Each Tongue Its Own Song to God

We have come a long way across the land in this chapter. Let us pause now and look back over the whole road we have walked, and see what it all adds up to.

Think of the journey. We began far in the south, where the Tamil saints first sang. We met the great singers of the north, in Hindi and its sister tongues. Then we went, region by region, gathering songs. Marathi, on the singing road to Pandharpur. Kannada, with the linga worn on the body. Assamese, by the wide Brahmaputra. Gujarati, by the western sea. Bengali, on the wandering Baul's road.

And everywhere, did you notice, we found the very same thing? The same love, rising up out of ordinary people. The same turning of the heart toward a God who is near and dear. Only the language changed. Each tongue found its own song, its own tune, its own sweet name for the Lord.

Here, then, is the quiet wonder of this whole age. For long, long ages, the deepest teaching of the tradition had been kept inside one language, Sanskrit, the language of the learned few. To reach the treasure, you needed years of study most people could never have. The door was narrow, and most stood outside it.

The saints of bhakti broke that door wide open. They sang to God in the speech of the home and the field, the words a mother uses with her child. And in doing so they changed who could be holy. Remember who these saints were. A weaver. A tailor. A tanner. A grain-seller. A maidservant. People the world had counted small. Now they stood as beloved teachers of the divine, their songs on a whole land's lips.^[1]

That is the great gift of this age, and we should name it plainly. Devotion in the mother tongue made God the shared treasure of everyone, not the property of a few. And that gift never went away. Walk through India today, into any village or city, and you will still hear it, the old songs in a hundred tongues, rising at dusk. The bhakti age left the whole land singing, and it has not stopped.