ABSTRACT
How did the canon come about of the influential gurus who were instrumental in producing what is now called “the bhakti movement” in North India? Vasudha Dalmia’s path-breaking 1997 work on the construction of Hinduism in the 19th century highlighted the contributions of Bhāratendu Hariścandra of Benares and, among others, his hagiography Uttarārddha-Bhaktmāl that canonized the bhakti saints. Monika Horstmann has pushed this construction process back into time, to the religious reforms of Jai Singh II, founder of Jaipur, which inspired many 18th-century hagiographies. Can we trace a linear evolutionary process from the early 18th to the 19th century? The mid-eighteenth century hagiography by Sāvant Singh alias Nāgarīdās of Kishangarh, studied in this paper, forms a counterpoint that illustrates how complex the processes at work were. Questions addressed are who was included, who was excluded, and what criteria determined the process.
