ÿþ<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>KAB&#298R</TITLE> <style type="text/css"> .BODY { background-color: #EAF1F7; background-image: url('images/gtbh.jpg'); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; background-position: center; color: #0066CC;} .C1{text-align: justify;color: #0066CC;FONT-size: SMALL;FONT-family: Tahoma;} .BIB{text-align: center;color: #000099;FONT-size: SMALL;FONT-family: Tahoma;} .CONT{text-align: right;color: #FF0000;FONT-size: SMALL;FONT-family: Tahoma;} </style><META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="KAB*R"> <META http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></HEAD> <BODY class="BODY" oncontextmenu="return false" ondragstart="return false" onselectstart="return false"> <FONT ALIGN="JUSTIFY" FACE="Tahoma"> <p class="C1">&#65279KAB&#298R, from his full name Kab&#299r D&#257s (<i>kab&#299r</i>, Arabic for "great", <i>d&#257sa</i>, Sanskrit for "slave" or "servant"), is widely acknowledged as one of the great names in the literary and religious history of North India. He is one of the medieval Indian saints and S&#363f&#299s whose compositions figure in Sikh Scripture, the Gur&#363 Granth S&#257hib. From among all of them, Kab&#299r 's contribution is the largest, 227 <i>padas</i> in 17 <i>r&#257gas</i> and 237 <i>&#347lokas</i>. Under each <i>r&#257ga</i> or musical mode marking a section of the Holy Book, Kab&#299r's hymns appear at the head of Bhagat B&#257&#7751&#299, a generic name for the works of contributors other than the Gur&#363s. The presence of a substantial amount of Kab&#299r's verse in the Sikh Scripture and chronologically he being the predecessor of Gur&#363 N&#257nak, founder of the Sikh faith, led some Western scholars to describe him as the forerunner of Sikhism. Some have even called him the preceptor of Gur&#363 N&#257nak. There is, however, no evidence to prove that Gur&#363 N&#257nak and Kab&#299r had ever met : their periods of time in fact do not coincide. There is little to suggest that the former owed anything to the latter's teachings. Kab&#299r's compositions do figure in what are known as Goindv&#257l <i>poth&#299s</i>, anthologies of the hymns of the Gur&#363s along with those of some of the Bhaktas prepared in the time of Gur&#363 Amar D&#257s, N&#257nak III. They were included in the Gur&#363 Granth S&#257hib as well. But this happened much later when Gur&#363 Arjan, fifth in spiritual line from the Founder, compiled the Holy Book. Besides his own works and those of his four predecessors, he entered in it hymns of some saints and mystics, both Hindu and Muslim. Kab&#299r was one of them.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Kab&#299r lived in the fifteenth century after Christ, which was a time of great political upheaval in India. As is true of many other contemporary religious leaders, very little reliable information concerning Kab&#299r's life is available, though there is no dearth of legend gathered around him. According to traditional accounts, especially those by Kab&#299rpanth&#299s, as the followers of Kab&#299r are called, he lived for 120 years, from 1398 to 1518. Recent scholarship, however, has come to accept 1398 as the year of his birth but 1448 as the year of his death. Relying especially on the researches of Haz&#257r&#299 Pras&#257d Dvived&#299, Charlotte Vaudeville is inclined to lend credence to these dates.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Kab&#299r's life was centred around K&#257sh&#299, modern Ban&#257ras (V&#257r&#257&#7751as&#299). Legend has it that he was actually the son of a Br&#257hma&#7751 widow who abandoned him and that he was found by a Muslim weaver named N&#299r&#363, who adopted the boy and taught him the weaver's trade. It is not clear whether he ever married, but tradition gives him a wife named Lo&#299 and two children. His caste was that of <i>jul&#257h&#257</i> and from his sayings (for instance, GG, 524) it seems clear that he followed (though in a somewhat erratic manner) his caste's hereditary occupation of weaving. Latter-day studies have established a N&#257th background for the <i>jul&#257h&#257s</i> as a strong possibility. On the basis of this modern research, it seems probable that Kab&#299r belonged to a family of non-celibate yog&#299s converted, not long before and to a considerable degree superficially, to Islam. Though Kab&#299r's name is most certainly a Muslim one, his knowledge of Islam seems to have been slight. Rather, there is in his poetical utterances <i>(b&#257&#7751&#299)</i> a wealth of Ha&#7789hayoga terminology and a thought structure which bears obvious resemblances to that of the N&#257ths. This is not to infer, however, that Kab&#299r was a N&#257th yog&#299. In addition to the yog&#299c conception that all truth is experimental, i.e. to be realized within the body with the aid of psycho physical-practices, concentration, control of breathing and sexual practices, thus making the body incorruptible and the yogis immortal, two other currents had already been added to the general religious stream of Kab&#299r's time ----Vai&#7779&#7751ava devotion <i>(bhakt&#299)</i>, which had come from the South, and Islamic mysticism (S&#363f&#299sm) which had been gaining influence in northwest India since the influx of S&#363f&#299 saints in the thirteenth century. Kab&#299r's debt to the <i>bhaktas</i> is evident in the primacy given to loving devotion in his sayings. His concept of love as a path of suffering may possibly indicate, in some measure, a debt to the S&#363f&#299s. These and other elements from N&#257th tradition, <i>bhakt&#299</i> and S&#363f&#299sm, Kab&#299r combined with his own mystical nature and produced the synthesis which is the distinctive religion of Kab&#299r. A strong tradition designates Sv&#257m&#299 R&#257m&#257nand as his <i>gur&#363</i>, but the numerous references which Kab&#299r does make to a <i>gur&#363</i> point unmistakably to the "True Gur&#363" within (Satgur&#363), the voice of God within the human soul.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the fifteenth century, Ban&#257ras was, even more than it is today, the fortress of Br&#257hma&#7751ic orthodoxy and orthopraxis where the priestly elite held sway as masters. For the erudite Pa&#7751&#7693its and their holy scriptures, for the priestly <i>pa&#7751&#7693&#257s</i> and their idols, for the immense mystification and exploitation of the ignorant and credulous masses, Kab&#299r felt aversion joined with indignation. No less was the satirical wit exercised by him on the superstitions of popular Hinduism. Not only did lie condemn the worship of idols, he also rejected all the proceedings and ceremonies, purificatory bathing, ritual feasts, pilgrimages and all sorts of other practices by which popular Hindu devotion manifested itself.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Because of his open condemnation of established and popular religion, Kab&#299r became an object of the wrath of both Hindus and Muslims in and around Ban&#257ras. Popular with many among the masses but persecuted by the ruling classes of Ban&#257ras, it is entirely likely, as maintained in tradition, that Kab&#299r spent less and less time at his loom and took to an itinerant life-style. Exactly where he went and how long he stayed can only be matters of conjecture. It is unanimously agreed that Kab&#299r's final days were spent not in Ban&#257ras, thought by many to be the most auspicious place for a Hindu to die at since death there leads automatically to heaven, but in the small village of Magahar, 43 km southeast of Bast&#299. It is said that anyone who died in this unfortunate place would automatically be reborn an ass. Thus, even in death Kab&#299r demonstrated what he had given his entire life to doing, i.e. overruling popular religious prejudice and practice. He rejected entirely all the external signs of religion. He acknowledged no caste distinctions, saw no virtue in asceticism, fasting and almsgiving, and belittled the six schools of Hindu philosophy. The Hindu theogony was a clear rejection. Belief in a Supreme Being was certainly central to his religious understanding. Although he used the name R&#257m frequently, it is obvious throughout his utterances that R&#257ma, the son of Dasaratha and incarnation of Vi&#7779&#7751u, was not what he meant thereby. In two of the <i>&#347lokas</i> by Kab&#299r in the Gur&#363 Granth S&#257hib, he clearly says that while uttering R&#257m, R&#257m, one must understand the distinction between R&#257ma (king of Ayodhy&#257) who was the bearer of a single body and was one of the many of his kind, and R&#257m (God), the Lord of wonders (GG, 1374). It is within a person's soul that God may, by grace, reveal Himself. The revelation comes, however, only to him who has prepared himself to receive it. The way of preparation is the path of love, a love addressed directly to the supreme Lord, who is both transcendent and immanent, and a love which will inevitably involve long periods in the anguish of separation (viraha) akin to the "dark night of the soul" of which Western mystics speak. God, the True Gur&#363 (Satgur&#363), discharges the arrow of the Word (&#347abda ) and man is "slain" that in "death" he may find "true life" (GG, 1374). This is to be found in mystical union, an ineffable experience of dissolution (sam&#257dh&#299) in the Divine.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is not surprising, therefore, that Kab&#299r's satire was brought to bear not simply on the vices and weaknesses of men but reached through and beyond them to the very systems themselves, which they defended or pretended to represent. It was the authority of the Vedas and the Qur&#257n more than the authority of the Pa&#7751&#7693it or the Q&#257z&#299 which Kab&#299r attacked. More precisely, he rebelled against the pretension of resolving, by means of books or by way of authority, the mystery of the human conditions and the problem of liberation <i>(mok&#7779a)</i>.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is inevitably much that must remain obscure in Kab&#299r 's attempts to describe his experiences, for they are fundamentally mystical in quality, and, as Kab&#299r himself repeatedly asserted, ultimately inexpressible. Throughout his utterances the emphasis is on interiorization. He constantly stressed that man ought to turn his attention away from the exterior world, from all sensible forms, in order to withdraw into the innermost depth of his soul where it is that God dwells. Monistic concepts, particularly as held and articulated by N&#257th yog&#299s, certainly influenced Kab&#299r, but it seems clear from what he indicates of his own understanding of the nature of his relationship with God that his thought must be regarded as monotheistic and not monistic.</p> <p class="C1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Kab&#299r composed no systematic treatise, rather his work consists of many short didactic poems, often expressed in terse vigorous language in the form of <i>padas, doh&#257s</i> and <i>ramain&#299s</i>. Indeed, in some of his verses there is a tendency to rugged coarseness as fit expression for his unsparing invective. Besides his works recorded in 1604 in the Gur&#363 Granth S&#257hib by Gur&#363 Arjan, N&#257nak V, and preserved inviolate since, two other collections exist ---- the <i>Kab&#299r Granth&#257val&#299</i> and <i>B&#299jak</i>. From among these two the latter is not as old as Kab&#299r's followers, for whom it has a scriptural status, claim it to be. Kab&#299r is, however, often obscure and his meaning can only be understood through an acquaintance with traditional allegorical images, some of which were standard among the Sant poets and some unique to Kab&#299r. A further complicating factor is the riddlelike use of paradox (ul&#7789ab&#257&#7749s&#299) so characteristic of much of Kab&#299r's poetry. At the same time, he was quick to find illustrations of moral and spiritual truth in the incidents of everyday life, and many of his similes and metaphors are very striking.</p> </font> <p class="BIB"> BIBLIOGRAPHY<p class="C1"><ol class="C1"><li class="C1"> Jodh Singh, <i>Kabir</i>. Patiala, 1971<BR> <li class="C1"> Westcott, G.H., <i>Kabir and the Kabir Panth</i>. Cawnpore (Kanpur), 1907<BR> <li class="C1"> Mohan Singh, <i>Kabir and Bhakti Movement</i>. Lahore, 1934<BR> <li class="C1"> Machwe, Prabhakar, <i>Kabir</i>. Delhi, 1968<BR> <li class="C1"> Macauliffe, Max Arthur, <i>The Sikh Religion</i>. Oxford, 1909<BR> <li class="C1"> Vaudeville, Charlotte, <i>Kabir Granthavali</i>. Pondichery, 1957<BR> <li class="C1"> Tiw&#257&#7771&#299, P&#257rasn&#257th, <i>Kab&#299r</i>. Delhi, 1968<BR> </ol><p class="CONT">David C. Scott<br></p><BR> </font><img src="counter.aspx" width="1px" height="1px" alt=""></HTML></BODY>