, subsequently Austrian ambassador to the
Court of St. James; the Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, the Russian
31 32
general Comte de Witt, M. de Gentz, the secretary of the
Congress, and the intimate friend of M. de Metternich; General
Nostiltz, the clever man of letters; Varnhagen (von Ense), the poet
Carpani, Doctor Koreff, the Baron d’Ompteda, former minister of
Westphalia at Vienna, whom the fall of his sovereign had left without
an embassy, and who attended this great diplomatic Sanhedrim as a
simple amateur.
A sweet and gentle animation pervaded those gatherings, which
were never interrupted by irritating political discussions. With her
charming grace, the countess imposed on all her friends a law of
mutual intimacy; consequently, they unanimously bestowed on her
the title of their queen, a title she had accepted, and which she bore
with a kind of serious dignity.
Her family as well as the number of her friends had increased
during my absence from Vienna. The former were growing into
beautiful beings, the latter, of whom she gave me some short
biographical sketches, were as devoted as ever. Fortune, thanks to
the rapidly succeeding events of the last few years, had forgotten
none of them. All had become generals, ambassadors, or ministers.
The one to whom I felt most attracted was the Prince of Hesse-
Homburg, then occupying a rank far distant from his exalted position
of to-day. Parity of age, of tastes and of ideas drew me towards him.
Like many of the princes of German sovereign houses, his fame was
solely due to himself.
Having joined the army at fifteen, he became a prisoner of the
French in one of the first wars of the Revolution, and was taken to
Paris, where he was confined in the Luxembourg. He had the luck to
have his life spared. Some time afterwards there was an exchange of
prisoners, and he resumed his military career. All his grades were
conferred upon him for distinguished services in the field, and at the
period of which I am treating he was numbered among the most
meritorious generals of the Austrian army.
 When, subsequently, he became a field-marshal, he was sent to
the Emperor of Russia, during the latter’s campaign against the
Turks in 1828. To-day (1820) as Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg,
Prince Philip is respected and worshipped by his subjects, whose
happiness is his foremost thought.
Mme. de Fuchs asked me if I had seen anything more of George
Sinclair, the young Englishman whose adventure with the Emperor
Napoleon had at first drawn attention to him in Vienna, a few days
before the battle of Jena. Mr. George Sinclair, who was on his way to
Austria, was arrested by French scouts, and taken to headquarters
on the suspicion of being a spy.
‘Whence came you, and whither are you going?’ asked the
Emperor in a tone which foreshadowed a death-sentence. Sinclair,
who spoke French with great facility, answered as briefly. ‘I have
come from the University of Jena, and am going to Vienna, where
letters and orders from my father, Sir John Sinclair, are awaiting me.’
‘Sir John Sinclair who has written frequently on agricultural
33
questions?‘
‘Yes, sire.’
The Emperor said a few words to Duroc, and continued his
interrogatory in a kindlier tone. Mr. Sinclair, who was barely
eighteen, was exceedingly well versed in geography and history. His
conversation fairly astonished Napoleon, who, after talking with him
for a couple of hours, ordered Duroc to give him an escort as far as
the outposts, and to let him resume his journey. It was altogether an
unexpected favour, and wholly due to his own worth.
I had practically lost sight of him altogether, but I knew that
after a journey through Italy he had entered Parliament, where he
had become one of the followers of his friend Sir Francis Burdett,
and had gained a brilliant reputation as a speaker in the Opposition.
Two events of a wholly different order occupied people’s minds
at that moment: the future destiny of the kingdom of Saxony, and
the announcement of a musical ride, a fête of knightly prowess
which was contemplated from the very first days of the Congress,
and was to take place in the Imperial Riding-school. Saxony came in
for a scant part of the conversation, but the preparations for the
tournament were discussed at great length. It was to be one of the
most magnificent entertainments hitherto projected, and there were
frequent consultations of the printed and engraved descriptions of
the famous carrousels of Louis XIV., which were to be eclipsed in
splendour.
The Comtesse Edmond de Périgord, one of the twenty-four
ladies who were to preside at the fête, told us that the dresses
which were being prepared for it would surpass in richness
everything that had been handed down concerning the elegance and
the splendour of the Court ladies of the Grand Monarque.
‘I really believe that we shall be able to display all the pearls and
diamonds of Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria combined,’ she said.
‘There is not a relative or friend of these ladies whose jewel-case has
not been laid under contribution; and this or that heirloom in the
way of precious stones, which has not seen the light of day for a
century, will glitter on the dress of one of us.’
‘As for the knights,’ said the young Comte de Woyna, ‘in default
of gorgeous dresses, they’ll certainly have magnificent horses. You’ll
behold them go through evolutions and dance minuets with as much
grace as the most nimble gentlemen of the Court.’
After this there was some animated conversation about the
colours of the different quadrilles, and the supposed skill of the
champions. Mottoes were quoted, and the ladies tried to get at their
hidden meaning. The excellent King of Saxony and his states were
absolutely forgotten; their cause had to make way for the more
important discussion.
On leaving Mme. de Fuchs’s, I caught sight on the Graben of
General Comte de Witt—a piece of luck, for the meeting reminded
me of those happy and delightful days I had spent in Ukraine, at the
hospitable and magnificent domain of Tulczim, the home of the
Comtesse Potocka, the comte’s mother.
The only son of the first marriage of his handsome mother with
General Comte de Witt, the descendant of the Grand Referendary of
Holland, Comte de Witt’s military career was as rapid as it was
brilliant. A soldier from his childhood, he was a colonel at sixteen,
and at eighteen commanded one of the most splendid regiments in
Europe, namely, the cuirassiers of the Empress. The campaigns of
the last three years had given him excellent opportunities of
distinguishing himself. In six weeks he had raised and equipped at
his own cost, and on his mother’s property, four regiments of
Cossacks, which he had taken to the Emperor, who made him a
lieutenant-general, and entrusted him with the organisation of the
military colonies. In 1828, in the war against the Turks, he re-
entered the service and commanded the army of reserve. After the
Peace of Varna, there was every prospect of his happiness, when
death removed him unexpectedly and at an early age.
Comte de Witt had married the Princesse Josephine Lubomirska,
one of the most distinguished women of Europe. Charming and
graceful, her quick and well-read intellect only equalled by her
inexhaustible kindness—such was the portrait of the Comtesse de
Witt traced by all those who had the privilege of coming in contact
with her.
Mme. de Fuchs had kept up the habit of supping, a habit so dear
to our fathers, and the disappearance of which is so much regretted
by those who are fond of joyous, frank, and unrestrained
conversation, inspired by the gaiety of the moment.
At one of those gatherings I had been placed close to the Comte
de Witt.
That same morning I had had a strange visit. I was just stepping
out of bed when told that a young Frenchman wished to speak to
me. The caller turns out to be a man of good appearance, who
presents me with a small parcel he is carrying. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is a
letter M. Rey, the advocate with whom you dined at M. de Bondy’s,
the Prefect at Lyons, has asked me to hand you.’ While I motion him
to be seated I open the epistle, in which M. Rey, after the usual
greetings, asks me, supposing I should be in Vienna, to interest
myself for the bearer, M. Cast ... in order to get him some
employment.
‘By the date of the letter, monsieur, you must have left Lyons
some time.’
‘Yes,’ replies the visitor, ‘having the whole of the world thrown
open to me to choose a habitat, I made my way to the present one
on foot.’
‘You have no doubt other recommendations?’
‘None whatever.’
‘Allow me to compliment you on your courage. To do three
hundred leagues on foot simply on the strength of a letter from a
person whom I have only seen once, and without even the certainty
of finding me—assuredly you ought to succeed! In spite of this, I
can give you but little hope. If you came to the Congress to claim a
kingdom, a province, an indemnity, you would probably be listened
to, but a post for a Frenchman in the Austrian States—that, I am
afraid, will be a difficult thing to get. Nevertheless, I will do all I can
for you. What have you done up to the present?’
‘I have served in the Guards of Honour.’
‘What sort of post have you in view?’
‘I am not at all particular. I can be a secretary, or pretty well fill
any kind of post, whether it be civil or military.’
‘You are certainly determined to make the best of things,’ I could
not help saying, for that particular aptitude for making the foot fit
the boot in a cheerful and intelligent way is unquestionably French. I
felt decidedly interested in my young compatriot, and I asked him to
give me a few days to look round for him. Meanwhile I took his
address, though with considerable doubt about the final result of his
bold journey.
At supper the conversation happened to turn on the sudden
resolutions and the unhoped-for and unexpected bits of daring that
often determine a man’s whole existence. As a matter of course,
instances were quoted, and notably that of General Tettenborn, who,
in something like four months had worked his way from major to
general-in-chief.
‘I could mention a trait of courage and a reliance on luck which,
save for the favourable results to come, is worth all those we have
mentioned.’
On being questioned, I told them all about my visitor of that
morning, about his economical journey with nothing at the end of it
but a simple letter of introduction, and about the coincidence of his
reaching Vienna but a couple of days after my own arrival. The
Comte de Witt had listened very attentively.
‘Your young man’s courage is worthy of consideration,’ he said,
‘and inasmuch as he has been in the Guards of Honour, he is
probably at home on horseback. Send him to me to-morrow
morning; I’ll find him something to do.’
I thanked the comte; then, turning to the other guests: ‘This is
my countryman’s second step on the road of chance in one day,’ I
said, ‘You’ll admit that if a letter of recommendation is often
addressed at random, it now and again happens to get into the
hands of Dame Fortune.’
‘Yes,’ remarked the young Comte de Saint-Marsan, ‘a letter of
recommendation sometimes constitutes a whole fortune. Would you
like to have an instance of this?’
And without further ado he told us with his habitual grace and
sprightliness the following anecdote in connection with a period
which already seemed far removed from us in the past, although the
actors had scarcely left the stage.
 ‘A young Parisian poet,’ began Marsan, ‘named Dubois, who was
probably as poor in wit as he was in money, had exhausted all his
faculties in singing the powers that were without getting the smallest
favour. As a forlorn hope, he addressed an ode to Princesse Pauline,
the favourite sister of Napoleon. In his poetical confusion, and
without reflecting upon the fate of Racine when the latter presented
to Louis XIV. his Memoir on the Wretched Condition of Peoples,
Dubois mingled with his praises of the princess counsels to Mars,
embroidered on a philanthropic dream of universal peace. The
greatest effects are often due to the most trivial causes. It so
happened that one of the princess’s waiting-maids was a distant
relative of the poet, and she seized a favourable opportunity of
presenting the epistle to her highness, who only read the rhymes of
“Pauline” and “divine,” recurring at almost every strophe, and
promised her influence to the author of such beautiful and kind
sentiments. “But where is he?” asked Princesse Pauline. “There,”
said the relative, pointing to the ante-chamber. “In that case let him
come in,” remarked the princess, and in less time than it takes to
tell, the poet enters the perfumed boudoir of Pauline, and finds
himself tête-à-tête with his future Providence. “Well, what can I do
for you?” asked the princess, after having listened to the usual
compliments. “If Madame by her influence could get me some small
post in this or that government office, I should for ever be grateful
to her.” “A letter of recommendation to Fouché may do the thing. Not
later than yesterday he said that I never asked for any favours. I’ll
put him to the test. Do you think that this would suit you?” Naturally
the poet replied that such a letter could not fail in its effect, and that
it would make him the happiest of mortals. Handsome Pauline
Borghese immediately opened her escritoire, and being in one of the
happy moods when sentences shape themselves on paper, in her
petition to his Grace of Otranto she spoke of M. Dubois as a man of
superior gifts, apt at many things, and in whom she took the
greatest interest.
‘An hour afterwards the protégé was at the door of the dispenser
of favours, but being unknown to the ushers, and not specially
recommended to them, it may easily be imagined that he got no
further than the ministerial ante-chamber, and that he was obliged
to remit his letter to the hands of those who did not care a jot. As a
matter of course, it was flung with many others into the basket set
apart for such epistles, which as often as not went straight from the
receptacle into the stove of the ante-chamber. Nevertheless, when
Fouché returned that evening from the Council of Ministers, and the
basket was, as usual, set in front of him, by the merest accident his
eye fell on the paper displaying the imperial arms. Naturally, he
opened it at once, read it from the first line to the last, and
immediately ordered four gendarmes to accompany his carriage at
nine in the morning. Among his entourage it was taken for granted
that he was proceeding to Saint-Cloud for some communication of
great importance; hence the surprise of his servants was intense
when they were ordered to take him to a mean street in the
neighbourhood of the Halles. It was there that our favourite of the
Muses had established his aerial quarters on the sixth floor.
‘There was neither porter nor number to the entrance of that
residence, and inquiries had to be made of the baker of the quarter
as to the domicile of M. Dubois, a man of letters.
‘“There is,” answered the baker’s wife, “a person of that name,
very poor, who inhabits an attic in the place. I do not know whether
he is a public scribe, but he owes me two quarters’ rent.”
‘And issuing from her shop, she begins to bawl out the name at
the top of her voice. The poor poet puts his head out of the window
of his garret, and espying below a carriage escorted by gendarmes,
comes there and then to the conclusion that the boldness of his
remarks with regard to a universal peace has been badly received by
Jupiter the Thunderer, and that they have come to arrest him in
order to make him expiate his audacity at Bicêtre.
‘Prompted by his fear only, Dubois considers it most prudent to
hide under his bed. Fouché, receiving no answer to the summons of
the baker’s wife, makes up his mind to mount the six flights. A
courtier does not stop at that when it becomes a question of proving
his zeal to those in power. It would want the facetious genius of
Beaumarchais or Lesage, or the comic talent of Potier, to paint the
originality of the scene, and of the Minister finally discovering the
protégé under the worm-eaten wooden structure that served him as
a couch. Hence I abridge the particulars. Fouché reassures Dubois,
and induces him to come forth from his improvised hiding-place.
Regardless of the poet’s very profound négligé, he places him by his
side in the carriage, which takes its way to the Ministry, where
luncheon is soon served.
‘“What would you like to be, M. Dubois?” asks his Excellency in
the interval between a dish of cutlets à la Soubise, made short work
of by the famished poet, and a salmis de perdreaux equally
appreciated, at any rate ocularly. “Now tell me what can I do for
you?”
‘“I’ll be whatever your Excellency likes; and I shall be grateful for
any kind of post.”
‘“Well, would you like to go to the island of Elba? I can give you
the appointment of commissary general of police.”
‘“I’ll go to the end of the world in order to please your
Excellency,” replies the poet, not quite sure whether for the last hour
or so he has been awake or dreaming.
‘“Very well then, I’ll go and make out your nomination, and you’ll
start to-morrow. On reaching Porto-Ferrajo you’ll find further
instructions. Meanwhile take this on account of your stipend.” Saying
which, Fouché presses a roll of napoleons into the poet’s hand. The
latter’s luggage was the reverse of voluminous; it would have filled a
big snuff-box, and did not take long to pack. Dubois engaged a place
in the diligence, and, in imitation of the awakened sleeper, departed,
like Sancho, for his island, which he reached without any further
adventures.
‘It so happened that at that identical moment, two competitors
were endeavouring to get the concession of the iron-ore mines of
the island of Elba, the yield of which is very considerable. The new
commissary-general of police seemed to enjoy immense credit in
Paris. He was entrusted with an important charge in the
administration of the island, and each of the competitors tried to
secure his goodwill. One of these offered him an interest in his
enterprise in return for his influence. The new functionary, who
perceived himself to be on the high road to fortune, took particular
care not to refuse the offer. He promised everything, and wrote to
Paris whatever the speculator directed. Whether it was sheer
accident or his recommendation that finally procured the concession
for his partner will, perhaps, never be known, but the merit of it was
attributed to the child of the Muses. He was, however, sharp enough
to be aware of his utter ignorance with regard to the working of
mines in no way connected with those of Parnassus, and sold his
interest in them for three hundred thousand francs, which with equal
good sense he invested in government securities, thus making his
newly acquired wealth safe against all vicissitudes.
‘Meanwhile the Princesse Borghese went to Bagnères to take the
waters, and it was some time before Fouché met with her at the
Tuileries.
‘“I trust your Highness is pleased with the manner in which I
have been able to provide for your protégé;” said the minister.
“What protégé, M. le Duc?” answered Pauline. “I am afraid I do not
understand.” “But, madame, I mean M. Dubois.” “M. Dubois? I don’t
think I know any one of that name.” “Does not your Highness
recollect a letter sent to me about three months ago, most
pressingly recommending a M. Dubois, a man of letters, in whom
your Highness took the greatest interest?” “One moment,” said the
princess, and then a smile overspread her beautiful features. “My
protégé, M. le Duc, was a poor poet, a relative of one of my maids,
who sent me an ode. What have you done with him? Have you given
him a stool in one of your departments?”
‘The minister, nettled at having been duped in that way, took
particular care to suppress the fact of his having made a grand
functionary of Dubois. Unfortunately, Fouché’s friends at Court got
wind of the thing, and there was an end of the secret. Napoleon
himself was vastly amused at it, and bantered his minister, whose
habits, as every one knows, were not of the bantering kind.
‘Naturally, Dubois’s order of recall was despatched with the same
promptitude as that for his departure. Our poet fell from his
commissaryship-general as Sancho had fallen from the governorship
of his island, and become a nonentity as before. But the three
hundred thousand francs had been paid to him and properly
invested, and on his return to Paris, he was enabled to pursue in
peace his cultivation of the Muses, and we may be sure did not lack
for parasites to applaud his verses and share his dinners, which were
amply defrayed by the iron-mines of Elba.’
Thus far the narrative of the Comte de Marsan, to whom I leave
the responsibility for the story, although I have no doubt of its
veracity, for Fouché, the Terrorist of old, was an excellent courtier.
M. Cast***‘s progress on the road to fortune was not as rapid as
that, yet sufficiently rapid for him to look back with satisfaction on
his pluck, as exemplified in his journey to Vienna. His interview with
Comte de Witt resulted in his appointment as his secretary. He came
to tell me of his wonderful piece of luck, and that same night went
to the Leopoldstadt theatre and was arrested by the police, who in
Vienna were very severe with foreigners. He showed fight, received
several blows, was bound hand and foot, and flung into a cell
pending inquiry. When brought before a magistrate next morning, he
referred to his new patron, the Comte de Witt, belonging to the suite
of the Emperor of Russia, and on the deposition of the general, was
set at liberty. Not being provided with a passport, he would, had this
happened one day earlier, have been taken as a vagrant to the
Austrian frontier.
Subsequently, I was told by the Abbé Chalenton, the tutor of the
young Polignacs, that M. Cast***, having accompanied the Comte
de Witt to Russia, married at Tulczim a Dutch girl of excellent birth,
with an income of two thousand Dutch ducats, and on that occasion
the abbé, at that time the tutor of Comtesse Potocka’s children, gave
the bride away. M. Cast*** returned afterwards to Lyons in a
different condition from that in which he had left it three years
previously.
The moral of all this is that, thanks to a plucky resolve, he also
had his share in the good things which were going at the Congress
of Vienna. Who after this shall deny the workings of chance on our
destinies and the usefulness of letters of introduction?
 CHAPTER III
Reception at M. de Talleyrand’s—His attitude at the Congress
—The Duc de Dalberg—The Duc de Richelieu—Mme.
Edmond de Périgord—M. Pozzo di Borgo—Parallel
between the Prince de Ligne and M. de Talleyrand—A
Monster Concert.

Since my arrival in Vienna, I had given myself up so wholly to

the pleasure of meeting with old friends that I had only been able to
pay a ‘duty’ call at the French Legation. Although several friends,
among others MM. Boigne de Faye and Achille Rouen, formed part of
it in different capacities, I had not been able to have a confidential
chat with any. I had begun sincerely to regret having missed the
opportunity of going to M. de Talleyrand’s receptions, when he
divined my wishes, and with his well-known and exquisite courtesy
sent me an invitation to dinner. As may be imagined, I did not fail to
respond to it, impatient as I was to observe from near at hand a
man whom I had not seen since my early manhood, and who had
been so largely mixed up with the chief events of the time. It is a
memorable thing in a man’s life to be able to approach closely to an
actor who has played a principal part on the world’s stage. It makes
an impression which only ceases with life or with the loss of
memory. I reached the embassy early, and from M. Rouen’s private
apartments made my way to the reception-rooms. There was no one
there but M. de Talleyrand, the Duc de Dalberg, and Madame
Edmond de Périgord, whom I had already met at Mme. de Fuchs’s.
The prince bade me welcome with the exquisite grace which had
become a second nature to him, and taking hold of my hand with
the kindliness reminiscent of a bygone period, he said: ‘I had to
come to Vienna, then, Monsieur, in order to have the pleasure of
seeing you at my home?’ I may have been mistaken, but at that
moment he certainly belied the axiom so long ascribed to him,
namely: That words were given to man to enable him to disguise his
thought. Without awaiting my answer, which, judging from my
embarrassed look, he fancied would not be quickly forthcoming, he
presented me to the Duc de Dalberg with a few flattering and
gracious words.
I had not seen M. de Talleyrand since 1806; but I was struck
once more with the intellectual subtlety of the look, the
imperturbable calm of the features, the demeanour of the pre-
eminent man whom I, in common with all those forgathered in
Vienna, considered the foremost diplomatist of his time. There were
also the same grave and deep tone of voice, the same easy and
natural manners, the same ingrained familiarity with the usages of
the best society—a belated reflex, as it were, of a state of things
which existed no longer, and of which one beheld in him one of the
last representatives. In that room, and face to face with such a man,
one could not help yielding to an irresistible feeling of timidity and
awe.
The panegyric of the French plenipotentiaries at the Congress is
practically contained in their names; nevertheless, M. de Talleyrand,
in particular, seemed to dominate that illustrious assembly by the
charm of his mind and the ascendency of his genius. Always the
same, he treated diplomacy as he treated it formerly in his drawing-
room in Paris and at Neuilly. Yet, France’s rôle was rendered not less
difficult by the circumstances from without than by the confusion
from within. Hedged, as it were, by numberless obstacles, the
inevitable consequences of a new organisation, and of the little
harmony such an organisation is likely to command, France was
virtually incapable of showing any virile disposition. It was an open
secret that such a display was beyond the power and beyond the will
of her government. The great European states, the arbiters of the
Congress, proceeded with a common accord of which hitherto there
had been no instance in diplomatic annals. It seemed as if nothing
could either break or detach a single link of the chain. Hence, the
representatives of France were bound to make up, either by the
resources of their genius or by talent of the first order, for the
obstacles opposed to them by a quadruple alliance applying to the
deliberations the whole weight of its actual importance and of its
unassailable union.
The force he could not look for from his government, M. de
Talleyrand found in himself; for it is no exaggeration to say that the
whole of the French mission at the Congress seemed personified in
him, whatever may have been the merit of his colleagues and the
consideration attached to their personality. With the marvellous
intuition which was the particular dower of his intellect, and which
seemed not only to foresee events but to dominate them, he soon
recovered the position belonging to France. Admitted to the directing
committee, composed of the four great Powers, he completely
changed its ideas and its tendency. ‘I bring to you more than you
possess, I bring to you the idea of “right.”’ He divided those Powers,
hitherto so united; he, as it were, raised the spectre of a
disproportionately aggrandised Russian weight on the rest of Europe,
and the necessity of edging her back to the north. He caused Austria
and England to share that conviction. Hence, Emperor Alexander,
who under the influence and in the drawing-room of M. de
Talleyrand had, six months previously, decided upon the restoration
of the House of Bourbon, saw, not without annoyance, his projects
stopped by the representative of a state which owed its existence to
him. ‘Talleyrand enacts the part here of Louis XIV.’s minister,’ he said
more than once with a show of bad humour.
I have no intention of enumerating the labours of M. de
Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna, or the important acts in which
he took a part. Still less do I intend to trace a portrait of that
celebrated man. Apart from the consideration that such a task would
entail infinite developments, M. de Talleyrand henceforth belongs to
history; and history alone, with inflexible truth, can describe and
make known one of the most historical personages of modern times.
But, having been an eyewitness at that trying period of his often
successful efforts at raising and reinstating the nation which he
represented, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to record the
vivid impression produced by his imperturbable calm, his attitude,
and the whole of his personality.
It has been said often, and with considerable truth, that at no
period did Talleyrand appear more conspicuously great than at the
moment of France’s disasters in 1814. I had seen him eight years
previously as Minister of France, then all-powerful, and dictating his
laws to the whole of Continental Europe. At Vienna, as the
plenipotentiary of a vanquished people, he was the same man, and
as absolutely confident of himself. There was the same noble dignity,
perhaps with an additional shade of pride, the same confidence
essential to the representative of a nation which though vanquished
was necessary to the maintenance of the European equilibrium—of a
nation which might gather strength from the very consciousness of
her defeat. His demeanour was, in one word, the most eloquent
expression of the grandeur of our country. In watching the look
which adverse fortune had been unable to disturb, the
impassiveness which nothing could disconcert, one could not but feel
that this man had still behind him a strong and powerful nation.
Just as his high renown, and the authority attached to his name
and experience, made themselves felt in the deliberations of
European politics, so did his noble manners, the manners of the
grand seigneur, and his urbanity stamp his private receptions and his
daily life with a character of gravity wholly in harmony with his
diplomatic rôle. At no moment in Vienna did he deviate from the
habits contracted in Paris and in the century that lay behind. Every
morning while he was dressing, visitors were admitted, and often
during the operation of shaving and attending to his hair by his
valet, discussions of the utmost gravity, though in the guise of mere
talk, were engaged in. I have frequently seen him in his drawing-
room seated on a couch by the side of the beautiful Comtesse
Edmond de Perigord, and surrounded by bearers of the most
eminent political names, the ministers of the victorious Powers, who,
standing, conversed with him, or rather listened, as to the lessons of
a teacher. In our century, M, de Talleyrand is perhaps the only man
who constantly obtained such a triumph.
M. le Duc de Dalberg was well worthy of figuring by the side of
M. de Talleyrand. Sprung from one of the oldest and noblest families
of Germany, he contributed powerfully on the 31st March to the
resolution which brought back the Bourbons to the throne; at the
same time, he had pronounced in favour of constitutional measures
calculated to reassure public opinion, and to make France rally to the
restored régime. Sharing the views and wishes of M. de Talleyrand at
the time of the Restoration, the same bond of union drew them
together at the Congress. The heartfelt aim of both was to restore to
France the rank of which her misfortunes had deprived her among
34
the Powers.
M. de Talleyrand, before proceeding to Vienna, had drawn up his
own instructions. It was said on excellent authority that he strictly
adhered to them, and that the various phases of the negotiations
had been foreseen and indicated by him with marvellous sagacity.
What is not generally known is the existence of two different sets of
private correspondence addressed to Paris by the French
plenipotentiaries; one, partly from the pen of and edited by M. de la
Besnadière, and exclusively anecdotal, was sent to King Louis XVIII.
M. de Talleyrand positively besprinkled it with those witty and
original sallies, those subtle and profound remarks, characteristic of
him. The other, exclusively political and principally indited by the Duc
35
de Dalberg, went straight to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On the day in question, there were few guests to dinner at M. de
Talleyrand’s. This afforded me the opportunity of observing more
attentively and of listening more carefully: each figure of such a
picture could be studied separately and with greater advantage.
In addition to the members of the French Mission, there were
only a few strangers, namely, the Comte Razumowski, General Pozzo
di Borgo, and the Duc de Richelieu. When I parted from the last at
Odessa in 1812, he was in a position most trying to a governor-
36
general. The plague was ravaging his provinces of the Chersonese
and the Taurida, and it required all his energy to get rid of such an
importunate visitor. In those cruel circumstances he displayed the
most admirable courage.
My questions followed each other most rapidly, as my pleasure
at seeing him again was great. I was seated between him and M. de
la Besnadière, and we went back with great interest to the days of
our past dangers; we chatted about the ravages of the plague as
sailors preserved from shipwreck would have spoken of the hidden
rocks on which their craft might have gone to pieces.
All those who have known the Duc de Richelieu are aware of the
sincere friendship he was apt to inspire. Few men in their public
capacity have shown a nobler character, and in their eminent
functions a stricter disinterestedness. The esteem of all parties was
his reward.
It is to him Russia owes, in the founding of Odessa, one of her
most precious commercial centres. Up to that period, the duke was
only distinguished for his military exploits. Having been sent to the
shores of the Black Sea by Emperor Alexander, who understood all
the importance of the site, Richelieu displayed in his fresh sphere of
activity the greatest talent, from an administrative standpoint. In a
few years, a harbour without life, and a few houses without tenants,
were replaced by an accessible and spacious port and a rich and
elegant town. The loyalty of his character contributed to draw
around him merchants and colonisers. In spite of the plague and of
the suspension of all commercial operations, Odessa, under his firm
and enlightened administration, instead of declining, increased each
day in prosperity. At present it is one of the most important points of
the East.
Thereafter, M. de Richelieu passed from the government of the
Taurida to that of his own country. He hesitated for a long while
before assuming a burden he fancied to be beyond his strength, and
only yielded at the repeated instances of Emperor Alexander.
Obliged, in virtue of his office, to sign the disastrous treaties of
1815, he bore with patriotic fortitude their odious consequences.
Students of history will remember his efforts at the Congress of Aix-
la-Chapelle (1818), and the happy results which crowned them.
History may not, perhaps, acquiesce in his sufficient knowledge of
the men and places which he had governed, but she will always
refer with grateful remembrance to his sterling virtues and his
exalted patriotism.
The conversation became general, and followed the direction
given to it by the personages, interesting in so many respects, taking
part in it. M. Pozzo di Borgo, whom I saw on that occasion for the
first time, seemed to me to unite the finesse, the liveliness of
intellect, and the imagination of his countrymen. An avowed enemy
of Bonaparte since the beginning of his career, he had never
disguised his joy at the latter’s fall. In a few words he summed up all
the causes which were inevitably to lead to the acceleration of that
37
great catastrophe.
At that time a simple general of infantry in the Russian service,
M. Pozzo di Borgo never deviated from the line of conduct which led
him subsequently to exercise such a great influence on the destinies
of Europe. Born in Corsica, and deputy for the island in the
Legislative Assembly, he held the same ardent opinions which had
made him conspicuous in his own country. It was he who in July
1792 induced the Assembly to declare war against the German
Emperor. After the revolution of August 10th, his name was found
mentioned in the papers of Louis XVI. A fellow-deputy for Corsica,
one of the commissaries entrusted with the examination of those
papers, informed him, it was said, of the danger he might be
running, and prevailed upon him to leave Paris. On his return to
Corsica, he changed his colours. Resolved to support the designs for
rendering the island independent, he joined the party of Paoli, and in
1793, the Convention summoned him, as well as the general, to its
bar, to account for his conduct. Neither obeyed the summons: the
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