INTRODUCTION
a circumstance which Hindu legends of the monastic type vainly attempt to conceal or explain - and it was from out of the heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation; pouring contempt upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who "has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat," and on all who think it necessary to flee a world pervaded by love, joy, and beauty - the proper theatre of man's quest - in order to find that One Reality Who has "spread His form of love throughout all the world."[1]
It does not need much experience of ascetic literature to recognize the boldness and originality of this attitude in such a time and place. From the point of view of orthodox sanctity, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, Kabir was plainly a heretic; and his frank dislike of all institutional religion, all external observance - which was as thorough and as intense as that of the Quakers themselves - completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion was concerned, his reputation as a dangerous man. The "simple union" with Divine Reality which he perpetually extolled, as alike the duty and the joy of every soul, was independent both of ritual and of bodily austerities; the God whom he proclaimed was "neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash." Those who sought Him needed not to go far; for He awaited discovery everywhere, more accessible to "the washerwoman and the carpenter" than to the self-righteous holy man.[2] Therefore the whole apparatus of piety, Hindu and Moslem alike - the temple and mosque, idol and holy water, scriptures and priests - were denounced by this inconveniently clear-sighted poet as mere substitutes for reality; dead things intervening between the soul and its love -
The images are all lifeless, they cannot speak:
I know, for I have cried aloud to them.
The Purana and the Koran are mere words:
lifting up the curtain, I have seen.[3]
This sort of thing cannot be tolerated by any organized
church; and it is not surprising that Kabir, having his head-
quarters in Benares, the very centre of priestly influence,
was subjected to considerable persecution. The well-known
legend of the beautiful courtesan sent by the Brahmans
to tempt his virtue, and converted, like the Magdalen, by
her sudden encounter with the initiate of a higher love,
preserves the memory of the fear and dislike with which he
was regarded by the ecclesiastical powers. Once at least, after
the performance of a supposed miracle of healing, he was
brought before the Emperor Sikandar Lodi, and charged with
