Bhaṭṭs in Braj

Abstract

A typical way of referring to the influx of southerners into Braj in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is to speak of these immigrants as gosvamis, which stresses their liturgical and perhaps institutional roles, but in this chapter John Hawley proposes another lens: the fact that crucial figures among them were Bhatts. Powerful new work by James Benson, Christopher Minkowski, and Rosalind O’Hanlon has focused on reconfigurations that occurred among Bhatt Brahmins in Banaras in the seventeenth century. Hawley attempts to discover similar connections among Bhatts who settled in Braj a century earlier. Their number and individual profiles are impressive: Narayan Bhatt, Sri Bhatt, Kesav Kasmiri Bhatt, Gopal Bhatt, and Vallabh Bhatt—that is, Vallabhacharya.