Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/455



ORIS$21. 443 As his master had laboured to gather together all castes of the Hindus in one conimon faith, so Kabir, seeing that the Hindus were in his time no longer the whole inhabitants of India, tried to build up a religion that would embrace Hindu and Muhammadan alike. The voluminous writings of his sect contain the amplest acknowledgment that the God of the Hindu is also the God of the Musalmán. His universal name is The Inner, whether he may be invoked as the Alí of the Muhamniadans, or as the Ráma of the Hindus. “To Alli and Rámá we owe our life, and should show like tenderness to all who live. What avails it to wash your mouth, to count your beads, to bathe in holy streams, to bow in temples, when, whilst you mutter your prayers or journey on pilgrimage, deceitfulness is in your heart? The Hindu fasts every eleventh day; the Musalman on the Ramazan. Who formed the remaining months and days, that you should venerate but one? If the Creator dwell in tabernacles, whose dwelling is the universe? The city of the Hindu God is to the east, the city of the Musalmán God is to the west ; but explore your own heart, for there is the God both of the Musalmáns and of the Hindus. Behold but One in all things. He to whom the world belongs, He is the father of the worshippers alike of Ali and of Ráma. He is my guide, He is my priest.' The moral code of habír is as beautiful as his doctrine. It consists in humanity, in truthfulness, in retirement, and in obedience to the spiritual guide. The labours of Kabir may be placed between 1380 and 1420 A.D. In 148; Chaitanya was born. As Rámánand and Kabir were the Vishnuite reformers of Hindustan and Bengal, so Chaitanya was the prophet of Orissil, and for twelve years laboured to extend the worship of Jagannath. Signs and wonders attended him through life, and during four centuries he has been worshipped as an incarnation of Vishnu. For thirteen months the holy child lay in the womb. An eclipse ended as he entered the world. On the lonely shores of Puri he was visited by beatific sights and revelations. On one occasion he beheld the host of heaven sporting upon the blue waves, and plunged into the ocean in a religious ecstasy, but was miraculously returned to earth in a fisherman's net. After forty-two years of preaching, he disappeared in A.D. 1527. Extricating ourselves from the halo of legends which surround and obscure the apostle, we know little of his private life, except that he was the son of a Sylhet Brahman, settled at Nadiya, near Calcutta ; that in his youth he married the daughter of a celebrated saint; that at twenty-four he forsook the world, and, renouncing the status of a householder, repaired to Orissa, and devoted the rest of his life to the propagation of his faith. But with regard to his doctrines, we have the most ample evidence. No caste and no race was beyond the pale