The Lord as Guru: Hindi Sants in North Indian Tradition

The worship of a living person as a manifestation of the divine, though seen throughout the world, finds some of its clearest expression anywhere in the history of religion among the sants of North India. An understanding of sant tradition is essential to comprehension of the religious landscape of that region, especially as concerns the origins and nature of Sikhism. Approaching santism from a religio-historical point of view, The Lord as Guru is the first study to consider this phenomenon as a tradition--to provide a coherent understanding of the movement as a whole--and the first to place it in a broader historical and comparative context, demonstrating the way in which santism draws from both Indic and Islamic religious milieus. Utilizing an original analytic method, Gold examines the dynamic of holy men and tradition among the sants, the continuities of esoteric language and experience in sant lineages, the bonds observable between masters and disciples, and the emergence of a theology of the guru. In the process he provides a vivid witness to the attitudes of devotees toward the independent and at times highly idiosyncratic holy men.