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 IV. EARLY BHAKTI POETS (1400-1550) The Vaishnava Revival.— A new development in Hindi literature was caused by the growth of the Vaishnava movement in North India. The Muhammadan con- quest had been a time of great difficulty for the Hindu religion. Scholars had been dispersed, idols broken, and temples cast down. But though Hinduism suffered severely it was not destroyed, and a great impetus was to be given to the Vaishnava form of the Hindu faith. The Vaishnava religious movements of North India at this time fall into three groups, Ramaite, Krishnaite, and deistic. But all the various sects have many points in common. A personal God, who is full of love and pity for his devotees, is the object of worship, and towards him devotion (bhakti) is demanded as the most important requirement from those who w^ould obtain release. The movement as a whole was a revolt against the cold intellectualism of Brahmanic philosophy and the lifeless formalism of mere ceremonial. It was essentially a popular religious movement, and this is emphasised by its use of the vernacular, rather than Sanskrit, in the vast amount of literature it produced. This constitutes the importance of the movement from the point of view of Hindi literature. Ramananda's Predecessors.— It is generally agreed that it was Ramananda who gave the greatest impulse to the religious revival in North India about this time, but there were others who were his predecessors and the harbingers of the movement. The Adi Granth of the Sikhs, compiled by Guru Arjun in 1604, has preserved some of the earliest specimens we possess of Hindi