Page:One Hundred Poems of Kabir - translated by Rabindranath Tagore, Evelin Underhill.pdf/5

 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. Sufis and Brahmans appear to have met in disputation: the most spiritual members of both creeds frequenting the teachings of Ramananda, whose reputation was then at its height. The boy Kabir, in whom the religious passion was innate, saw in Ramananda 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 Ramananda 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. Kabir then declared that he had received the mantra of initiation from Ramananda's lips, and was by it admitted to discipleship. In spite of the protests of orthodox Brahmans 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 Ramananda had sought to establish in thought. Ramananda appears to have accepted him, and though Mohammedan legends speak of the famous Sufi Pir, Takki of Jhansi, as Kabir'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 Kabir's life contradicts 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 Ramananda, joining in the theological and philosophical arguments which his master held with all the great Mullahs and Brahmans of his day; and to this source we may perhaps trace his acquaintance with the terms of Hindu and Sufi philosophy. He may or may not have submitted to the traditional education of the Hindu or the Sufi 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 Kabir was a weaver, a simple and unlettered man, who earned his living at the loom. Like Paul the tent-maker, 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 -