Explain the significance of Kabir’s poems and the traditions he drew to describe the ultimate reality.

(a) Kabir (c. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) is perhaps one of the most outstanding examples of a poet-saint who emerged within this context. Historians have painstakingly tried to reconstruct his life and times through a study of compositions attributed to him as well as later hagiographies.

(b)    Verses ascribed to Kabir have been compiled in three distinct but overlapping traditions. The Kabir Bijak is preserved by the Kabirpanth (the path or sect of Kabir) in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh, the Kabir Granthavali is associated with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan, and many of his compositions are found in the Adi Granth Sahib.

(c)    Kabir’s poems have survived in several languages and dialects, and some are composed in the special language of nirguna poets, the saint bhasha.

(d) Diverse and sometimes conflicting ideas are expressed in these poems. Some poems draw on Islamic ideas and use monotheism and iconoclasm to attack Hindu polytheism and idol worship.

(e) Just as Kabir’s ideas probably crystallised through dialogue and deba e explicit or implicit with the traditions of sufis and yogis in the region of Awadh (part of present day Uttar Pradesh), his legacy was claimed by several groups, who remembered him and continue to do so.

(f) However, the attributed to Kabir, he use the words guru and satguru, but do not mention the name of any specific preceptor.