This book is a contribution to understanding the formation of religious communities as revealed by the rhetoric of hagiographical works. It studies how religious groupings legitimize themselves by affiliation with holy men, and how they go about “magining” this affiliation in songs and stories in praise of holy men.

The focus of the book is on the influential North Indian Krishna bhakti (devotional) movement of Hinduism and its multiple hagiographical strategies. It presents a case study of hagiographical works by and about Harirām Vyās, a sixteenth-century Hindu holy man or bhakta. The book includes a new scholarly edition and first-time translation of an important set of poems by Vyās in praise of several holy men, including the famous Kabīr. It also provides an edition and translations of selected hagiographical material about Vyās himself. The analysis of this little-studied material has implications for the history of Krishna devotion in particular and Hindu devotion in general, and has broader relevance for the history and phenomenology of religion.