14.11 Religion · Part 2

of north India. An interesting aspect of the Bhakti poets was that they came from lower castes practising craft and service occupations. Kabir was a weaver, Ravidas, a worker in hides, Sain, was a barber, and Dadu, a cotton carder. The Satnami sect in Haryana credited its origin to Kabir and his teachings. While Sanskrit and Persian were the languages of administration and intellectual activity, the vernacular languages demonstrated their literary vitality. Sikhism Sikhism originated as a popular monotheistic movement, and evolved into one of the recognised religions of the world. Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhs, contained the sayings of Muslim saint Shaikh Farid and of Bhakti poets such as Namdev, Kabir, Sain and Ravidas. Guru Nanak believed in one God who was formless and omnipresent. He condemned image worship and religious rituals. He stressed ethical conduct, kindness to all human beings and condemned caste system. Sufism India was a fertile soil for the prevalence of Sufism or Muslim mysticism that had its origin in Iran. It was accepted by the orthodox theologians as long as it fulfilled the obligations of the shariah. Sufism played a key role in creating religious harmony. Christianity Along with the European traders came the Christian missionaries like Roberto De Nobili, Francis Xavier. The early missionaries were Catholics. The first Lutheran missionaries under Danish patronage arrived in at Tranquebar and Ziegenbalg translated the New Testament of the Bible into Tamil in , and soon the Old Testament as well. of Hinduism as a single body of doctrine, in view of the countless faiths and innumerable customs and practices, having developed in mutual interaction and expressed in a large part in the same language (Sanskrit), the different sects of Hinduism yet shared the same idiom and the same or similar deities. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the centuries of Vaishnavism. Tulsidas ( Ramcharitmanas) a great proponent of Rama cult in his popular verses of devotion portrayed Rama as a god incarnate. The expression of bhakti was deeply emotional as the object of bhakti (devotion) was Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. The