In a seminar on bhakti in South India, a scholar from Mysuru reads out a short Kannada saying of the twelfth century. It mocks people who pour milk on a serpent carved in stone but shout for a real serpent to be killed, and who offer food to an image that cannot eat while sending away a hungry servant of the god. She then turns to two other developments of roughly the same period: a famous Sanskrit text that took in many ideas of the Tamil Vaishnava bhaktas, and the rise of bhakti traditions in a region north of Karnataka a century later.
The Sanskrit text the scholar refers to is:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Bhagavata Purana
Option (1) Bhagavad Gita — Incorrect. The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata, which took shape long before this period.
Option (2) Valmiki Ramayana — Incorrect. The Valmiki Ramayana is a much older Sanskrit epic, composed centuries before the Tamil bhaktas.
Option (3) Manusmriti — Incorrect. The Manusmriti is an early Dharmashastra, a book of rules for social conduct.
Option (4) Bhagavata Purana — Correct. Ideas of the Tamil bhaktas, mainly the Vaishnavas, entered the Sanskritic tradition. This process ended in the Bhagavata Purana, one of the best-known Puranas.
NCERT (2026-27): “3. The Virashaiva Tradition in Karnataka … |