Kabīr

Kabīr is a towering figure of North Indian devotional poetry whose actual biography is largely irrecoverable behind legend. Tradition makes him a low-caste weaver (julāhā) of Varanasi, raised in a Muslim weaving family yet drawn to a Hindu Sant milieu (often linked, traditionally, to the teacher Rāmānanda). His pithy, often biting verses (dohās and pads) ridicule the externals of both Hindu and Muslim religion — idol and mosque, pilgrimage and ritual bathing, brahmin and qāzī alike — and call instead for direct, inward devotion to a formless, nameless God (nirguṇa). His influence runs across traditions: he is claimed by the Kabīr Panth sect, a number of his verses are enshrined in the Sikh Gurū Granth Sāhib, and he is beloved across communal lines. His dates are uncertain (conventionally c. 1440–1518, with a competing 1398–1448 reckoning); the legend that, at his death at Maghar, his body was found to be flowers contested between Hindu and Muslim followers is itself a parable of his message. Much attributed to him is of later composition.