Kabīr

Kabīr was a poet and saint of Varanasi in the fifteenth century; his dates are uncertain, and traditions place his life anywhere from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. He belonged to a family of Muslim weavers, and his poems often speak of the loom. Legend makes him a disciple of the Vaishnava teacher Rāmānand, and tells that at his death Hindus and Muslims quarrelled over his body, and found only flowers beneath the shroud.

Kabīr belonged to the movement of the sants, poet-saints of northern India who worshipped a God without form, and taught in the vernacular for ordinary people. His sharp, plain-spoken verses mock the rituals, pilgrimages and pride of both Brahmins and mullahs, and point to the God who is found within, through the Name and the true teacher.

His poems were sung and handed down orally, and survive in three main collections: the Bījak of the Kabīr Panth, the sect that reveres him; the Rajasthani collections; and the many hymns in the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib. Rabindranath Tagore’s English versions of 1915 made him known in the West, though they are based on a late collection whose authenticity scholars doubt.