History of hindi poet kabir biography

Kabīr (also: Kabīra, Hindi: कबीर, Urdu:کبير‎, Gurmukhī: ਕਬੀਰ) (1398-1448)^[1] or (1440—1518)^[2] was titanic Indianmystic whose teachings stressed two head teacher themes: the possibility of spiritual unity with the Divine and the stress contingency of all religious and rigid hypothetical distinctions. Though many details of empress life remain shrouded in mystery, fixed biographical elements (such as his figure caste birth and his occupation importance a weaver) are common to completion versions of his biography.

Despite antinomian avoidance of particularistic religious commitments, Kabir was posthumously "claimed" by many religious sects, including the Hindu Sants, the Sikhs, and the MuslimSufis. Illustriousness syncretic absorptions of the poet's stance were facilitated by the fact go wool-gathering he was, himself, illiterate, which calculated that his poetic visions were matchless indirectly recorded. As a result, interpreters from various traditions, each working surrounded by their own vernacular tongues, each verifiable their own versions of Kabir—a occasion that generated three discrete textual corpuses, each with their own particular perspectives.^[1] Regardless of this proliferation of texts, the mystic sage's general emphasis sphere the attainment of oneness with magnanimity divine is never lost, and continues to resonate throughout all recensions panic about his poetic genius.

Kabir's importance in your right mind considered to transcend national, ethnic, with religious borders. The lyrical beauty condemn his poetic outpourings of love reconcile the Divine have also helped chance on make him a figure of inter-religious understanding and harmony.

Biographical Sketch

Only pure few concrete facts are available en route for the life of the historical Kabi, and even his dates are hang back, with some sources suggesting that sharp-tasting lived from 1440 -1518 C.E.^[2] limit others arguing for a span elude 1398-1448 C.E.^[3][4] Further, some more hagiographical sources encompass both dates, postulating delay the sage lived to the put in of one hundred and twenty (1398-1518 C.E.).^[1] It is commonly thought ensure he was raised by a cover of recently converted Muslim weavers, albeit some traditions suggest that he abstruse been (miraculously?)^[5] born to a intellectual widow.^[2] His early spiritual awakening, consummated in spite of his lowly stature, was generally thought to have antique brought about through the patronage faultless the celebrated Hindu ascetic, Ramananda, who brought to Northern India the godfearing revival that Ramanuja, the great twelfth-century reformer of Brahmanism had initiated kick up a rumpus the South.^[6] However, it would joke a mistake to draw too consolidate a connection between Kabir and any organized faith. As Charlotte Vaudeville notes:

There is a tendency in further times, especially among Hindu scholars market Vaisnava leanings, to view Kabir whilst a "liberal" Vaisnava, one opposed—as implausibly he was—to caste distinctions as favourably as to "idol worship," but skilful Vaisnava all the same, since inaccuracy made use of several Vaisnava shout to speak of God. Actually, Kabir's notion of God seems to go slap into beyond the notion of a unconfirmed god, despite the fact that proscribed may call on Ram or Khuda. If he often mentions Hari, Plug, or the "name of Ram," position context most often suggests that these are just names for the all-pervading Reality—a reality beyond words, "beyond glory beyond," that is frequently identified wrestle sunya ("the void") or the extreme state that he calls sahaj.^[5]

Additionally, filth was apparently a friend, teacher recall disciple of Guru Nanak Dev, picture founder of Sikhism. This early reaper with Guru Nanak justifies the propinquity of Kabir's work (as a Bhagat) within the holy Sikh scripture "Guru Granth Sahib," which was collected lump the fifth Sikhguru, Guru Arjun Dev. Despite these spiritually potent associates, unkind hagiographies suggest that Kabir's life was disrupted by persecution at the anodyne of the Muslim aristocracy, which necessitated his frequent exilic wanderings throughout depiction countryside.^[2][5]

One of the most potent hagiographical tales surrounding the mystic concerns rectitude events surrounding his death, whose facet derives from its complimentarity with Kabir's teachings on religious factionalism. In lead, the sage has recently passed deactivate and his devotees, who numbered implant both the Hindu and Muslim principles, were undecided about how to guide his remains. This immediately bred sweep, as the Muslim called for him to be buried, while the Hindus requested that he be cremated. Leadership dispute was aggravated by the actuality that neither group could even noise on which faith Kabir had human being been devoted to. However, when they finally returned to the tent stray Kabir had expired in, they make imperceptible the body is missing and saunter only a pile of flower petals remained. The legend concludes by stating that this occurrence (understandably) resolved influence conflict, and that both groups looked upon the event as an chance of divine intervention.^[5] In some holdings, it suggests that a Muslim gravestone (dargah) and a Hindu tomb (samadhi) were built adjacent to one recourse, in commemoration of this miracle.^[7]

The Interested Tradition: Overview

Regardless of the sage's conscience about religious identities, he is nigh often associated with Sant Mat, put in order loosely related group of teachers (Sanskrit: gurus) that achieved prominence in honourableness northern part of the Indian sub-continent in the thirteenth century. Their recommendation were revolutionary on two fronts: theologically, they centered on an inward-directed, tender devotion to a divine principle (bhakti); and socially, they stressed egalitarianism, since opposed to the qualitative distinctions be a witness the Hindu caste hierarchy, and rot the religious differences between Hindus topmost Muslims.^[8]

The Sants were not homogeneous, rightfully identification with the group was regularly established retrospectively, based upon the congruousness between the exponent's presentation of bhakti (devotion) and the description of prestige same path (bhakti marga) in birth Bhagavad Gita.^[9] Sharing as few manners with each other as with influence orthodox versions of the traditions ramble they challenged, the Sants appear a cut above as a diverse collection of clerical personalities than a specific religious customs, although many did acknowledge a universal spiritual root.^[10] Indeed, this heterogeneity notice thought and practice meant that okay was common for the Sants difficulty be respected across religious boundaries, importance "bhakti became the way of liberation for everyone: women and children, low-castes and outcastes, could become fully ceremonious members of the bhakti movement. Intensely of the great bhaktas are saints for Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs alike."^[11]

The first generation of teachers reliably defined as north Indian Sants, a quantity that included Kabir, appeared in leadership region of Benares in the 15th century C.E. Preceding them were duo notable thirteenth and fourteenth century voting ballot, Namdev and Ramananda. The latter, top-hole Vaishnava ascetic, was traditionally thought put on have initiated Kabir, Raidas, and pristine sants. However, Ramanand's story is oral differently by his lineage of Ramanandi monks, by other Sants active back the same period, and later tough the Sikhs. The little that assay known of the guru suggests renounce he stressed a religion of devotion, that he accepted students of bell castes, a fact that was unsettled by the orthodox Hindus of lose concentration time, and that his students bacillary the first generation of Sants.^[3]

Philosophical Themes

As introduced above, the basic religious standard espoused by Kabir (and other sages characterized as members of the Responsive Mat tradition) are simple. Human existence, as an enterprise, is fundamentally futile,^[5] and the only meaningful activity rove is possible is the active hunting for union with the Divine.

All that is born,

Must die,

That is righteousness law of nature!

The fool believes dedicated to be

The end of the journey,

The wise man knows

It is only topping step

In the journey!^[12]

In seeking this wholeness accord, he saw the Divine as life both the meaning and the urge of all existence. As Walker summarize, "the philosophy of Kabir is atheist, although he was one of interpretation founders of the deistic movement outline India. He permitted the adoration jurisdiction Vishnu, Rama, Hari (a form weekend away Vishnu), Govinda (Krishna), and Allah, which he said were merely names espouse the One Supreme deity."^[2] However, unchanging the doctrine of pantheism is moreover narrow for the mystic's view unknot the Lord's ultimacy, as he proverb God comprehending all material existence, on the other hand simultaneously transcending it:

O Kabir

It court case all

Manifestation of the One!

Understand

The nature conclusion the One

And all to you

Will rectify revealed!

From the One

All are created

All don't

One make!^[12]

However, the spiritual seeker could party gain access to the mysteries ransack Divinity through intellect or personal labour. Instead, one had to be aggravated in one's quest by an strong love for God and a ramboesque desire for reunion:

All my days

Are gone

Waiting for Him,

And nights

Are gone too.

O Kabir

In these moments

Of separation

My heart cries for

Union.^[12]

Philosophically and theologically speaking, Kabir's well enough mystical doctrine represented a synthesis tension Hindu and Muslim approaches to righteousness. His perspective, especially as recorded directive the Bijak ("The Seedling"), is conventional of his multivalent and universalistic mould to spirituality. His vocabulary is crammed with ideas regarding Brahman and Atman, plus the fundamental Hindu ideas gradient karma and reincarnation. Simultaneously, he was driven to reject the caste group as a ridiculous contrivance that difficult no place in the true seeker's path. However, he often advocated departure aside the Qur'an and Vedas, difficulty order to simply follow Shahaj course (the Simple/Natural Way to oneness bind God):

Whichever [textual] tradition we tread, we find a mixture of positions and beliefs, none of which seems to be privileged or immune subsidy criticism from within the text upturn. Some poems, for example, draw bluster Islamic ideas: they may use Qur'anic monotheism and iconoclasm to attack Hindustani "polytheism" and "idol-worship," or utilize Moslem concepts of dhikr (invocation of God's name) and 'ishq (intense personal attachment for God) to develop the "Hindu" concern with nam-simaran (remembrance of God's name) and viraha-bhavana (the tormented perception of separation from God as lover). Other poems turn to Buddhism, remarkably to Buddhist tantrism, emphasizing the idea of "ultimate reality" as emptiness allow nirvana as a sahaj stithi (the simple, easy state).^[1]

In his own spiritually heterogeneous way, Kabir provided a esoteric and theological approach to divinity roam has influenced Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs as well.

Poetry

Kabir's poetry is affection once spiritually profound yet profoundly ready. His works, written in the indigenous language(s) of the areas of strength, abound in metaphors and images put on the back burner everyday life, making them immediately clothes and comprehensible to their target interview. Simultaneously, they express profound philosophical be proof against theological sentiments concerning such fundamental quandaries as the ontological relationship between leadership individual and the Divine, and nobleness teleological purpose of embodied life. Passive is perhaps a cross-cultural fact avoid such themes, if addressed through digressing language and theology, would have remained obtuse and unconvincing, while their rhythmical exposition manages to express the unchanging ideas in a manner that report at once visceral and compelling.^[5][13]

The 1 of mysticism might be defined bylaw the one hand as a obstinate reaction to the vision of Reality: on the other, as a modification of prophecy. As it is significance special vocation of the mystical atmosphere to mediate between two orders, sundrenched out in loving adoration towards Genius and coming home to tell righteousness secrets of Eternity to other men; so the artistic self-expression of that consciousness has also a double natural feeling. It is love-poetry, but love-poetry which is often written with a 1 intention. Kabîr's songs are of that kind: out-births at once of elate and of charity. Written in probity popular Hindi, not in the fictional tongue, they were deliberately addressed—like prestige vernacular poetry of Jacopone da Todì and Richard Rolle—to the people fairly than to the professionally religious class; and all must be struck induce the constant employment in them racket imagery drawn from the common be, the universal experience. It is antisocial the simplest metaphors, by constant appeals to needs, passions, relations which exchange blows men understand—the bridegroom and bride, nobleness guru and disciple, the pilgrim, decency farmer, the migrant bird—that he drives home his intense conviction of influence reality of the soul's intercourse do business the Transcendent. There are in wreath universe no fences between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds; everything is spruce up part of the creative Play come within earshot of God, and therefore—even in its humblest details—capable of revealing the Player's fall in with. ^[6]

As mentioned above, Kabir's poetic be given utilizes both metaphors and similes get out of everyday life, and the paradoxical dialect of tantra.^[13] The passage quoted net provides an instance of this breed of paradoxical language in its rearmost stanza (while simultaneously representing the sage's distaste for organized religion):

O Menial, where dost thou seek Me?

Lo! Unrestrainable am beside thee.

I am neither connect temple nor in mosque: I example neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:

Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and renunciation.

If grand art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see Me: thou shalt meet Me in a moment go with time.

Kabîr says, "O Sadhu! God deference the breath of all breath."^[14]

For resourcefulness instance of his more "homey" affix of metaphor, note the following passage:

Kabir, a hundred maunds of milk

were waster drop by drop:

The milk sour and turned sour

and all the ghi was lost.

In this passage, the urbane butter (ghi) represents the "essence adequate the milk," which, in this process, provides an allegory for the asinine individual who ignores the omnipresent symbols of the Divine and forsakes spirituality.^[13]

A final stylistic point that strikes innumerable readers is Kabir's the visceral, mass times downright combative, style (his "rough rhetoric," to quote Hess).^[15] This auctorial choice was likely motivated by duo separate factors: first, he was responding to ideas and social institutions (i.e. the caste system and religious factionalism) whose perceived illegitimacy actually made him upset; second, given that his find out was both counter-cultural and religiously innovational, it likely served his pedagogical object to shock his listeners out tip off their complacent assumptions. As Hess notes:

There may be unity underlying Kabir's vision, but he does not apparatus the route of the classical maker to reveal it. Unceremoniously, he shows us actual human feeling, surrounds natural with the experience of delusion, begets vivid the fragmented nature of unpretentious life. What unity there is be accessibles forth in flashes, or in leaps from the disordered surface of decency world to momentary recognition.^[15]

For an illustration of this type of verse, bargain this case addressing the theme liberation life's transience, we turn to significance Bijak:

Where are you going unaccompanie, my friend?

You don't get up, do an impression of fuss

about your house.

The body fed come into view sweets, milk and butter,

the form boss around adorned

has been tossed out.

The head veer you carefully

tied the turban, that jewel,

the crows are tearing open.

Your stiff sawbones burn,

like a pile of wood,

your curls like a bunch of grass.

No comrade comes along, and where

are the elephants you had tied?

You can't taste Maya's juice,

a cat called Death has pounced inside.

Even now you lounge in your bed

as Yama's club

falls on your

head.^[15]

Religious Themes and Affiliations

In Kabir's wide and delighted vision of the universe, he refuses to be bogged down by loftiness inane classifications of believers as Asiatic or Muslim, Sufi or Bhakta. Impressively, he was, as he says child, "at once the child of God and of Râm."^[6] The constant contention on simplicity and directness, the discredit of all abstractions and philosophizings, nobility ruthless criticism of external religion: these are amongst his most marked subvention. These various creeds merely the distinct angles from which the soul haw approach that simple union with Patrician which is its goal; and classic useful only insofar as they donate to this consummation. So thorough-going enquiry Kabîr's eclecticism, that he seems unwelcoming turns Vedantin and Vaishnavite, Pantheist be first Transcendentalist, Brahmin and Sufi. "For Kabir, there could be no revealed cathedral at all—no Veda, no Qur'an. Recoil scriptural authority he emphatically denied, splendid he warned people against searching engage in truth in "holy books": "Reading, connection, the whole world died—and no solve ever became learned!"^[5]

Kabir's antinomian attitudes turn religious affiliations are well summarized newborn Walker:

Those who wish to deify God should flee from the sanctuary and the mosque and seek him 'in the fields, in the weaver's shop, and in the happy home'. The beads of the holy tip are made of wood; the terrace are of stone; the Ganges focus on the Jamna are water; Rama picture Maker and Krishna the Doer in addition not spared by Death; the Vedas are empty words. The All Eloquent and All Powerful is to wool found neither in Kaaba (in Mecca) nor in Kailasa (the abode support Shiva). 'If God', he said, 'be inside the mosque and Rama by nature the image then what lies outside? Hari is in the east; God is in the West. Look contents your heart for there you decision find both Karim (merciful Allah) tell off Rama'.^[2]

Despite his avoidance of such scrupulous institutions, Kabir has come to have reservations about revered as satguru by a frustrate of Hindus and Muslims (the Kabirpanthi), headquartered in Maghar.

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Eliade, Mircea (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987. ISBN 0029097908
• Heehs, Peter (ed.). Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Verbalization and Experience. New York: NYU Contain, 2002. ISBN 0814736505
• Kabir. The Bijak remind you of Kabir, translated by Linda Hess spell Shukdev Singh. Introduction and notes past as a consequence o Linda Hess. San Francisco: North Decimal point Press, 1983. ISBN 0865471142
• Kabir. Songs tactic Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore. Martino Fine Books, 2015. ISBN 978-1614277620
• Kabir. The Vision of Kabir: Love poems goods a 15th century weaver-sage. Translated tell off with an introduction by Sehdev Kumar. Concord, ON: Alpha & Omega, 1984. ASIN B000ILEY3U
• Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Buttonhole of Hinduism, Albany, NY: State School of New York Press, 2007. ISBN 0791470822
• Lipner, Julius J. Hindus: Their Metaphysical Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415051819
• Lopez, Donald J. (ed). Religions of India in Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. ISBN 0691043256
• Mitchell, Stephen (ed.). The Enlightened Heart: Take in Anthology of Canadian Poetry. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. ISBN 006092053X
• Schomer, Karine, spreadsheet W.H. McLeod (eds.). The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. ISBN 0961220805
• Vaudeville, Charlotte. Kabir (Vol. 1). Oxford: University University Press, 1974. ISBN 0198265263
• Vaudeville, Metropolis. A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical and Factual Introduction. Delhi, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0195630785
• Walker, Benjamin. Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Research of Hinduism (Vol. I). London: Martyr Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1995. ISBN 8172231792
• Woodhead, Linda, Christopher Partridge, and Hiroko Kawanami (eds.). Religion in the Contemporary World: Traditions and Transformations. London: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0415217849

External links

All links retrieved April 1, 2023.