BHAKTI. – From the Sanskrit root *bhaj* ("to adore"), in Brahmanic and Hindu India it denotes the attitude of mystical devotion toward a particular deity. Already known in ancient times, it was guaranteed by the orthodox philosophical system of Yoga as a means of individual salvation through devotion to the god *Īśvara*, without the practice of meditation. This attitude developed considerably during the medieval period, when Brahmanism, in order to reassert its victory over Buddhist heterodoxy, favored—against the minute practices of Brahmanic ritualism and the difficulties of meditation, used as means of liberation in philosophical schools and in the Buddhism of the "Little Vehicle"—tender and ardent devotion, like that of a bride to her spouse, toward deities beloved of popular devotion: Viṣṇu, Rāma, Kṛṣṇa. In coarser spirits, this devotion degenerated into practices of obscene eroticism.
This attitude of mystical devotion, a true path to salvation (*bhaktimārga*), could be followed even by those who had no sacrifices to offer nor capacity for contemplation: it was a universal path and thus accessible even to subject non-Aryan populations,
a path which even Mahāyāna Buddhism adopted, substituting prayer for liberating meditation. Indeed, in Mahāyāna Buddhism the epithet *bhāgavat* (blessed, glorious), substantially identical to that of *bhakta*, is attributed to the Buddha and to bodhisattvas, that is, to those on the path to becoming Buddha.
The most notable example of mystical devotion proclaiming the superfluity of sacrifices or ritual practices is found in the "Song of the Blessed" or "Divine Song" (*Bhagavadgītā*, q.v.). The oldest school of *bhakti* is that of the Bhāgavatas, which arose in pre-Christian times and was based on the cult of Kṛṣṇa-Vāsudeva.