In the Shrine of the Heart

In the early modern period, the Sants emerged in North India as devotees of a
formless interior god. The volume introduces seven Sant authors living in Rajasthan
in the period from the first half of the sixteenth to the eighties of the
seventeenth century. It explores their complex cultural background, their literary
conventions, and their sectarian network, and presents samples of their poetry in
the original Hindi with English translations. By far the most of the compositions in
this volume have not been translated before, and of one of these the original text
is published also for the first time. Sant poetry has been transmitted in oral and
written form. It owes its continuing vitality largely to congregational and private
performance. This fact has been illustrated by a number of audio and video
samples.