Kabir
Kabir
| Kabir | |
|---|---|
An 1825 CE painting depicts Kabir weaving.
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| Born | uncertain (1398 or 1440 CE)[1][2] Lahartara near Kashi (present-day Varanasi) |
| Died | uncertain (1448 or 1518 CE)[1][2] Maghar |
| Occupation | Weaver, poet |
| Known for | influencing the Bhakti movement, Sant Mat and Kabir Panth movements. Having hymns included in the Guru Granth Sahib |
| Movement | Bhakti (Ramananda's disciple) |
| Parents | |
Kabir (Hindi: कबीर, IAST: Kabīr[4]) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Adi Granth.[5][6][7] His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strongly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader Ramananda.[5]
Kabir is known for being critical of both Hinduism and Islam, stating that the former was misguided by the Vedas and the latter by the Quran, and questioning their meaningless rites of initiation such as the sacred thread and circumcision respectively.[5][8] During his lifetime, he was threatened by both Hindus and Muslims for his views.[1]:4 When he died, both Hindus and Muslims he had inspired claimed him as theirs.[6]
Kabir suggested that True God is with the person who is on the path of righteousness, considered all creatures on earth as his own self, and who is passively detached from the affairs of the world.[6] To know God, suggested Kabir, meditate with the mantra Rāma, Rāma.[1]:4
Kabir's legacy survives and continues through the Kabir panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognises him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects. Its members are known as Kabir panthis.[9]
Early life and background[edit]
The years of Kabir's birth and death are unclear.[10][11]:14 Some historians favor 1398–1448 as the period Kabir lived,[1][11]:5 while others favor 1440–1518.[2][5][11]:106
Many legends, inconsistent in their details, exist about his birth family and early life. According to one version, Kabir was born to a Brahmin unwed mother in Varanasi, by a seedless conception and delivered through the palm of her hand,[1]:5 who then abandoned him in a basket floating in a pond, and baby Kabir was picked up then raised by a Muslim family.[1]:4–5[5] However, modern scholarship has abandoned these legends for lack of historical evidence, and Kabir is widely accepted to have been born and brought up in a family of Muslim weavers.[1]:3–5 According to the Indologist Wendy Doniger, Kabir was born into a Muslim family and various birth legends attempt to "drag Kabir back over the line from Muslim to Hindu".[12]
Some scholars state that Kabir's parents may have been recent converts to Islam, they and Kabir were likely unaware of Islamic orthodox tradition, and are likely to have been following the Nath (Shaiva Yogi) school of Hinduism. This view, while contested by other scholars, has been summarized by Charlotte Vaudeville as follows:[13]
Kabir is widely believed to have become one of the many disciples of the Bhakti poet-sant Swami Ramananda in Varanasi, known for devotional Vaishnavism with a strong bent to monist Advaita philosophy teaching that God was inside every person, everything.[6][14][15][16]
Some legends assert that Kabir never married and led a celibate's life. Most scholars conclude from historical literature that this legend is also untrue, that Kabir was likely married, his wife probably was named Dhania, they had at least one son named Kamal and a daughter named Kamali.[17]
Kabir's family is believed to have lived in the locality of Kabir Chaura in Varanasi. Kabīr maṭha (कबीरमठ), a maṭha located in the back alleys of Kabir Chaura, celebrates his life and times.[18] Accompanying the property is a house named Nīrūṭīlā (नीरू टीला) which houses Niru and Nima's graves.[19] The house also accommodates students and scholars who live there and study Kabir's work.
Poetry[edit]
Kabir composed poems in a pithy and earthy style, fused with imagery. His poems were in vernacular Hindi, borrowing from various dialects including Avadhi, Braj, and Bhojpuri.[20] They cover various aspects of life and call for a loving devotion for God.[1]:4–6
Kabir and his followers named his verbally composed poems of wisdom as "bāņīs" (utterances). These include songs and couplets, called variously dohe, śalokā (Sanskrit: ślokā), or sākhī (Sanskrit: sākşī). The latter term means "witness", implying the poems to be evidence of the Truth.[22]
Literary works with compositions attributed to Kabir include Kabir Bijak, Kabir Parachai, Sakhi Granth, Adi Granth (Sikh), and Kabir Granthawali (Rajasthan).[23]However, except for Adi Granth, significantly different versions of these texts exist and it is unclear which one is more original; for example, Kabir Bijak exists in two major recensions.[24] The most in depth scholarly analysis of various versions and translations are credited to Charlotte Vaudeville, the 20th century French scholar on Kabir.[24]
Kabir's poems were verbally composed in the 15th century and transmitted viva voce through the 17th century. Kabir Bijak was compiled and written down for the first time in the 17th century.[25] Scholars state that this form of transmission, over geography and across generations bred change, interpolation and corruption of the poems.[25] Furthermore, whole songs were creatively fabricated and new couplets inserted by unknown authors and attributed to Kabir, not because of dishonesty but out of respect for him and the creative exuberance of anonymous oral tradition found in Indian literary works.[25] Scholars have sought to establish poetry that truly came from Kabir and its historicity value.[26]
Authenticity[edit]
Numerous poems are attributed to Kabir, but scholars now doubt the authenticity of many songs credited to him.[1]:6
Rabindranath Tagore's English translation and compilation One Hundred Poems of Kabir was first published in 1915, and has been a classic reprinted and widely circulated particularly in the West.[27][28] Scholars believe only six[29] of its hundred poems are authentic,[30] and they have questioned whether Tagore introduced then prevalent theological perspectives onto Kabir, as he translated poems in early 20th century that he presumed to be of Kabir's.[31] The unauthentic poems, nevertheless belong to the Bhakti movement in medieval India, and may be by admirers of Kabir who lived later.[27]
Philosophy[edit]
Some commentators suggest Kabir's philosophy to be a syncretic synthesis of Hinduism and Islam, but scholars widely state that this is false and a misunderstanding of Kabir.[1]:5 He adopted their terminology and concepts, but vigorously criticized them both.[1]:5–6[32] He questioned the need for any holy book, as stated in Kabir Granthavali as follows:
Many scholars interpret Kabir's philosophy to be questioning the need for religion, rather than attempting to propose either Hindu-Muslim unity or an independent synthesis of a new religious tradition.[34] Kabir rejected the hypocrisy and misguided rituals evident in various religious practices of his day, including those in Islam and Hinduism.[34]
In Bijak, Kabir mocks the practice of praying to avatars such as Buddha of Buddhism, by asserting "don't call the master Buddha, he didn't put down devils".[1]:45[35]Kabir urged people to look within and consider all human beings as manifestation of God's living forms:
Charlotte Vaudeville states that the philosophy of Kabir and other sants of the Bhakti movement is the seeking of the Absolute. The notion of this Absolute is nirguna which, writes Vaudeville, is same as "the Upanishadic concept of the Brahman-Atman and the monistic Advaita interpretation of the Vedantic tradition, which denies any distinction between the soul [within a human being] and God, and urges man to recognize within himself his true divine nature".[37] Vaudeville notes that this philosophy of Kabir and other Bhakti sants is self-contradictory, because if God is within, then that would be a call to abolish all external bhakti. This inconsistency in Kabir's teaching may have been differentiating "union with God" from the concept of "merging into God, or Oneness in all beings". Alternatively, states Vaudeville, the saguna prema-bhakti (tender devotion) may have been prepositioned as the journey towards self-realization of the nirguna Brahman, a universality beyond monotheism.[38]
David N. Lorenzen and Adrián Muñoz trace these ideas of God in Kabir's philosophy as nirguna Brahman to those in Adi Shankara's theories on Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, albeit with some differences.[39]
Influence of Islam[edit]
Lorenzen in his review of Kabir philosophy and poetry writes, "the extent to which Kabir borrowed elements from Islam is controversial. Most recent scholars have argued that he simply rejected Islam and took almost all his ideas and beliefs from the Hindu tradition. Contemporary Kabir Panth sadhus makes roughly the same argument. Most of the vocabulary used in his songs and verses is borrowed directly from the Hindu tradition. Nonetheless it is hard not to see the influence of Islam in his insistence on devotion to a single God, a god Kabir most often calls Ram".[39]
Some scholars state that the sexual imagery in some of Kabir's poems reflect a mystic Sufi Islam influence, wherein Kabir inverts the traditional Sufi representation of a God-woman and devotee-man longing for a union, and instead uses the imagery of Lord-husband and devotee-bride.[40] Other scholars, in contrast, state that it is unclear if Sufi ideas influenced Bhakti sants like Kabir or it was vice versa, suggesting that they probably co-developed through mutual interaction.[41]
Kabir left Islam, states Ronald McGregor, but that does not mean Kabir adopted Hindu beliefs.[7] Kabir, nevertheless, criticized practices such as killing and eating a cow by Muslims, in a manner Hindus criticized those practices:[42]
Persecution and social impact[edit]
Kabir's couplets suggest he was persecuted for his views, while he was alive. He stated, for example,
Kabir response to persecution and slander was to welcome it. He called the slanderer a friend, expressed gratefulness for the slander, for it brought him closer to his god.[43] Winand Callewaert translates a poem attributed to Kabir in the warrior-ascetic Dadupanthi tradition within Hinduism, as follows:[44]
The legends about Kabir describe him as the underdog who nevertheless is victorious in trials by a Sultan, a Brahmin, a Qazi, a merchant, a god or a goddess. The ideological messages in the legends appealed to the poor and oppressed. According to David Lorenzen, legends about Kabir reflect a "protest against social discrimination and economic exploitation", they present the perspective of the poor and powerless, not the rich and powerful.[45] However, many scholars doubt that these legends of persecution are authentic, point to the lack of any corroborating evidence, consider it unlikely that a Muslim Sultan would take orders from Hindu Brahmins or Kabir's own mother demanded that the Sultan punish Kabir, and question the historicity of the legends on Kabir.[46]
Legacy[edit]
Kabir's literature legacy was championed by two of his disciples, Bhāgodās and Dharmadās. Songs of Kabir were collected by Kshitimohan Sen from mendicants across India, these were then translated to English by Rabindranath Tagore.[47]
New English translations of Songs of Kabir is done by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra ."It is Mehrotra who has succeeded in capturing the ferocity and improvisational energy of Kabir’s poetry".[48]
Kabir's legacy continues to be carried forward by the Kabir panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognises him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects. This community was founded centuries after Kabir died, in various parts of India, over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[49] Its members, known as Kabir panthis, are estimated to be around 9.6 million.[citation needed] They are spread over north and central India, as well as dispersed with the Indian diaspora across the world, up from 843,171 in the 1901 census.[50]
Kabir, Nanak and the Guru Granth Sahib[edit]
Kabir's verses were incorporated into Adi Granth, the scripture of Sikhism, with verses attributed to Kabir constituting the largest non-Sikh contribution.[7]
Some scholars state Kabir's ideas were one of the many influences[51][52] on Guru Nanak, who went on to found Sikhism in the fifteenth century. Other Sikh scholars disagree, stating there are differences between the views and practices of Kabir and Nanak.[49][53][54]
Harpreet Singh, quoting Hew McLeod, states, "In its earliest stage Sikhism was clearly a movement within the Hindu tradition; Nanak was raised a Hindu and eventually belonged to the Sant tradition of northern India, a movement associated with the great poet and mystic Kabir."[55] Surjit Singh Gandhi[better source needed]disagrees, and writes "Guru Nanak in his thought pattern as well as in action model was fundamentally different from Kabir and for that matter other radical Bhaktas or saints (saint has been erroneously used for such Bhaktas by Mcleod). Hence to consider Kabir as an influence on Guru Nanak is wrong, both historically and theologically".[53]
McLeod places Nanak in the Sant tradition that included Kabir, and states that their fundamental doctrines were reproduced by Nanak. JS Grewal contests this view and states that McLeod's approach is limiting in its scope because, "McLeod takes into account only concepts, ignores practices altogether, he concentrates on similarities and ignores all differences".[56]
Kabir's poetry today[edit]
There are several allusions to Kabir's poetry in mainstream Indian film music. The title song of the Sufi fusion band Indian Ocean's album Jhini is an energetic rendering of Kabir's famous poem "The intricately woven blanket", with influences from Indian folk, Sufi traditions and progressive rock.
Noted classical singer, late Kumar Gandharva, is widely recognized for his wonderful rendering of Kabir's poetry.
Documentary filmmaker Shabnam Virmani, from the Kabir Project, has produced a series of documentaries and books tracing Kabir's philosophy, music and poetry in present-day India and Pakistan. The documentaries feature Indian folk singers such as Prahlad Tipanya, Mukhtiyar Ali and the Pakistani Qawwal Fareed Ayaz.
The album No Stranger Here by Shubha Mudgal, Ursula Rucker draws heavily from Kabir's poetry. Kabir's poetry has appeared prominently in filmmaker Anand Gandhi's films Right Here Right Now (2003) and Continuum. Pakistani Sufi singer Abida Parveen has sung Kabir in a full album.
Criticism[edit]
Kabir has been criticised for his depiction of women. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh states, "Kabir's opinion of women is contemptuous and derogatory".[54] Wendy Doniger concludes Kabir had a misogynist bias.[54] For Kabir, states Schomer, woman is "Kali nagini (a black cobra), kunda naraka ka (the pit of hell), juthani jagata ki (the refuse of the world)". According to Kabir, a woman prevents man's spiritual progress.[54]
Singh states that this outlook of Kabir about women and their role in human quest for spirituality[54] was not shared with Nanak who founded Sikhism. Surjit Singh Gandhi also agrees with this.[53]
In contrast to Singh's interpretation of Kabir's gender views, Dass interprets Rag Asa section of Adi Granth as Kabir asking a young married woman to stop veiling her face, and not to adopt such social habits.[57] Dass adds that Kabir's poetry can be interpreted in two ways, one literally where the woman refers to human female, another allegorically where woman is symbolism for his own soul and Rama is the Lord-husband.[58]
See also[edit]