Buddhism in India

The Bhakti Movements 195

Kabir is also said, in the tradition of the Brahman commentators,

to have had Ramanand as a guru, and it is as unlikely with him as

with Ravidas. In the traditional story, Kabir seeks out Ramananda,

and fearing that as a low-born weaver he would not be accepted,

lies on the stairs down which Ramanand goes for his daily bath in

the Ganges; when Ramanand trips and utters ‘Ram, Ram’, Kabir

takes these words as his mantra and his initiation. Among the

problems with this story is that there is no indication anywhere in

Kabir’s writings that he knew Ramanand, let alone as a guru. The

‘Ram’ in his poems is abstract, simply a name for the divine, with-

out reference to the hero of the Mahabharata (Hawley and

Juergensmeier 1988: 35–49; and Linda Hess, Introduction to Kabir

1986: 3–6).

Kabir is so scathing about the claimed authority of Brahmans

that it is hard to imagine him seeking out a Brahman guru:

Saints, the Brahmin is a slicked-down butcher.

He slaughters a goat and rushes for a buffalo

without a twinge of pain in his heart.

He lounges after his bath, slaps sandal paste

on his brow, does a song and dance

for the Goddess, crushes souls in the wink of an eye–

the river of blood flows on.

How holy! What a superior race! What authority

in society, and how people grovel to get his initiation!

It makes me laugh.

They tell tales about ending sin

but their actions are base.

I’ve seen two of them throttle each other,

but Yama carted off both.

Kabir says, saints, this is Kaliyug:

the age of phoney Brahmins (#11).

There is much in the tradition of Kabir that shows this enmity with

Brahmans was strong and reciprocal. Brahmans, in one famous

story, bring a case against him before the Muslim emperor Sikandar

Lodi when he was visiting Banaras; Kabir is ordered to bow down

but refuses, saying he only bows down before God. The emperor

then decrees that Kabir should be bound in chains and thrown in

the Ganges to be drowned, but he is found afterwards miraculously

saved and standing unharmed on the bank. In another incident,

came from, since you believe in it.

Mix red juice, white juice and air–

a body bakes in a body.

As soon as the eight lotuses

are ready, it comes

into the world. Then what’s untouchable?

Eighty-four hundred thousand vessels

decay into dust, while the potter

keeps slapping clay

on the wheel, and with a touch

cuts each one off.

We eat by touching, we wash

by touching, from a touch

the world was born.

So who’s untouched? Asks Kabir.

Only he who has no taint of Maya (#41).^2

Kabir (c. 1440–1518 CE), perhaps the most famous of the north
Indian sants,was born into a low-caste weaver family in Banaras.
Weavers, the creators and producers of the prized Indian textile
tradition, had a respectable status in ancient India; they were not
counted among the ‘low castes’ and they were often organised
into guilds. Many were Buddhists, especially in the Bengal region,
where Taranatha describes a weaver named Tanti-pa who
became a powerful Buddhist Tantrik (Taranatha1990: 249–51).
They appear not to have easily accepted the degradation of their
status under a crystallised varnashramaregime. Many became
Muslim; others became followers of the Nath sect, a kind of
Hindu Tantrism. It was natural, perhaps, for someone of this
community, with its history of resistance to caste tyranny, to
voice a radical protest against caste and against the hypocrisies of
Brahmans.
Kabir is fortunate also in being the subject of sufficient research
that has begun to unravel some of the legends. The work of Linda
Hess and Shukdev Singh, for example, includes a beautiful transla-
tion into English of the Bijak collection, with comments by Hess,
while Singh himself has proposed an alternative critical edition
(Kabir1986; see Hawley and Juergensmeier 1988: 185).

194 Buddhism in India

(^2) All numbers refer to the Sabdaof the Bijak; translations by Linda Hess and
Shukdev Singh.