Overview

In the Tamil region in medieval times, a quiet revolution unfolded. It came to be known as the Bhakti movement. Appar’s hymn above exemplifies its spirit of rebellion against Vedic rigidity and ritual. Rebellion in Verse unfolds a journey that goes back to the sixth century CE―a time when many yearned for a reprieve from the constraints of Vedic orthodoxy and caste hierarchies. The Tamil Bhakti movement emerged as their clarion call, a grassroots surge of devotion that redefined spirituality and the social fabric itself. The saints of this movement were poets of the people, composing their hymns in Tamil and their verses, brimming with simplicity and profundity, wrestled divine wisdom from the elite grip of Sanskrit and handed it to the masses. Change had dawned. It would soon ripple through history with the force of a tidal wave.

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9780143474005

Table of Contents

Reviews

‘The book compellingly charts the breathtaking spiritual trajectory of the early medieval Tamil Bhakti model of worship, which, drawing upon early historic poetic sensibilities of the Sangam era, sidestepped the need for ritualistic priestly mediation by using devotional poetry to invoke the divine’ ― Sharada Srinivasan, professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru ‘[Srinivasan] scours the literature of the early Tamils, straddling the Sangam, the Buddhist and the Jaina, and the compositions of the Bhakti poets to recreate a landscape that was seething with rebellion against social trends during the early medieval period’ ― Venkata Raghotham, former professor of history and head of department, Pondicherry University

Author Information

Raghavan Srinivasan is a chemical engineer from Madras University and an MBA from McMaster University, Canada. He currently works as a development professional and has written a number of articles for print and online newspapers as well as international journals. He co-edits an online magazine called Ghadar Jari Hai. Raghavan is passionate about various aspects of Indian history and writes regularly on the same. His published books include Rajaraja Chola, Yugantar, Dogged Pursuit, Indian Philosophy and Indian Cities.

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