The vernacular turn is the most important thing that happened to Hinduism in the second millennium. Sanskrit is a restricted language with restricted access, and the bhakti poets wrote in what people spoke — which meant that women, labourers and untouchables could compose scripture, and did. Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas is the clearest demonstration of scale: written in Awadhi in the 1570s, allegedly against fierce opposition from Sanskritists, and now the text north Indians quote, stage as Ramlila every autumn, and hear at all-night recitations. It is also more devotionally warm and more socially conservative than Valmiki, which is worth saying. The Marathi abhangs, the Kannada vachanas, Shankaradeva's Assamese Kirtan Ghosha and the Braj poetry of Surdas each anchored a regional religious world, and the vachanas in particular are formally extraordinary — short, first-person, argumentative, ending with the poet's signature phrase, and frequently rude about religion.