This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration to Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory [2007] [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory is available online at: http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/
Through the Bhaktamāl and its most influential commentary, therefore, we witness a debate over the boundaries of a religious community. In support of their positions, Nābhādās and Priyādās advance different visions of the logic of devotion and its objects and articulate different understandings of the relationship between historical devotees and a past which transcends historical time. The tension I explore in this essay, between Nābhādās and Priyādās can, in hindsight, be viewed as a debate over the boundaries and composition of what would later come to be called Hinduism. In the colonial context of the nineteenth century, this debate would become more prominent and well defined, but many of the ingredients were already present during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this essay, I do not have space to trace the Bhaktamāl’s long tradition into the nineteenth century, but this brief analysis of the Bhaktamāl and its earliest known commentary may contribute to a better understanding of the religious subjectivities of the traditionalist advocates of modern Hinduism.
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