Editing Bhakti movement (section)

== Debates in contemporary scholarship ==
Contemporary scholars question whether the 19th- and early 20th-century theories about the Bhakti movement in India, its origin, nature and history are accurate. Pechilis in her book on the Bhakti movement, for example, states:{{sfnp|Pechilis Prentiss|2014|pages= 13-14}}

{{Blockquote|Scholars writing on bhakti in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were agreed that bhakti in India was preeminently a monotheistic reform movement. For these scholars, the inextricable connection between monotheism and reform has both theological and social significance in terms of the development of Indian culture. The orientalist images of bhakti were formulated in a context of discovery: a time of organized cultural contact, in which many agencies, including administrative, scholarly, and [[Proselytism|missionary]] – sometimes embodied in a single person – sought knowledge of India. Through the Indo-European language connection, early [[orientalism|orientalists]] believed that they were, in a sense, seeing their own ancestry in the antique texts and "antiquated" customs of Indian peoples. In this respect, certain scholars could identify with the monotheism of bhakti. Seen as a reform movement, bhakti presented a parallel to the orientalist agenda of intervention in the service of the empire.
|Karen Pechilis|The Embodiment of Bhakti{{sfnp|Pechilis Prentiss|2014|pages= 13-14}}}}

[[Madeleine Biardeau]] states, like Jeanine Miller, that the Bhakti movement was neither reform nor a sudden innovation but the continuation and expression of ideas to be found in [[Vedas]], Bhakti Marga teachings of the [[Bhagavad Gita]], the [[Katha Upanishad]] and the [[Shvetashvatara Upanishad]].<ref name=madeleine>Madeleine Biardeau (1994), ''Hinduism: The Anthropology of a Civilization'' (Original: French), Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|978-0195633894}} (English Translation by Richard Nice), pages 89-91</ref><ref>J Miller (1996), ''Does Bhakti appear in the Rgveda?: An enquiry into the background of the hymns'', {{ISBN|978-8172760656}}; see also J Miller (1995), in ''Love Divine: Studies in 'Bhakti and Devotional Mysticism'' (Editor: Karel Werner), Routledge, {{ISBN|978-0700702350}}, pages 5, 8-9, 11-32</ref>

John Stratton Hawley describes recent scholarship that questions the old theory of the Bhakti movement's origin and story of art coming from the south and moving north". He states that the movement had multiple origins by mentioning [[Brindavan]] in [[North India]] as another centre.{{sfnp|Hawley|2015|page=10}} Hawley describes the controversy and disagreements between Indian scholars and quotes Hegde's concern of Bhakti movement being a reform a theory that has been supported by "cherry-picking particular songs from a large corpus of Bhakti literature". He states that if the entirety of the literature by any single author like ''[[Basava]]'' is considered along with its historical context, there is neither reform nor a need for reform.{{sfnp|Hawley|2015|pages=338-339}}

[[Sheldon Pollock]] writes that the Bhakti movement was neither a rebellion against Brahmins and the upper castes nor a rebellion against Sanskrit since many of the prominent thinkers and earliest champions of the Bhakti movement were Brahmins or from other upper castes. Also, early and later Bhakti poetry and other literature werre in Sanskrit.<ref>Sheldon Pollock (2009), ''The Language of the Gods in the World of Men'', University of California Press, {{ISBN|978-0520260030}}, pages 423-431</ref> Further, Pollock considers that evidence of Bhakti trends in ancient [[Southeast Asian]] Hinduism in the 1st millennium CE, such as those in [[Cambodia]] and [[Indonesia]], where the [[Vedic period]] was unknown, and upper-caste Tamil Hindu nobles and merchants introduced Bhakti ideas of Hinduism, suggest that the roots and the nature of the Bhakti movement were primarily spiritual and political quests, rather than the rebellion of some form.<ref>Sheldon Pollock (2009), ''The Language of the Gods in the World of Men'', University of California Press, {{ISBN|978-0520260030}}, pages 529-534</ref><ref>[[Keat Gin Ooi]] (2004), ''Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia'', {{ISBN|978-1576077702}}, page 587</ref>

John Guy states that the evidence of Hindu temples and Chinese inscriptions from the 8th century CE about Tamil merchants presents Bhakti motifs in Chinese trading towns, particularly [[Quanzhou]]'s [[Kaiyuan Temple (Quanzhou)|Kaiyuan Temple]].<ref name=johnguy /> They show that Saivite, Vaishnavite and Hindu Brahmin monasteries revered Bhakti themes in China.<ref name=johnguy>John Guy (2001), ''The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400'' (Editor: Angela Schottenhammer), Brill Academic, {{ISBN|978-9004117730}}, pages 283-299</ref>

Scholars increasingly drop, according to Karen Pechilis, the old premises and the language of "radical otherness, monotheism and reform of orthodoxy" for the Bhakti movement.{{sfnp|Pechilis Prentiss|2014|pages= 15-16}} Many scholars now characterise the emergence of Bhakti in medieval India as a revival, reworking and recontextualization of the central themes of Vedic traditions.{{sfnp|Pechilis Prentiss|2014|pages= 15-16}}