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either in terms of a (mystical) state of being or as a
personal God."6
Used as a device for understanding, this
typology can be extremely helpful in sorting out the
bewildering variety of the tradition. Within Hinduism,
Advaita Vedanta is the preeminent representative of the
former tendency, and emotional K峁涐梗峁嘺 devotionalism one of
the prime examples of the latter.
These particular forms of the two basic types, it
should be noted, do not emerge until the second half of the
first millenium C.E. While they each obviously have their
antecedents in earlier forms of Indian spirituality, a
detailed exposition of their roots, development, and
interactions--even insofar as these can be known from the
limited documentation--is beyond the scope of the present
study. 7
I do, however, want to touch in this chapter on
certain key moments in early Hindu religious history with a
view to sketching a rough picture of the place of bhakti in
the tradition and its relation to impersonalistic ways of
thought in the time prior to Samkara. I shall naturally
focus on the most important scriptures of this period,
namely the 峁歡veda (RV), the Upani峁�ads, and the Bhagavad G墨t膩
(BG), though bhakti itself, as we shall see, does not emerge
in the Sanskrit tradition--and the light of history--until
the time of the last of these.