When one looks closely at the Bhaktamal, it becomes clear that its tapestry of saints, though rich, is far from exhaustive. Several major figures of the bhakti tradition do not receive biographical treatment there, and this absence itself reveals the text’s particular horizon. Among the most striking omissions are the great Tamil poet-saint lineages: the Vaiṣṇava Āḻvārs and the Śaiva Nāyaṉmārs. Their devotional poetry and temple-centered piety shaped entire regions, yet they are not systematically presented in Bhaktamal as individual, detailed lives.

A similar pattern appears with respect to the southern and Deccan traditions more broadly. Saints of the Haridāsa stream in Karnataka, such as Purandara Dāsa and related composers, are not given biographical space. Likewise, the later saint-composers associated with the Carnatic musical heritage, such as Tyāgarāja, are absent. These omissions suggest that Bhaktamal’s gaze remains largely oriented toward the Hindi-speaking world and its immediate devotional networks, rather than attempting a pan-Indian survey of bhakti.

The text’s selectivity also becomes evident when considering other regional currents. Bengali Vaiṣṇava figures, despite the intense devotional ferment in that region, are largely missing as biographical subjects. The Assamese saint Śaṅkaradeva, who stands at the heart of a powerful regional bhakti movement, is also not included. Various Sufi-influenced saints and many local figures from regions such as Gujarat and Rajasthan do not find a clear place in the work either, indicating that Bhaktamal’s map of sanctity is both geographically and doctrinally bounded.

In terms of historical and social breadth, the coverage of later and female saints is similarly limited. Many important later bhaktas, including figures like Tukaram, fall outside the temporal frame and thus do not appear. Women saints, with a few notable exceptions such as Mirabai, are underrepresented, and their lives are not explored with the same fullness as those of their male counterparts. Taken together, these absences show that Bhaktamal is not a neutral catalogue of all bhakti saints, but a situated work shaped by region, lineage, and time, illuminating some streams of devotion while leaving others in the background.