BHAKTI. - From the Sanskrit root bhaj ("to adore"), it is in Brahmanical and Hinduistic India the attitude of mystical devotion toward a particular divinity. Already known in ancient times, when with the orthodox philosophical system Yoga it guarantees the salvation of the individual through devotion to the god Jśvara, without the practice of meditation, this attitude developed greatly during the medieval period, when Brahmanism, in order to reaffirm its victory over Buddhist heterodoxy, favored — against the meticulous practices of Brahmanical ritualism and the difficulties of meditation, in use as means of liberation in the philosophical schools and in the Buddhism of the "small vehicle" — tender and ardent devotion, as from bride to bridegroom, toward the divinities dear to popular devotion: Viṣṇu, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, a devotion transcended in the crudest spirits into practices of obscene eroticism.
This attitude of mystical devotion, a true and proper way of salvation (bhaktimārgo), can also be followed by one who has no sacrifices to offer, nor capacity for contemplation: it is a universal way and therefore accessible also to the subjected non-Aryan populations, for which Mahāyāna Buddhism also exerted itself, substituting prayer for liberating meditation. Precisely in Mahāyāna Buddhism the epithet of bhāgavat (blessed, glorious), substantially identical to that of bhahta, is attributed to the Buddha and to the bodhisattva, that is, to those who are on the way to becoming Buddha.
The most notable example of mystical devotion that proclaims the superfluity of sacrifices or of ritual practices is found in the "song of the Blessed One" or "divine song" (Bhāgavadgītā, v.). The most ancient school of b. is that of the Bhāgavata, which arose in pre-Christian times and was founded on the cult of Kṛṣṇa-Vāsudeva.