presented at the Sixth International Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, which convened between 7 and 9 July 1994 at the University of Washington, Seattle. The conference followed previous meetings held at Leuven/Louvain (1979), Bonn (1982), Leiden (1985), Cambridge (1988), and Paris (1991). Twenty-eight papers, by some of the world's foremost scholars of South Asian devotional literature, are contained in this volume. Topics that are treated include hagiography, oral traditions, text criticism, and metaphors. Although many papers deal with devotionalism in Hinduism, other papers are concerned with Islamic, Parsi, and Christian traditions as well. This volume will be of interest to students of Indian languages, religion, history, culture, and civilisation.