BHAKTI. — From the Sanskrit root bhaj (“to worship”), in Brahmanical and Hindu India it is the attitude of mystical devotion toward a particular divinity. Already known in ancient times, when, together with the orthodox philosophical system Yoga, it guaranteed the salvation of the individual through devotion to the god Jśvara, without the practice of meditation, this attitude developed considerably during the medieval period, when Brahmanism, in order to reaffirm its victory over Buddhist heterodoxy, favored—over the meticulous practices of Brahmanical ritualism and the difficulties of meditation, used as means of liberation in the philosophical schools and in the Buddhism of the “lesser vehicle”—tender and ardent devotion, as from wife to husband, toward the divinities dear to popular devotion: Viṣṇu, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, a devotion that, among the coarser spirits, degenerated into practices of obscene eroticism.
This attitude of mystical devotion, a true path to salvation (bhaktimārgo), can also be followed by those who have no sacrifices to offer or capacity for contemplation: it is a universal path and therefore accessible even to the subjugated non-Aryan populations,
for which Mahāyāna Buddhism too has made provision, substituting prayer for liberated meditation. It is precisely in Mahāyāna Buddhism that the epithet bhāgavat (blessed, glorious), substantially identical to that of bhahta, is attributed to the Buddha and to the bodhisattvas, that is, to those who are on the path to becoming Buddhas.
The most notable example of mystical devotion proclaiming the superfluity of sacrifices or ritual practices is found in the “song of the Blessed One” or “divine song” (Bhāgavadgītā, v.). The oldest school of b. is that of the Bhāgavatas, which arose in the pre-Christian period and was founded on the cult of Kṛṣṇa-Vāsudeva.