Songs of Kabir
Songs of KabirINTRODUCTIONKABIR'S POEMSchapter4chapter5chapter6chapter7chapter8Copyright
Songs of Kabir
Kabir
INTRODUCTION
The poet Kabîr, 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,
he became in early life a disciple of the celebrated Hindu ascetic
Râmânanda. Râmânanda had brought to Northern India the religious
revival which Râmânuja, the great twelfth-century reformer of
Brâhmanism, 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 Vedânta philosophy, the exaggerated
monism which that philosophy proclaimed. It took in Râmânuja'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 Gîtâ, there was in its
mediæval revival a large element of syncretism. Râmânanda, through
whom its spirit is said to have reached Kabîr, 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, Attâr, Sâdî, Jalâlu'ddîn
Rûmî, and Hâfiz, 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
Brâhmanism. 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 Kabîr'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 Kabîr 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 Brâhman
or Sûfî, Vedântist or Vaishnavite. He is, as he says himself, "at
once the child of Allah and of Râm." 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.
Kabîr'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 Sûfî and
a Brâhman 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. Sûfîs and Brâhmans appear to
have met in disputation: the most spiritual members of both creeds
frequenting the teachings of Râmânanda, whose reputation was then
at its height. The boy Kabîr, in whom the religious passion was
innate, saw in Râmânanda 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 Râmânanda 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. Kabîr then declared that
he had received the mantra of initiation from Râmânanda's lips, and
was by it admitted to discipleship. In spite of the protests of
orthodox Brâhmans 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 Râmânanda had sought to establish in thought. Râmânanda
appears to have accepted him, and though Mohammedan legends speak
of the famous Sûfî Pîr, Takkî of Jhansî, as Kabîr'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 Kabîr'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 Râmânanda, joining in the theological and
philosophical arguments which his master held with all the great
Mullahs and Brâhmans of his day; and to this source we may perhaps
trace his acquaintance with the terms of Hindu and Sûfî philosophy.
He may or may not have submitted to the traditional education of
the Hindu or the Sûfî 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 Kabîr 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." [Footnote: Cf. Poems Nos. XXI, XL, XLIII, LXVI,
LXXVI.]
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, Kabîr 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 Kailâsh." 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.
[Footnote: Poems I, II, XLI.] 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 Purâna and the Koran are mere words:
lifting up the curtain, I have seen.
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[Footnote: Poems XLII, LXV, LXVII.]