ABSTRACT
During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Nābhādās—a sadhu, or monk, associated with the Galtā monastery near present-day Jaipur—imagined a new kind of religious community. 1 He composed a text known as the Bhaktamāl, or “Garland of Devotees,” 2 a slender collection of biographical stanzas in which Nābhādās weaves together terse words of praise for hundreds of bhaktas. 3 He selects individuals and groups for inclusion, reflecting a community that spans boundaries of sampradāy or sect, 4 region, caste, and gender. This community also exceeds temporal boundaries: Nābhādās includes his contemporaries as well as bhaktas whose lives are recorded in the Purāṇas and other ancient sources. He presents a community, united in bhakti, which remains rooted in the monastic order even as it transcends particular sectarian affiliations as well as time itself.
