denote: Bhakti implies a personal God.]

[Sidenote: Bhakti a genuine feeling because it may override caste.]

[Sidenote: Bhakti not fit to cope with caste.]

This brings us to the second of the three paths of salvation, the middle
portion of the upward path to the mountain top of clear, unclouded
vision of the All, the One Soul. In Hindu theory, at this second stage
man is still amid the clouds that cling to the mountain's breast. For
easy reference I have named it _Salvation by Faith_, although the
English term must not mislead. The extract from the Mahanirv[=a]na
Tantra, already quoted, describes this inferior stage as the method of
"chanting of glories and recitation of names" of gods. The Sanscrit
name, _Bhakti_, is rendered devotion, or fervour, or faith, or fervent
love; and in spite of alien ideas associated with bhakti, bhakti is much
more akin to Faith than are many of the features of Hinduism to the
Christian analogues with whose names they are ticketed. For example,
bhakti practically implies a personal god, not the impersonal
pantheistic Brahma. Intense devotion to some personal god, generally
Vishnu the preserver, under the name Hari, or either of Vishnu's chief
incarnations, Ram or Krishna, is the usual manifestation of bhakti. In
actual practice it displays itself in ecstatic dancing or singing, or in
exclaiming the name of the god or goddess, or in self-lacerations in his
or her honour. Lacerations and what we would call penances, be it
remembered, are done to the honour of a Deity; they are not a discipline
like the self-whipping of the Flagellants and the jumping of the Jumpers
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Bhakti," says Sir Monier
Williams, "is really a kind of 'meritorious work,' and not equivalent to
'faith' in the Christian sense."[129] Bhakti is the religion of many
millions of India, combined more or less with the conventional externals
of sacrifice and offerings and pilgrimages and employment of brahmans,
which together constitute the third path of salvation, by karma or
works. That ecstatic adoration is religion for many millions of India,
although the name _bhakti_ may never pass their lips. We judged the idea
of salvation by knowledge, or by intense concentration of mind, to be
_genuinely_ felt, because it could override the idea of caste. Applying
the same test here, we must acknowledge the genuineness of feeling in
bhakti. Theoretically, at least, as Sir Monier Williams says,