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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: JUN-KHA |
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KABIR , the most notable of the Vaishnava reformers of religion in northern India, who flourished during the first half of the 15th century. He is counted as one of the twelve disciples of Ramanand, the great preacher in the north (about A.D. 1400) of the doctrine of bhakti addressed to Rama, which originated with Ramanuja (12th century) in southern India. He himself also mentions among his spiritual forerunners Jaideo and Namdeo (or Nama) the earliest Marathi poet (both about 1250). Legend relates that Kabir was the son of a Brahman widow, by whom he was exposed, and was found on a lotus in Lahar Talk), a pond near Benares, by a Musalman weaver named `All (or Nuri), who with his wife Nima adopted him and brought him there is My abode."3 The distinctions of creeds are declared to be of no importance in the presence of God: " The city of Hara' is to the east, that of 'Ali 5 is to the west; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Karim;" 8 " Behold but One in all things: it is the second that leads you astray. Every man and woman that has ever been born is of the same nature as yourself. He, whose is the world, and whose are the children of 'Ali and Rama, He is my Guru, He is my Pir." He proclaims the universal brotherhood of man, and the duty of kindness to all living creatures. Life is the gift of God, and must not be violated; the shedding of blood, whether of man or animals, is a heinous crime. The followers of Kabir do not observe celibacy, and live quiet unostentatious lives; Wilson (p. 97) compares them to Quakers for their hatred of violence and unobtrusive piety.The resemblance of many of Kabir's utterances to those of Christ, and especially to the ideas set forth in St John's gospel, is very striking; still more so is the existence in the ritual of the sect of a sacramental meal
Agra
up in their craft as a Musalman. He lived most of his life at Benares, and afterwards removed to Maghar (or Magahar), in the present district of Basti, where he is said to have died in 1449. There appears to be no reason to doubt that he was originally a Musalman and a weaver; his own name and that of his son Kamal are Mahommedan, not Hindu. His adhesion to the doctrine of Ramanand is not a solitary instance of the religious syncretism which prevailed at this time in northern India. The religion of the earlier Sikh Gurus, which was largely based upon his teaching, also aimed at the fusion of Hinduism and Islam; and the example of Malik Muhammad,' the author of the Padmawat, who lived a century later than Kabir, shows that the relations between the two creeds were in some cases extremely intimate. It is related that at Kabir's death the Hindus and Musalmans each claimed him as an adherent of their faith, and that when his funeral issued forth from his house
flowers
Kabir's fame as a preacher of bhakti, or enthusiastic devotion to a personal God, whom he preferred to call by the Hindu names of Rama and Hari, is greater than that of any other of the Vaishnava spiritual leaders. His fervent conviction of the truth and power of his doctrine, and the homely and searching expression given to it in his utterances, in the tongue of the people and not in a learned language remote from their understanding, won for him multitudes of adherents; and his sect, the Kabirpanthis, is still one of the most numerous in northern India, its numbers exceeding a million. Its headquarters are the Kabir Chaura at Benares, where are preserved the works attributed to Kabir (called the Granth), the greater part of which, however, were written by his immediate disciples and their followers in his name. Those works which seem to have the best claim to be considered his own compositions are the Sakhis, or stanzas, some 5000 in number, which have a very wide currency even among those who do not formally belong to the sect, and the Shabdawali, consisting of a thousand " words " (shabd), or short doctrinal expositions. Perhaps some of the Rekhtas, or odes (too in number), and of the Ramainisbrief mystical poems in very obscure languagemay also be from his hand. Of these different forms specimens will be found translated in Professor H. H. Wilson's Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus, i. 79-9o. Besides the followers who call them-selves by Kabir's name, there may be reckoned to him many other religious sects which bear that of some intermediate guru or master, but substantially concur with Kabir in doctrine and practice. Such, for instance, are the Nanakshahis in the United Provinces, the Central Provinces, and Bombay, and the Dadu-pant his, numerous in Rajputana (Wilson, loc. cit. pp. 103 sqq.) ; the Sikhs, numbering two and a half millions in the Panjab, are also his spiritual descendants, and their Granth or Scripture is largely stocked with texts drawn
Kabir taught the life of bhakti (faith, or personal love and devotion), the object of which is a personal God, and not a philosophical abstraction or an impersonal quality-less, all-pervading spiritual substance (as in the Vedanta of Sankaracharya). His utterances do not, like those of Tulsi Das, dwell upon the incidents of the human life of Rama, whom he takes as his type of the Supreme; nevertheless, it is the essence of his creed that God became incarnate to bring salvation to His children, mankind, and that the human mind of this incarnation still subsists in the Divine Person. He proclaims the unity of the Godhead, the vanity of idols, the powerlessness of bra/mans or mullas to guide or help, and the divine origin of the human soul, divinae particula aurae. All evil in the world is ascribed to Maya, illusion or false-hood, and truth in thought, word and deed is enjoined as the chief
' See article HINDOSTANI LITERATURE. 2 An exactly similar tale is told of Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, who died in 1538. No critical edition of the writings current under the name of Kabir has yet been published, though collections of his sayings (chiefly the Sdkhis) are constantly appearing from Indian presses. The reader is referred, for a summary account of his life and doctrine, to H. H. Wilson's Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus (Works, i. 68 sqq.). Dr E. Trumpp's edition of the Adi 3ranth (Introduction, pp. xcvii. sqq.) may also be consulted. Recent
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