"Utpanna dravide bhaktih, Karnate vriddhimagata I Sthita kinchit -maharashtre gurjare jirnatam gata II" - Padmapurana. Account for the emergence of bhakti in Dravida desa.

Answer:

The verse of the Padmapurana personifies Bhakti as born in the Tamil country, growing in Karnataka, halting in Maharashtra and ageing in Gujarat. Its testimony that devotion originated in Dravida desa is borne out by history, for the earliest popular Bhakti movement arose among the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars from about the sixth century.

The earliest expression

• The Nayanars, sixty-three Shaiva saints, and the Alvars, twelve Vaishnava saints, led the movement.
• Their hymns were collected in the Tevaram and the Nalayira Divya Prabandham.
• Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar are the great Shaiva figures.
• Nammalvar and Andal, the woman saint, are among the foremost Alvars.
• They sang in Tamil and travelled from shrine to shrine, taking devotion to the people.

Why it emerged in the Tamil country

• A vigorous Tamil devotional tradition already existed in the Sangam concept of anpu, or loving attachment.
• The temple had become the centre of social and cultural life in the south.
• Competition with the well-established Jain and Buddhist orders spurred an emotional Hindu response.
• Pallava and Pandya patronage supported temples and the saints' pilgrimages.
• Agrarian expansion and the growth of settled society created a stable devotional public.

Character of the movement

• It stressed intense personal love of a chosen deity above ritual and philosophy.
• It admitted saints of low caste, such as Nandanar and Tiruppan Alvar, and women.
• Singing in the vernacular reached those excluded from Sanskrit learning.
• Ramanuja later gave it a philosophical foundation in Vishishtadvaita.
• From the south it moved northwards, exactly as the Padmapurana verse describes.

Consequences of the movement

• It contributed decisively to the decline of Jainism and Buddhism in the Tamil country.
• The saints' hymns became part of temple liturgy, canonised alongside Sanskrit scripture.
• Temple worship and pilgrimage networks were greatly strengthened.
• Vernacular Tamil gained the status of a sacred language.
• The Bhakti idiom later reached Maharashtra, north India and Bengal.

Bhakti thus emerged in Dravida desa because a strong Tamil emotional tradition, a temple-centred society and sectarian competition met under royal patronage. As scholars observe, the Alvars and Nayanars created the devotional idiom that would in time sweep the whole subcontinent, so the Padmapurana's poetic geography records a genuine historical movement.