The devotional currents associated with bhakti brought about a quiet revolution in language by turning the gaze away from elite Sanskrit and toward the speech of ordinary people. Saints and poets deliberately composed hymns, songs, and poems in regional tongues such as Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi dialects like Awadhi and Braj, Bengali, and others. Texts like Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi or the dohas of Kabir in Hindi became not only vehicles of devotion but also touchstones for their respective languages. By treating these vernaculars as worthy mediums for addressing the divine, the movement endowed them with religious prestige and authority that had long been reserved for Sanskrit.

As devotional compositions multiplied, they helped stabilize and enrich the regional languages in which they were written. Continuous use of local speech for poetry, commentary, and song encouraged more consistent grammar, an expanded vocabulary, and recognizable literary styles. New devotional forms such as bhajans, abhangas, and dohas took shape in these tongues, giving each language its own distinctive spiritual literature. In many regions, these works became foundational texts, anchoring emerging literary canons and contributing to the formation of distinct cultural and linguistic identities.

The bhakti emphasis on accessibility meant that spiritual teachings were carried into the everyday lives of people through their own idioms and rhythms of speech. Congregational singing—kirtans, bhajans, and other musical gatherings—spread these languages far beyond the circles of the learned, fixing popular expressions and turns of phrase in collective memory. Oral traditions, folk sayings, and colloquial usages were preserved and legitimized as they entered written devotional literature. Through this interplay of song, scripture, and spoken word, vernacular languages were not only nurtured and codified but also recognized as fully capable of expressing the deepest religious experience.