Machine summary:
. It came to birth quite naturally when devotion turned to a single personal God. Bhakti, in the senseunderstood in India, is a devo• tion full of affections, and the traditions bv which it is in• spired belongto Aryan as much as to Semitic thought.
never under• went any external influence ; at all events after the arrival of Islam in India, as I shall show later, the religious point of view of the Hindus, though always based 011 old founda• tions, became considerably modified.
How and in what degree did the influence of Islam help the sentiment of Bhakti, which already existed in India; to become a doc• trine and a cult ?· Here we have a problem of very great historical importance, the correct solution· of which is necessary to the understanding of the formation of modern Hindu civilization.
the fact that at the time ·of the arrival of the Musulmans in India, Hindu Society was divided between those who were plunged in an ignorance without parallel and the so-called intellectuals, who had no faith in any verity of life, and disputed among themselves about the subtleties · of metaphysics.
the school re• presented by Weber, Bhakti, as the means and condition of spiritual salvation, was a foreign idea which ·came to India with Christianity and exercised a considerable in• fluence on the Hinduism of the period of the great epics and of the Puranas.