Answer the questions, can be 2-3 sentences.
Indian Poetry After Islam 1. Bhakti is a first-millenium C.E. movement in India; abandonment of one’s caste often plays a significant role in bhakti poets’ upbringing, worldview, and response to cultural issues. In bhakti (devotional) literature, Islamic monotheism and the rejection of hierarchy and ritual are combined with the Hindu concerns of karma and moksa (freedom from reincarnation). Bhakti poetry focuses on replacing the Hindu caste system with a more egalitarian society, although indu pantheistic myths are often preserved, as is the Hindu concern with liberation from reincarnation and union with God. Basavanna, for example, is born into the highest caste as a brahmana (priest) but abandons his status and travels as an exile when he has mystical eperiences that get recorded as “sayings” or poems inspired by the god Siva. Polytheism is attacked in poem 563, gender issues in poem 703, and the unequal distribution of wealth in poem 820. Mahadevi become a devotee of Siva but proclaimed herself a homeless, wandering mystic after abandoning an undesirable marriage with her village chieftain. In Kabir’s “The Final State” the poet warns that pure enlightenment can be attained only by complete sacrifice to the Eternal One and “true community.” In his parable “The Ant” he uses animal and plant references to urge people to “renounce all family, caste, and clan.” Mirabai may have been a princess and become a homeless wanderer after a male relative attempted to poison her for her nontraditional spiritual beliefs. Tukaram was born to the lowest caste as a peasant and turned to poetry for spiritual consolation as he became a devotee of the god Visnu. His poems “The Rich Farmer” and “The Harvest” contrast the wealthy landowner with the common farmer. 2. The female poets Mahadevi and Mirabai expresses a sexual longing for the gods (respectively, Siva and Krisna), mainly looking at themes of socially forbidden love, separation from the beloved, and love that conquers all. Discuss, using examples from the text. 3. Various literary styles are employed in bhakti poetry: padas (songs), dohas (proverb-like couplets), vacanas (sayings) and parables,[footnoteRef:0] and sakhis (poems of witness, satires, or historical accounts are among the most popular poetic forms used. Kabir specializes in slokas (songs). Slokas are the kernel of Indian epic verse, formed in couplets with strict metrical rules, and generally written to invoke or portray different forms of the divine. Discuss elements of a song, couplet, wise saying, aphorism,[footnoteRef:1] and satire,[footnoteRef:2] and find examples in the poetry selection. [0: a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson] [1: Observation that contains a general truth] [2: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. ] 4. Musical devices add to a poem’s performativity; in Europe, prior to the advent of the Middle Ages, music, song, and rhetoric were often grouped under the single discipline of “song,” as artists were expected to have mastered the talents of writing poetry, playing instruments, and giving great oratory performances. Musical devices such as meter and rhyme remained important musical devices of written poems, but the instrumental elements and call for the use of castanets and drums essentially disappeared in Western poetry after the Renaissance. Conversely, poetry retained its performative value in many non-Western countries long after the sixteenth century. Examine, particularly, Tukaram’s work for musical elements, as his poems were often set to music with castanets, drums, and the style of western India. Ajit Kadkade – contemporary devotional singe; hear Tukaram’s poems set to music in his Yuge Attavis – Ubha Vie Vari (the song we listened to is “Vittah Amuche Jeevan”) 5. In Kabir’s poetry the material body is treated as a temple that can only be purified with good thoughts, and it is therefore separated from the conventional definitions of pollution and purity. Similar to the Catholic belief that Jesus’s body is the way to salvation (through ingestion of the Eucharist and wine as body and blood), Kabir’s poem “Mosque with Ten Doors” calls the Muslim priest’s body the true mosque of the Muslim religion. Interestingly, Kabir urges readers to treat their bodies as holy temples and to seek divinity within rather than searching for outward positions such as priest or master to proclaim one’s faith. In the poem “Purity,” Kabir uses the setting of eating a meal to show that nothing material can be pure: physical elements for cooking (fire, water, food, words, utensils, feritlizer) are all impure, while purity may be achieved only by cleansing one’s thoughts, In the poem “The Simple State.” False pious people are criticized for their outward physical rituals, which have nothing to do with achieving the “simple state” of union with God. Encounters with Islam Islam did not seek converts, which meant that it often allowed local religious practices to exist alongside Islam, thus creating multicultural societies in which different religions existed side by side. The Ottoman Empire and the Mughal rule in India, for all the tensions that existed between different groups, set a standard for religious tolerance. Islam and Hinduism in South Asia 1206Turkish slave-warrior proclaims himself Sultan of Delhi, laying the foundation for a Muslim empire in northern India that lasted more than three centuries 1526-1857Mughal Empire Before the arrival of Islam, Indian subcontinent was predominantly Hindu in religion and culture, with Buddhism and Jainism practiced only by small minorities of the population. For much of the first millennium of the Common Era, Hinduism in its classical form involved polytheism, worship in temples officiated by priests, the worship of idols and the performance of numerous and intricate rituals, and pilgrimages to designated holy places. When Islam settled in South Asia, it challenged many of these ideas and practices in Hinduism. Islam’s uncompromising monotheism (belief in a single, all-powerful God), as well as its attacks on idol-worship, compelled many Hindus to reconsider their polytheism and their worship in temples (which is centered around idols, often representing gods in anthropomorphic form). Likewise, Islam’s emphasis on social equality and a universal fraternity persuaded Hindus to question the caste hierarchy and its practice of discrimination on the basis of birth. Moreover, Sufism, a mystical form of Islam centered on the cultivation of music, dance, poetry, the visual arts, and techniques of ecstasy—offered forms of spiritualism that resonated with some Hindu conceptions of “union with God.” The poets collected here, from different regions and religions of South Asia, all work through this productive tension between Islam and Hinduism, testifying to the fact that cross-cultural encounters are sometimes violent, but can also lead to artworks of stunning beauty. Bhakti Movement One prominent example of the encounter of Islam and Hinduism was the bhakti movement, which began on the smaller scale in southern India before the end of the first millennium C.E. Bhakti (“devotion”), which emphasized intense commitment and service to one chosen god out o many in the Hindu pantheon… It started out as a movement to reform classical Hinduism and the caste system… After the arrival of Islam, bhakti increasingly engaged with monotheism, iconoclasm, and abstract divinity (as contrasted to idols), as well as egalitarianism and community. In this apparent synthesis, however, bhakti did not completely overturn the central concepts of Hinduism. It retained the logic of karma and moksa, so that union with God and liberation from reincarnation remained principle goals; it preserved the classical mytholgoies of Siva and Visnu, and it continued with earlier Hindu pantheism, in which godhead (“the God beyond God”) pervades the universe, and hence can be found everywhere. moksa “liberation” – liberation from samsara (cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) karma explains causality through a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul's reincarnated lives forming a cycle of rebirth. The Final State To get a better footing, start by reading the footnotes. What is “the final state”? How does Kabir describe the Final State? What are adjectives that Kabir uses to describe “The Final State”? What is the effect of Kabir’s use of negation? What is the effect of the juxtaposition? (Juxtaposition: to place different things side by side in order to compare/contrast them.) What do you think it means to “sacrifice yourself / to the Guru”? Who is the Guru? How does Kabir describe one who “sacrifice[s]” oneself to “the Guru”? Discuss Kabir’s choice of verbs: permeate, sacrifice, ensconced. Describe the effect of each of these verbs. Does this remind you of other works that we’ve read? Why, how? Make a list. Come up with at least three different texts. These questions are just to get us going. (Jot down other observations.) AntTo get a better footing, start by reading the footnotes. What is the tone of Ant? Who does the poet address? What is the effect of the tone? Discuss the first stanza. What is the effect? Discuss the second stanza (The neem tree/becomes the mango tree…) Does a neem tree become a mango tree? Does a banana plant spread into a bush? Does a coconut palm turn into a berry? Why might Kabir say all of this? What is the effect? Discuss the third stanza. What is the effect? What is Kabir saying, literally (the actual meaning of the words)? What is Kabir saying, figuratively? What might the “elephant” represent? What might the “ant” represent? When does Kabir the poet announce himself to the reader? What does he say? How is this language different than the other language of the poem? What is the effect? These questions are just to get us going. (Jot down other observations.)