Note 314 — Chapter II · (continued 3)

The most celebrated of the twelve distinguished disciples of Rámánandra (see note, p. 180) was Kabir. I omit the miraculous circumstances of his birth. He was taken up near Benares, a foundling, by the wife of a weaver, named Nimá, and brought up by her and her husband Nuri. Such is the uncertainty prevailing about Kabir’s time, that he is placed by different authors within the space of not less than three centuries, that is, from 1149 to 1449. According to Professor Wilson, he flourished probably about the beginning of the 15th century. The philosophic and religious notions of the Kabir Panthir are in substance the same as those of the Pauranic sects, especially of the Váichnava division. They admit but one God, the creator of the world, and, in opposition to the Vedanta notions of the absence of every quality and form in him, they assert that he has a body formed of the five elements of matter, and that he is endowed with the three gunas, or qualities of being, of course of ineffable power and perfection.

The works attributed to Kabir himself, or to his disciples, are written in the usual form of Hindi verse; twenty of them are enumerated in Professor Wilson’s account of this sect (pp. 58 and 59), and appear very voluminous.

This sect is very widely diffused in India, and split into a variety of subdivisions. At a great meeting near Benáres, no fewer than 35,000 Kabir-Panthis of the monastic and mendicant class are said to have been collected. A place called “the Kabir Cháura,” at Benares, is an establishment pre-eminent in dignity, and constantly visited by wandering members of this sect, as well as by those of other kindred heresies: its Mahant, or Superior, receives and feeds these visitors whilst they stay; the establishment itself is supported by the occasional donations of its lay-friends and followers—(See the work quoted, pp. 53-75).