Tradition · Vaishnava sampradaya

Pushti Mārga

Also known as Vallabha Sampradaya, Pushtimarg, Way of Grace

Date

from 1494

Function

Religious institution & practice

Tradition

Pushti Mārga practice; Vārtā literature

Confidence

Established / referenced

Worth knowing

Vitthalnāth divided the seven principal svarūpas among his seven sons, which is why the images ended up in different towns. When Aurangzeb's iconoclasm reached Braj in the 1660s they were carried west into Rajput protection — Shrīnāthjī to Nāthdvāra, Dvārkādhīsh to Kankroli, and the rest onward.

Connections (3)

• Pilgrimage order ofNāthdvāra

  The Nāthdvāra haveli is a house rather than a temple, and the day there is a household's: mangalā at waking, shringār for dressing, rājbhog at midday, shayan at bedtime. Behind the image hangs a pichhwai changed with the festival, painted in the town by families who have done nothing else for generations.

• Image migrationKankroli

  Vitthalnāth divided the seven principal svarūpas among his seven sons, and when Braj became unsafe in the 1660s the images travelled separately into Rajput protection. Dvārkādhīsh reached Kankroli, Shrīnāthjī Nāthdvāra, forty kilometres apart — a sectarian inheritance turned into a map by a flight. Each of the seven houses developed its own liturgy, cuisine and pichhwai style around its image, so a sectarian split produced seven distinct material cultures within two centuries.

• Devotional corpus onSūrdās

  Sūrdās is counted among the ashtachhāp, the eight poets Vitthalnāth appointed to sing before the Pushti Mārga images. The order's worship is a household's day with a child Krishna, and Sūr's padas are the words for it — which is why his poetry is sung at Nāthdvāra rather than read.

Sources

Wikipedia, “Pushtimarg”. Sangeet Natak Akademi and Ministry of Textiles documentation, and the standard field studies.

• Wikipedia — Pushtimarg