Everyone and everything
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Gauranga · Nimai
Bengali saint (1486–1534) who taught the Hare Krishna mantra and congregational chanting, spent his last two decades at…
Kanakadasa
Sixteenth-century Haridasa poet-saint of a herding caste, barred from the Udupi temple, for whom the Krishna image is…
Dnyaneshwar
Jnaneshwar · Jnanadeva
The 13th-century Marathi saint whose verse commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the Dnyaneshwari, is the scripture of the…
Purandara Dasa
Purandaradasa · Srinivasa Nayaka
A Haridasa composer of the late 15th and 16th centuries, initiated by Vyasatirtha at Hampi, who wrote Kannada keertanas…
Sankardev
Srimanta Sankardev
Assamese saint-poet (1449–1568 by tradition; some historians place the birth 1479–84) who founded Ekasarana Dharma —…
Tukaram
Sant Tukaram
A 17th-century Marathi poet-saint of Dehu whose abhangas to Vitthal and whose community kirtans shaped the Varkari…
Vyasatirtha
Vyasaraja
The Madhva scholar-saint of Vijayanagara who initiated Purandara Dasa and Kanakadasa and gave the Haridasa movement its…
Andal
Kodhai · Goda Devi
The only woman among the twelve Alvars, whose Thiruppavai is sung every Margazhi; tradition says she merged into…
Annamacharya
Tallapaka Annamacharya · Annamayya
A 15th-century Telugu poet-composer, the earliest known writer of sankirtanas in the south, who addressed more than…
Bhadrachala Ramadasu
Kancharla Gopanna · Ramadasu
A 17th-century revenue official under the Golconda sultanate who built the Bhadrachalam Rama temple with state money…
Bhakta Ramadasu
Kancharla Gopanna
The Golconda revenue officer who built the Bhadrachalam temple in 1674 with state money and was jailed for it…
Pokala Dhammakka
Dammakka
A tribal woman of the Bhadragiri hills who, in the local telling, was led by a dream to find self-formed images of…
Pundalik
The devoted son who, busy serving his parents when Krishna called, threw a brick out for the god to stand on; the…
Thuluka Nachiyar
Bibi Nachiyar
The Delhi Sultan's daughter who, in Srirangam tradition, loved the processional icon carried off in the 1311 raid and…
Uddhava
Krishna's friend and disciple who retrieved the Guruvayur image as Dwarka sank and handed it to Brihaspati and Vayu.
Vakula Devi
The foster mother of Srinivasa on the Venkata hill, held to be Yashoda reborn so that she could see Krishna married.
Vidyapati
Indradyumna's brahmin envoy who married the Sabara chief's daughter Lalita and scattered mustard seeds to mark the…