Author: Muhammad Hedayetullah
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 331
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788120833739
Description
The interaction between Hindu and Muslim ideas in India took place over a period of several centuries. The two cultures met on various levels, such as intellectual, commercial, political and religious. On each of these levels, the two religions influenced each other, sometimes peripherally, sometimes deeply. The most important of these levels for this study was the religious.
In spite of their very basic differences, the two traditions were forced by circumstances into some kind of interaction even on the orthodox level. However, the point at which the two religious traditions had something in common was mysticism, and both traditions had something in common been mysticism, and both traditions produced non-orthodox mystics who could hardly be distinguished from one another. The system which expresses the culmination of their interaction is called Bhakti Mysticism.
The interaction of Hindu-Muslim ideas through bhakti mysticism produced a number of great mystics in India during the medieval period. The characteristic feature of these bhakta-mystics was that by no orthodox criterion could they be identified as purely Hindu or Muslim.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
…The author of this carefully researched and balanced study has performed a service for students of religion and social history.
…The book is a significant contribution to an understanding of the complexities of Indian religious history.
- STANLEY E. BRUSH, University of Bridgeport
The Muslim World, July/October 1984
The main objective of this readable and well-documented book is not so much to present new information about the great Indian preacher of mutual understanding, as to reinterpret the information already available on him in order to show in what circumstances he tried to resolve the historical tensions extant between Hindus and Muslims. It must be welcomed because it not only offers a well-arranged and lucid interpretation of all the more or less known facts, but primarily seeks to thoroughly re-evaluate the real foundations of the Hindu-Muslim relationship. In this sense, the work is very timely.
- Archivorientalini, Volume 52/1984
Contents
Foreword By Prof. C.J. Adams
Preface
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
CHAPTER
I. History of the Interaction of Hindu-Muslim Ideas
II. The Interaction of Hindu-Muslim Ideas on the mystical Level
III. Interaction through Bhakti Mysticism
IV. The Life of Kabir
V. The Teaching of Kabir
Conclusion
Bibliography