The Paradigm of Light in the Hindu-Muslim Religious Culture of Rajasthan

Nizārī Ismailism was a major strand in the fluid religious culture of Rajasthan and its periphery. D. S. Khan (1997) submitted the hypothesis that it also helped shape sects of nirguṇa bhakti, such as the Dādūpanth, which emerged as late as the 16th century. The article tests the case of this sect by a textual study focusing on the paradigm of light in the thought of Dādū and his disciples and related to the same paradigm elsewhere in the regional religious landscape. Dādū’s bhakti beyond the Hindu-Muslim divide was characterized by the impulse it received from Sufism, conspicuously at a time when Nizārī Ismailism itself had been impacted by this for about three centuries.