Early records of Kabı ̄r’s songs are found in three distinct sources (Hess 1987).
TheBijakcontains only his works (Hess and Shukdev Singh 1983), but his songs
are also found in the A ̄di Granthof the Sikhs and the manuscript collections of the
Da ̄du ̄ panth, another nirgun.“path” or sect founded by Da ̄du ̄ , a cotton-carder (pos-
sibly Muslim) living in Rajasthan in the latter half of the sixteenth century who
followed in the footsteps of Kabı ̄r (Orr 1947; Callewaert 1988). Among the most
important of the latter are the thematic collections of the Sarva ̄n.gisof Rajab and
of Gopalda ̄s and the Pañc-Va ̄nicollections recording songs of five saints: Da ̄du ̄,
Kabı ̄r, Na ̄mdev, Raida ̄s, and Harda ̄s (Callewaert 1988; Callewaert and Beeck,
1991; Callewaert 2000a). Both the A ̄di Granthand these seventeenth-century
Rajasthani Da ̄du ̄ panthi manuscripts provide a gold mine of early songs, especially
fornirgun.saints. A sect, the Kabı ̄rpanth, has also been established in Kabı ̄r’s name
by those who share his low-caste status and for whose adherents Kabı ̄r has
reached almost divine status (Lorenzen 1987). A vast oral tradition of song exists
as well, performed across North India today, which includes songs of Kabı ̄r
together with the songs of many, many other saints (Martin 2000).
Raida ̄s, another of the supposed disciples of Ra ̄ma ̄nanda from Banaras, is
alternately said to be a pure nirgun.devotee or to blend nirgun.devotion with a
sagun.love of Ra ̄m (Callewaert and Friedlander 1992). A camar(an untouchable
leatherworker whose caste-fellows dispose of the bodies of dead animals), he
speaks against the hierarchies of purity, approaching God with humility and
utter dependence on divine grace and love, relying on the recitation of the name
of God to keep his mind and heart focused on his Lord in a world that parades
an endless stream of distractions (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 1988: 24–32). His
songs too are included in the Sikh and Da ̄du ̄ panthi collections, and a low-caste
religious movement devoted to him and known as the Raida ̄sis can be found in
Banaras (Schaller 1995). There are epic oral song traditions recounting episodes
from his life as well, sung among leatherworker communities from Banaras to
Rajasthan, which combine social protest with religious devotion, exposing the
greed and corruption of rulers and brahmanpriests alike and affirming the
dignity and legitimacy of Raida ̄s and thus of other low-caste devotees.
In the lineage ofnirgun.Hindu devotion, we also find the founder of the Sikh
tradition, Na ̄nak, who lived in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century in
the Punjab region (McLeod 1968). Stories abound of his debates with Na ̄th jogis
and his encounters with Hindu and Muslim spiritual teachers. He advocated a
nirgun.devotion that focused on the importance of the Lord as guru and on the
practice of the repetition of the Name of God. Respected by both Hindus and
Muslims, he laid out a path which transcends the particulars of both traditions,
preaching adamantly against outward forms of worship including temples and
mosques, religious scriptures, pilgrimage, and ritual. Even so the collection of
his songs and those of other Sikh gurus was initiated by the fifth guru Arjan in
a text that came to be known as the A ̄di Granthand also included the songs of a
number of other earlier saints referred to as bhagats(including Kabı ̄r, Raida ̄s,
and Na ̄mdev). This text became the effective guru for the sect’s members after
their tenth and final human guru Govind Singh passed on, and because of its
188 nancy m. martin