On the Virtues of Love’s Savor

Humble Sufis, Arrogant Tantrikas, and Vaiṣṇava Bhakti Ethics

Abstract

This article examines the emergent ethical sensibility within Vaiṣṇava bhakti communities in early modern north India, arguing for its distinct formation through interaction with Sufi devotional attitudes and in deliberate opposition to tantric asceticism, particularly that of the Nāth yogīs. Moving beyond a rule-based understanding of ethics, the paper frames it as the cultivation of virtues and dispositions. It highlights how the expanding bhakti public, largely Vaiṣṇava in idiom, fostered shared emotional and aesthetic sensibilities that promoted specific ethical behaviors. The author demonstrates striking similarities between Sufi and Vaiṣṇava ethical visions, characterized by humility, loving devotion, and passionate longing for the Divine, and their mutual condemnation of the Nāth yogīs' pursuit of power, bodily immortality, and magical abilities. Through comparisons of texts like Narasī Mehtā's poem and the teachings of Nizām al-Din Awliyā’, and an analysis of Tulsīdās's critiques of yoga and tantra, the article reveals how a shared aesthetic experience of "love's savor" (prema-rasa) underpinned the intertwined ethical and emotional dimensions of Sufi and bhakti religiosity.