Bhajana

By Jit Majumdar

worship; adoration; veneration
a genre of songs and their performance, encompassing diverse traditions and in different Indian languages, chiefly lyrical in composition, and which can be either strictly classical, light-classical/ semi-classical, or folk and popular by nature, and which are basically about devotion, love and surrender to the Divine, and the relation between the Divine and the devotee. The primary subject matter of these are anecdotes and episodes from mythologies and legends in scriptures, the teachings and life-incidents of famous devotees, mystics and saints and the narrations and descriptions of the deities’ qualities and characteristics and the love and admiration of the devotee for them, their deeds, legends, and the relations and interactions between them and their devotees.

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