The medieval Indian period, marked by the presence of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire between the 13th to 16th centuries, stood witness to a remarkable degree of cultural exchange between the Hindus and the Muslims. It is well known that Indian classical music deeply had influenced their musical traditions and that Mughal architecture had left a lasting impression upon the Hindu traditions of building. The two were poles apart in their religious and political ideologies, but the intense give and take amongst their poets and mystics - the Sants and the Sufis - in a land whose people were in the habit of singing their poetry, had led to a period phenomenally rich in the creative arts. The political tension and struggle between the Mughal rulers and the Indian kings appears to have lent the phenomenon just that extra edge of a `catalyst`. Indeed, these major defining factors had truly been acting as the key governing factors to the ushering in of medieval poetry in the Indian scenario, which was to bloom forth into distinctive genres. Indeed, medieval Indian poetry was a gradual and matured culmination towards modernity under the British Empire, as can be comprehended as under.

Indian literature during the medieval period had emerged forth from several dissimilar strands. Indeed, it can authentically be reasoned that medieval literature was rooted in the medieval Indian poetry and its overwhelming flowering towards perfection. It is known that the regional court poets were of the habit to compose poems by eulogising the emperors and kings and warriors; many poets had given rise to works based upon themes borrowed from the Sanskrit epics and Puranas; and Persian-speaking Muslim courts had introduced elements of intrinsic Islamic culture to India. In a particular manner, the spread of Hinduism had given rise to enormous amounts of religious literature, often dedicated to the divinities Rama and Krishna. This was the literature of `bhakti` (devotional religion), based upon the magnitude and substance of a loving relationship between the worshipper and the Almighty. In the meantime, diversities and mixtures of folk poetry, celebrating the seasons and festivals, were passed down from generation to generation and are in fact still recited today. And this Bhakti literature was mostly reverberated in the language of poetry, the most trailblazing a movement of Hinduism and Islam - clearly upholding medieval Indian poetry.

Bhakti literature is the most important and significant development of the medieval period and its intimate association with Indian medieval poetry. Lords Krishna and Rama - the two principal incarnations of the great Lord Vishnu - had begun to be worshipped widely. Numerous temples had begun to be erected in honour of them and their worshippers began to establish a number of different sects, each one espousing a particular religious teacher. Much of bhakti literature was penned in the form of poetical hymns, still sung in contemporary times. These hymns were of the habit to extol the deities and their deeds, or modestly and respectfully had focuses upon his rollicking activities with the gopis - the cowherd girls amongst whom Krishna had spent his youth. The stories arrive mostly from the Bhagavata Purana and the Gitagovinda. They delineate and account a very dissimilar aspect of Krishna from the stately and majestic Krishna of the Mahabharata. His worshippers are indeed captivated by his pranks and his romantic lovemaking. Rama, on the other hand, is venerated as an idealistic and heroic king and his wife, Sita, is the exemplar of Hindu womanhood. The monkey god Hanuman - the faithful collaborator of Rama in the war against Ravana - comes forth as the ideal devotee.

Bhakti lyric poems as a generic domain of medieval Indian poetry, do share a number of characteristics. Unlike earlier Indian literature in Sanskrit, they delineate works of a personal and emotional character. Sung by devotees, Bhakti poems often emote from the perspectives of `marginalised` and `barred` groups in Indian society, vocalising social criticism. Some of the major bhakti poets were women and men of the lower castes were also represented.

The Islamic influence is yet another tremendous genre which was successful to enhance and stress its magnification upon the medieval poetry of India. Several Muslim dynasties had ruled much of India from their advent during the 1100`s and 1200`s. Most of them had versed in Persian or Turkish. These were the principal languages utilised, in a somewhat `Indianised` form, for the business dealings of government and court. Muslim poets Malik Mahammod Jayasi, Raskhan, Rahim and others had penned a voluminous amount of Sufi and Vaishnava (pertaining to Vishnu) poetry. The religious and cultural synthesis of Islam and Hinduism that was a special concern of medieval Indian poetry, finds frequent expression in their literature. Bulleh Shah, the most celebrated Muslim Punjabi poet had popularised Sufism (Islamic doctrine of divine love) through Punjabi kafi (verse form). Shah Laatif, a Sindhi Muslim poet, is also known to have penned an important Sufi text, Risalo.

During the medieval period, Urdu literature had come into being in India in an overwhelming manner. Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), the great and most august Sufi poet and an early architect of India`s `composite culture`, had experimented with poetry in a language that was a mixture of Persian and Hindi. This was the primary origin of Urdu language, especially its intense connection with Islamic courts of kings. Urdu poetry has largely espoused Persian forms and metres, but it has also embraced some of the purely Indian forms, which primarily had formed the basis of medieval Indian poetry. The ghazal (lyrical couplet), qasidah (ode of praise), and marsia (elegy) are of strict Iranian origin. The poet Sauda (1706-1781) had lent cogency and true versatility to Urdu poetry. Mir Dard (1720-1785) and Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1810) yet some more gifted contributors to Indian medieval poetic genres, had lent Urdu language maturity and had ushered it into the modern period of literature. The most legendary Mughal Empire of the 1500`s to the 1700`s also had offered a livelihood to numerous poets. Luxuriously illustrated memoirs of emperors form part of the historical and artistic legacy from this period.

It is also an acknowledged factor that during medieval Indian literature, the earliest works in many of the languages essentially bore a sectarian touch, contrived to encourage and boost or to celebrate some unorthodox regional notions. Instances exist in the Charyapadas in Bengali, Tantric verses of the 12th century and the Lilacharitra (circa 1280), in Marathi. In Kannada literature from the 10th century and later in Gujarati from the 13th century, the first truly indigenous medieval Indian poetic works comprise the Jain romances, most seemingly the lives of Jain saints. These actually represent popular tales, based upon Sanskrit and Pali themes. In this context, most significant of all for later Indian medieval poetry were the first traces in the vernacular languages of the northern Indian cults of Krishna and of Rama, as has been stated earlier. Included in this list of medieval poetic Indian tradition, was the 12th-century poems by Jayadeva, named as the Gitagovinda (The Cowherd`s Song); and approximately 1400, a group of religious love poems scripted in Maithili (eastern Hindi of Bihar) by the poet Vidyapati were a seminal influence on the cult of Radha-Krishna in Bengal.

Buddhism had diminished and faded into oblivion as a religious force in India, but the philosophies of Hinduism and Jainism were still going strong. From 12th century onwards, Indian literature had begun to demonstrate the influence of yet another religion - Islam. During medieval times, a succession of Islamic dynasties had conquered umpteen territories in north and central India. Some Indian languages were thoroughly influenced by Islamic religion and culture, as well as by the Persian and Arabic languages and the literatures of these two tongues. These influences had impressed upon the development of the Hindi language, thus resulting in the emergence of Urdu - a particular form of Hindi. The Urdu language possesses a large number of Persian and Arabic words, and is written in the Arabic script. Such a cultural amalgamation of ancient Indian with the ancient Persian from the Arabian countries, is also a crucial factor that medieval Indian poetry is so much varied and diversified in its every attempt and intrinsic sensibility.

Although the literatures of the regional languages were as miscellaneous as the languages and subcultures they interpreted, they also had shared a number of characteristics. For instance, the older Sanskrit myths, epics and kavya poems had served as sources for some of the best works in the new languages. But also, for the first time in the domain of medieval Indian literature, unique versions of local myths, legends, romances and epics had come into view - all of which were an exhaustive attempt to the triumph of medieval Indian poetry.