A section from the journey
Shankaradeva of Assam
We journey now to the far northeast, to Assam, by the wide Brahmaputra. There a saint and artist named Shankaradeva carried the bhakti tide to a corner of the land it might never have reached. He taught devotion to one God, Krishna, through the simple chanting of the Name. He was a poet, a playwright, a painter, and a maker of music, and he built gentle prayer-houses where people of every background could gather to sing. His way is still living in Assam today.
We have travelled west to Maharashtra and south to Karnataka. Now let us go far to the east, almost to the edge of the land, into Assam. Here the great river Brahmaputra runs wide and slow, and here the tide of devotion found one of its richest voices.
His name was . He lived across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some five hundred years ago. And he was not one kind of man only. He was a poet, a maker of plays, a painter, a singer, a builder of community, all at once. It is as if the whole tide of bhakti poured itself into a single life and asked it to do everything.
What did he teach? The thing the whole age was teaching, in its own new tongue. He taught love for one God, whom he sang of as Krishna, the Lord. And he placed at the centre of his path the simplest practice of all, the chanting of the divine Name. No costly rite was needed. No high learning. A person had only to take the Name on the lips with love. The poorest farmer could do it as fully as any scholar.
But Shankaradeva knew that people learn God best through beauty. So he made beauty for them. He shaped new ways of singing. He wrote a whole new kind of devotional drama, so the old tales of God could be acted out before the village in the Assamese tongue. He set down poems and retold the scriptures so they could be heard and held. He even painted. He led the heart to God through the ear and the eye, not only the book.
And he gave his people a gathering place. He founded simple prayer-houses, plain and open, with no grand image at the centre, only the holy book and the shared song. There, folk of every background could come together, sit as one, hear the scripture read, and sing the Name into the evening. He turned devotion into a shared and gentle life, not a lonely climb.
The way Shankaradeva began did not fade. It is woven into the very life of Assam to this day, in its songs, its dances, its prayer-houses, its festivals. Here is the lesson once more, written now in the Assamese tongue. There is no land too far, no language too small, for the love of God to find a home.
Shankaradeva led people to God through song, story, and painting, not only through hard study. Which has opened your own heart more often, a careful explanation, or a piece of music or art that you could not quite put into words?
The bhakti tide reached even the far corners of the land. In Assam, in the northeast, by the broad waters of the Brahmaputra, it found one of its most complete voices in Shankaradeva, who lived across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was not only a saint but a whole world of art at once: a poet, a dramatist, a painter, a song-maker, a builder of community. He taught a path of pure devotion to one God, understood as Krishna or Vishnu, and made its centre the chanting of the divine Name, which any person could do, learned or unlettered. He shaped new forms of singing and a new kind of devotional theatre to carry the old stories of God to ordinary people in their own Assamese tongue. He founded simple prayer-houses, open and unadorned, where folk of every background gathered to hear the scriptures and sing together. The tradition he began is woven into the life of Assam still. He shows, once more, the one bhakti spirit speaking in a new mother tongue.
❧1 of 1
Page 1 of 1