The devotional current later recognized as the Bhakti movement has deep textual and historical roots, yet it crystallized in a very specific time and place. Scriptural sources such as the Bhagavad Gita, with its emphasis on surrender to a personal deity, and the later Puranic narratives of Vishnu, Shiva, and their devotees, provided a theological foundation for loving devotion. These currents did not remain abstract doctrines; they gradually merged with popular and folk religious practices, preparing the ground for a more emotionally charged, personal relationship with the divine.

Historically, this devotional stream took on a distinct and organized form in South India between the 6th and 9th centuries. In the Tamil region, the Alvars, devoted to Vishnu, and the Nayanars, devoted to Shiva, composed fervent hymns in the vernacular Tamil rather than in Sanskrit. Their poetry portrayed an intimate, often passionate bond between devotee and deity, and it implicitly challenged rigid ritualism and social exclusivity by making the divine accessible through heartfelt song. Figures such as Andal and Nammalvar among the Alvars, and Appar and Sundarar among the Nayanars, became exemplars of this path, and their compositions came to shape temple worship and communal devotion.

Over time, these southern devotional currents were given philosophical articulation and institutional support. Thinkers like Ramanuja developed a Vedantic framework that affirmed personal devotion while remaining within the broader Brahmanical tradition, thereby integrating intense bhakti with established theology. As this synthesis matured, the ethos of emotional, personal devotion began to travel beyond its Tamil heartland, carried by teachers, poets, and sectarian communities.

From roughly the 11th to the 16th centuries, related devotional movements spread across northern and western regions of the subcontinent. Saints and poets such as Ramananda, Kabir, Surdas, Tulsidas, Mirabai, and Chaitanya articulated bhakti in various regional languages, making the experience of God available to people across social strata. Their songs and teachings often questioned caste hierarchies and empty ritual, emphasizing instead sincerity of heart and direct communion with the divine. In this way, what began as a regional flowering of Tamil devotional poetry gradually unfolded into a subcontinental movement centered on emotional, personal devotion to a chosen deity.