Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford India Paperbacks) - Softcover

'We have waited long for an anthology of Hindi bhakti of this range, authority, and literary excellence.' -- A K Ramanujan

'The author's deep knowledge of the bhakti traditions of north India is evident both in their choice of representative poetry for each of the six saints and in the renderings of their poetry, which are so skilfully fashioned that one can easily hear the nuances of each poet's voice in registers of contemporary English.' -- The Journal of Asian Studies

'This is one of those rare and wonderful books that makes first-rate scholarship immediately accessible to the non-specialist.' --Religious Studies Review

The six poets presented here-Ravidas, Kabir, Nanak, Surdas, Mirabai, and Tulsidas-have contributed more to the religious vocabulary of Hinduism in north India today than any voices before or since. In worship, in education, even in politics, modern Hinduism sings their tune. For half a millennium, these saints' poems have circulated from the banks of the Jumna to the rice fields of Bihar and back to the deserts of Rajasthan, providing a language for many of life's most vivid concerns-cruelty and loneliness, status and intimacy, hope and infatuation, and the maddening transitoriness of it all. With a biographical and interpretive essay on each poet and a selection of representative verses in original translation, this book offers a complete introduction to a literature that transcends the boundaries we associate with religion and those of India as well.