You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book explores the life of one of India's greatest religious and literary figures. As a symbol of secularism and religious tolerance, Kabir is the medieval counterpart of Mahatma Gandhi, as a poet whose verses continue to enjoy enormous popularity, he prefigures Tyagaraja and Tagore. Born a lower-caste muslim weaver, Kabir opposed superstition, empty ritualism and bigotry. His writings include scathing attacks against Brahmanical pride, caste prejudice and untouchability, as well as against the dogmatism and bigotry he perceived within Islam. Written by one of the greatest scholars of medieval Indian religious culture, A Weaver Named Kabir provides all that is essential to understand and appreciate Kabir.
Knowledge ahead, knowledge behind, knowledge to the left and right. The knowledge that knows what knowledge is: that’s the knowledge that’s mine. —Bijak, sakhi 188 One of India’s greatest mystics, Kabir (1398-1448) was also a satirist and philosopher, a poet of timeless wit and wisdom. Equally immersed in theology and social thought, music and politics, his songs have won devoted followers from every walk of life through the past five centuries. He was a Muslim by name, but his ideas stand at the intersection of Hinduism and Islam, Bhakti and Yoga, religion and secularism. And his words were always marked by rhetorical boldness and conceptual subtlety. This book offers Vinay Dharwadker’s sparkling new translations of one hundred poems, drawing for the first time on major sources in half a dozen literary languages. They closely mimic the structure, voice and style of the originals, revealing Kabir’s multiple facets in historical and cultural contexts. Finely balancing simplicity and complexity, this selection opens up new forms of imagination and experience for discerning readers around the world.
"Few major achievements of world literature are as little known to Americans as the great ecstatic poetry of the Hindus and Sufis, as exemplified by the work of the 15th century master, Kabir. Irreverent while being intensely religious, Kabir seems incredibly playful in his taunting of the sacred dogmas of his time--to readers accustomed to the solemnity and ideological fidelity of most Western religious poems. Kabir has been translated into English only once before, by Rabindranath Tagore and Evelyn Underhill. Unfortunately, Tagore's Victorian English was simply not equal to Kabir's directness, spontaneity, and irreverent humor. Working from the Tagore-Underhill translation, Bly has done much more than retranslate into American diction. A noted poet himself, he has breathed new life into the work of a fascinating poet"--From back cover.
This book represents the first systematic collection and analysis of the principal legends about Kabir Das, a fifteenth-century poet-saint. It focuses on the ways in which the legends embody and reflect the often changing social and religious needs of those who created and listened to them. Particular attention is paid to the earliest known collection of legends, Ananta-das's Kabir Parachai. This book makes available for the first time an English translation of this text, with detailed notes on its variant readings, as well as a corrected Hindi edition based on a comparison of over a dozen manuscripts. The various historical synchronisms between Kabir and his leading contemporaries, including Ramananda and King Virasimhadev Baghel, are reevaluated, and a solution is proposed to the longstanding debate about Kabir's dates.
On Kabir, 15th cent. saint-poet, his philosophy and Kabirapanthis.
Originally published in 1976, with more than 75,000 copies in print, this collection of poems by fifteenth-century ecstatic poet Kabir is full of fun and full of thought. Columbia University professor of religion John Stratton Hawley has contributed an introduction that makes clear Kabir's immense importance to the contemporary reader and praises Bly's intuitive translations. By making every reader consider anew their religious thinking, the poems of Kabir seem as relevant today as when they were first written.
The 15th-century poet Kabir created timeless works of enlightenment that combine the philosophies of Sufism, Hinduism, and the Kabbala. Kabir's poems possess a simplicity and cover a wide emotional range. Features 100 songs translated by Rabindranath Tagore.
None
Kabir Das was a 15th century mystic, saint and poet of India who happened to be one of the fore-runners and a strong supporter of a religious-cum-spiritual renaissance, the ‘Bhakti Movement’. It was an uprising against the rigid manifestation of dogmas and rituals among Hindus as well as oppression at the hands of Muslim rulers in the name of religion. They filled the Indian sacred hearts with doom and dread. Though all the poet-mystics of the time loved God in their own ways, Kabir worshipped, loved and venerated the Supreme-energy manifest as the primordial, formless, pure and the pristine. His verses show a spirit closer and akin to that of Sufis. Though lovelorn, Kabir was far from r...