Kabir
INTRODUCTION
THE
poet Kabīr, a selection from whose songs is here for the first
time offered to English readers, is one of the most interesting
personalities in the history of Indian mysticism. Born in or near
Benares, of Mohammedan parents, and probably about the year 1440,
be became in early life a disciple of the celebrated Hindu ascetic
Rāmānanda. Rāmānanda had brought to Northern India the religious
revival which Rāmānuja, the great twelfth-century reformer of
Brāhmanism, had initiated in the South. This revival was in part a
reaction against the increasing formalism of the orthodox cult, in
part an assertion of the demands of the heart as against the
intense intellectualism of the Vedānta philosophy, the exaggerated
monism which that philosophy proclaimed. It took in Rāmānuja's
preaching the form of an ardent personal devotion to the God
Vishnu, as representing the personal aspect of the Divine Nature:
that mystical "religion of love" which everywhere makes its
appearance at a certain level of spiritual culture, and which
creeds and philosophies are powerless to kill.
Though such a devotion is indigenous in Hinduism, and finds
expression in many passages of the Bhagavad Gītā, there was in its
medięval revival a large element of syncretism. Rāmānanda, through
whom its spirit is said to have reached Kabīr, appears to have
been a man of wide religious culture, and full of missionary
enthusiasm. Living at the moment in which the impassioned poetry
and deep philosophy of the great Persian mystics, Attār, Sādī,
Jalālu'ddīn Rūmī, and Hāfiz, were exercising a powerful influence
on the religious thought of India, he dreamed of reconciling this
intense and personal Mohammedan mysticism with the traditional
theology of Brāhmanism. Some have regarded both these great
religious leaders as influenced also by Christian thought and
life: but as this is a point upon which competent authorities hold
widely divergent views, its discussion is not attempted here. We
may safely assert, however, that in their teachings, two--perhaps
three--apparently antagonistic streams of intense spiritual
culture met, as Jewish and Hellenistic thought met in the early
Christian Church: and it is one of the outstanding characteristics
of Kabīr's genius that he was able in his poems to fuse them into
one.
A
great religious reformer, the founder of a sect to which nearly a
million northern Hindus still belong, it is yet supremely as a
mystical poet that Kabīr lives for us. His fate has been that of
many revealers of Reality. A hater of religious exclusivism, and
seeking above all things to initiate men into the liberty of the
children of God, his followers have honoured his memory by
re-erecting in a new place the barriers which he laboured to cast
down. But his wonderful songs survive, the spontaneous expressions
of his vision and his love; and it is by these, not by the
didactic teachings associated with his name, that he makes his
immortal appeal to the heart. In these poems a wide range of
mystical emotion is brought into play: from the loftiest
abstractions, the most otherworldly passion for the Infinite, to
the most intimate and personal realization of God, expressed in
homely metaphors and religious symbols drawn indifferently from
Hindu and Mohammedan belief. It is impossible to say of their
author that he was Brāhman or Sūfī, Vedāntist or Vaishnavite. He
is, as he says himself, "at once the child of Allah and of Rām."
That Supreme Spirit Whom he knew and adored, and to Whose joyous
friendship he sought to induct the souls of other men, transcended
whilst He included all metaphysical categories, all credal
definitions; yet each contributed something to the description of
that Infinite and Simple Totality Who revealed Himself, according
to their measure, to the faithful lovers of all creeds.
Kabīr's
story is surrounded by contradictory legends, on none of which
reliance can be placed. Some of these emanate from a Hindu, some
from a Mohammedan source, and claim him by turns as a Sūfī and a
Brāhman saint. His name, however, is practically a conclusive
proof of Moslem ancestry: and the most probable tale is that which
represents him as the actual or adopted child of a Mohammedan
weaver of Benares, the city in which the chief events of his life
took place.
In
fifteenth-century Benares the syncretistic tendencies of Bhakti
religion had reached full development. Sūfīs and Brāhmans appear
to have met in disputation: the most spiritual members of both
creeds frequenting the teachings of Rāmānanda, whose reputation
was then at its height. The boy Kabīr, in whom the religious
passion was innate, saw in Rāmānanda his destined teacher; but
knew how slight were the chances that a Hindu guru would accept a
Mohammedan as disciple. He therefore hid upon the steps of the
river Ganges, where Rāmānanda was accustomed to bathe; with the
result that the master, coming down to the water, trod upon his
body unexpectedly, and exclaimed in his astonishment, "Ram!
Ram!"--the name of the incarnation under which he worshipped God.
Kabīr then declared that he had received the mantra of initiation
from Rāmānanda's lips, and was by it admitted to discipleship. In
spite of the protests of orthodox Brāhmans and Mohammedans, both
equally annoyed by this contempt of theological landmarks, he
persisted in his claim; thus exhibiting in action that very
principle of religious synthesis which Rāmānanda had sought to
establish in thought. Rāmānanda appears to have accepted him, and
though Mohammedan legends speak of the famous Sūfī Pīr, Takkī of
Jhansī, as Kabīr's master in later life, the Hindu saint is the
only human teacher to whom in his songs he acknowledges
indebtedness.
The
little that we know of Kabīr's life contradicts many current ideas
concerning the Oriental mystic. Of the stages of discipline
through which he passed, the manner in which his spiritual genius
developed, we are completely ignorant. He seems to have remained
for years the disciple of Rāmānanda, joining in the theological
and philosophical arguments which his master held with all the
great Mullahs and Brāhmans of his day; and to this source we may
perhaps trace his acquaintance with the terms of Hindu and Sūfī
philosophy. He may or may not have submitted to the traditional
education of the Hindu or the Sūfī contemplative: it is clear, at
any rate, that he never adopted the life of the professional
ascetic, or retired from the world in order to devote himself to
bodily mortifications and the exclusive pursuit of the
contemplative life. Side by side with his interior life of
adoration, its artistic expression in music and words--for he was
a skilled musician as well as a poet--he lived the sane and
diligent life of the Oriental craftsman. All the legends agree on
this point: that Kabīr was a weaver, a simple and unlettered man,
who earned his living at the loom. Like Paul the tentmaker, Boehme
the cobbler, Bunyan the tinker, Tersteegen the ribbon-maker, he
knew how to combine vision and industry; the work of his hands
helped rather than hindered the impassioned meditation of his
heart. Hating mere bodily austerities, he was no ascetic, but a
married man, the father of a family--a circumstance which Hindu
legends of the monastic type vainly attempt to conceal or
explain--and it was from out of the heart of the common life that
he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works
corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he
extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal
existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation;
pouring contempt--upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who
"has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat," and
on all who think it necessary to flee a world pervaded by love,
joy, and beauty--the proper theatre of man's quest--in order to
find that One Reality Who has "spread His form of love throughout
all the world."
It
does not need much experience of ascetic literature to recognize
the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a time and
place. From the point of view of orthodox sanctity, whether Hindu
or Mohammedan, Kabīr was plainly a heretic; and his frank dislike
of all institutional religion, all external observance--which was
as thorough and as intense as that of the Quakers
themselves--completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion was
concerned, his reputation as a dangerous man. The "simple union"
with Divine Reality which he perpetually extolled, as alike the
duty and the joy of every soul, was independent both of ritual and
of bodily austerities; the God whom he proclaimed was "neither in
Kaaba nor in Kailāsh." Those who sought Him needed not to go far;
for He awaited discovery everywhere, more accessible to "the
washerwoman and the carpenter" than to the self--righteous holy
man.[1] Therefore the whole apparatus of piety, Hindu
and Moslem alike--the temple and mosque, idol and holy water,
scriptures and priests--were denounced by this inconveniently
clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things
intervening between the soul and its love--
|
The images are all
lifeless, they cannot speak:
I know, for I have cried aloud to them.
The Purāna and the Koran are mere words:
lifting up the curtain, I have seen. |
This
sort of thing cannot be tolerated by any organized church; and it
is not surprising that Kabīr, having his head-quarters in Benares,
the very centre of priestly influence, was subjected to
considerable persecution. The well-known legend of the beautiful
courtesan sent by Brāhmans to tempt his virtue, and converted,
like the Magdalen, by her sudden encounter with the initiate of a
higher love, pre serves the memory of the fear and dislike
With
which he was regarded by the ecclesiastical powers. Once at least,
after the performance of a supposed miracle of healing, he was
brought before the Emperor Sikandar Lodi, and charged with
claiming the possession of divine powers. But Sikandar Lodi, a
ruler of considerable culture, was tolerant of the eccentricities
of saintly persons belonging to his own faith. Kabīr, being of
Mohammedan birth, was outside the authority of the Brāhmans, and
technically classed with the Sūfīs, to whom great theological
latitude was allowed. Therefore, though he was banished in the
interests of peace from Benares, his life was spared. This seems
to have happened in 1495, when he was nearly sixty years of age;
it is the last event in his career of which we have definite
knowledge. Thenceforth he appears to have moved about amongst
various cities of northern India, the centre of a group of
disciples; continuing in exile that life of apostle and poet of
love to which, as he declares in one of his songs, he was destined
"from the beginning of time." In 1518, an old man, broken in
health, and with hands so feeble that he could no longer make the
music which he loved, he died at Maghar near Gorakhpur.
A
beautiful legend tells us that after his death his Mohammedan and
Hindu disciples disputed the possession of his body; which the
Mohammedans wished to bury, the Hindus to burn. As they argued
together, Kabīr appeared before them, and told them to lift the
shroud and look at that which lay beneath. They did so, and found
in the place of the corpse a heap of flowers; half of which were
buried by the Mohammedans at Maghar, and half carried by the
Hindus to the holy city of Benares to be burned--fitting
conclusion to a life which had made fragrant the most beautiful
doctrines of two great creeds.
Songs of
Kabir
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