Weaver-saint whose verses entered the Guru Granth Sahib
Kabir, a fifteenth-century Indian mystic poet, needled hollow ritual in Hinduism and Islam alike, yet Hindus and Muslims both claimed him at death. His lines live in Sikh scripture, Sufi memory, and the Kabir panth that still names him founder.
Birth and death years are debated—some historians prefer 1398–1448, others 1440–1518; tradition often sets birth in 1398 (Vikram Samvat 1455) on Jyeshtha’s full moon at Brahmamuharta in Varanasi (today’s Uttar Pradesh). Followers sometimes say he descended from Satloka as light; other accounts have Muslim weavers Niru and Nima find the infant at Lahartara Lake and raise him. He is remembered as Ramananda’s disciple in the Ramanandi Sampradaya, linking Vaishnava Advaita teaching that God indwells all with Sufi currents—early bilingual lives appear in Persian Dabestan-e Mazaheb manuscripts noted by Irfan Habib.
Poetry in Sadhukkadi (“Panchmel Khichri”) mixes Khadi boli, Braj, Bhojpuri, Marwari, and Awadhi; some pieces are pure Bhojpuri. Followers called his uttered wisdom bāņīs—songs and couplets known as dohe, śalokā, or sākhī (“witness”). Collections include Kabir Bijak, Kabir Parachai, Sakhi Granth, the Sikh Adi Granth, and Kabir Granthawali; except for the Adi Granth, recensions diverge, and oral transmission through the seventeenth century invited interpolation. Hawley notes a more householder Eastern Kabir versus a more devotional Western (Rajasthani) persona. Tagore’s 1915 Songs of Kabir popularized him in English, though critics question how many poems are authentic.
Linda Hess rejects the soft “synthesizer of Hinduism and Islam” myth: Kabir borrowed freely yet attacked both major faiths’ follies and claimed independence from either camp. The Kabir Chaura quarter of Banaras still hosts Kabīr maṭha and Nīrūṭīlā with Niru and Nima’s graves. His legacy runs through Hindu bhakti, Sikh scripture, Sufism, and Sant Mat Kabir panthis—truth, for him, sitting with the righteous ego-shedder, not the sectarian gatekeeper.
Source: Kabir
