A Highlight · History
The Bhakti Movement
Devotion over ritual and caste — the poet-saints who reshaped Hindu religious life from the seventh century onward.
Overview
- Bhakti movementThe Bhakti movement was a devotional current in Hinduism, emerging in Tamil Nadu by the 6th century CE and spreading across the subcontinent through the 17th century, that emphasized personal devotion to a chosen deity over Brahminical ritual and caste hierarchy.
- Guru NanakGuru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism, a teacher of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Punjab whose compositions form the opening of the Guru Granth Sahib.
- TulsīdāsTulsīdās was the sixteenth-century poet-saint who composed the Rāmcaritmānas, the Awadhi Rāmāyaṇa that became the central devotional text of the Hindi-speaking north.
More collections
- The Indian Independence MovementFrom the 1857 revolt to Partition — every satyagraha, revolutionary and Congress leader, in one place.
- European Colonial Rule in IndiaFrom Vasco da Gama's landfall to the last Viceroy — the Company's conquest and every Governor-General who ruled after it.
- The Maurya EmpireFrom Chandragupta to Ashoka — the first pan-Indian empire, and the emperor who renounced conquest after seeing what it cost.
- The Gupta Golden AgeClassical India at its height — the age of Aryabhata, Kalidasa, and a revival of Sanskrit literature and science.
- The Chola EmpireSouth India's great maritime power — temple-building, a navy that reached Southeast Asia, and the longest-lived dynasty in Indian history.
- The Vijayanagara EmpireThe last great Hindu empire of the south, built in the fourteenth century as a bulwark against the Sultanates — and sacked in 1565.
- The Islamic Conquest of North IndiaGhaznavid raids to the Delhi Sultanate, 1000–1526 — the temples destroyed, Nalanda burned, Delhi sacked twice, told without euphemism and without inventing what the sources don’t say.
- The Mughal EmpireFrom Babur to Aurangzeb — the empire that built the Taj Mahal, ran the Mansabdari system, and reached its widest extent just before it began to break apart.
- The Maratha EmpireShivaji’s hill forts to a confederacy that broke Mughal power across the Deccan and north India.