The celebrated group of poets in medieval Mathura and Vrindavana called the Ashta-Chhapa were the successors of which one of the following medieval Bhakti Saints?

Correct — D, Surdas of Braj region. The Ashta-Chhapa, the eight seals, were a group of eight Braj Bhasha poets whose devotional songs were sung in the service of Shrinathji, the deity of the Pushtimarg. Surdas is the senior figure of that group and by far its greatest poet, and the later members of the circle wrote in the manner and the language he had established. Of the four saints offered, he is the only one who belongs to Braj at all: Kabir preached a formless devotion at Benaras, Chaitanya's movement was Bengali and Gaudiya, and Guru Nanak's was Punjabi. Region and sect together leave only one possible answer.

• (a)Kabir of Benaras — Kabir belongs to the nirguna stream, which rejects image worship and the temple service the Ashta-Chhapa songs were composed for, and he worked at Benaras rather than in Braj.
• (b)Chaitanya of Bengal — Chaitanya is the most tempting of the three wrong options, because his followers did settle at Vrindavana. But the Gaudiya circle there is a separate lineage from the Pushtimarg group the Ashta-Chhapa belonged to.
• (c)Guru Nanak of Punjab — Guru Nanak's tradition took shape in Punjab and developed into a distinct religion with its own scripture and institutions; it has no connection with the Braj temple singers.

Braj — the country around Mathura and Vrindavana associated with Krishna's childhood — became in the sixteenth century the centre of a devotional literature written in Braj Bhasha and meant to be sung. The Pushtimarg, the path of grace founded by Vallabhacharya, organised that singing into the daily temple service, and the eight poets of the Ashta-Chhapa supplied its repertoire. Their subject is Krishna as child and as lover, and their form is the pada, a short lyric set to a raga and a time of day.

One honest point about the stem. The group was formally constituted not by Surdas but by Vitthalnath, the son of Vallabhacharya, who gathered four of his father's disciples and four of his own; Surdas was one of the four senior members rather than the founder of a school. Vallabhacharya is not among the options, so the question is really asking which of these four saints the group can be attached to at all, and on that reading Surdas is unarguable — he is a member of it, he is its outstanding poet, and the tradition of Braj devotional song is conventionally traced through him.

• The Ashta-Chhapa were eight Braj Bhasha poets of the Pushtimarg whose songs formed the liturgy of the Shrinathji temple service.
• The group was constituted by Vitthalnath, son of Vallabhacharya, and drew four poets from his father's disciples and four from his own.
• Surdas is the senior and greatest of the eight; the Sursagar is the collection associated with his name.
• Kabir belongs to the nirguna stream at Benaras, Chaitanya to Gaudiya Vaishnavism in Bengal and Guru Nanak to Punjab.
• Braj Bhasha, not Sanskrit, is the language of this literature, which is part of what made it popular devotion rather than priestly learning.

• Choosing Chaitanya because his followers settled at Vrindavana; the lineage is a different one.
• Assuming any sixteenth-century Krishna devotee will do; the Ashta-Chhapa are specific to one sect's temple service.
• Confusing Surdas with Raskhan, who also wrote Krishna poetry in Braj Bhasha but was not one of the eight.

As a single-answer attribution question where three of the four options can be struck out on region alone.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pushtimarg, the sect associated with the Ashta-Chhapa poets, was founded by

  • (a)Ramanuja
  • (b)Vallabhacharya
  • (c)Madhvacharya
  • (d)Nimbarka

  Answer(b) Vallabhacharya — his son Vitthalnath then constituted the group of eight poets.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following Bhakti saints belongs to the nirguna stream?

  • (a)Surdas
  • (b)Tulsidas
  • (c)Kabir
  • (d)Mirabai

  Answer(c) Kabir — his devotion is to a formless divine, unlike the image-centred devotion of the other three.