Book excerpt: The Bhakti Ratnavali is an anthology of verses selected by a medieval ascetic named Vishnu Puri from the Srimad Bhagavata which is the magnum opus on Bhakti and is accepted as authoritative by all schools of Vaishnavism. Vishnu Puri has selected from this vast and amorphous literature four hundred and five verses. In these verses, the reader will get a clear outline of the doctrine of Bhakti both in its theory and practice as conceived by the great devotional text the Bhagavata.