SOURCE: Machwe, Prabhakar. “Poetry.” In Kabir, pp. 35-43. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1968.

[In the following essay, Machwe argues that Kabīr's originality—evident in the language, meter, paradoxes, and ideas in his works—marks him as more than merely a “mystic poet” but a poet in the broadest and deepest sense of the word.]

Search the word and know the word
          Follow the word by word
Word is sky and word is underworld
          Word pervades the core and the cosmos
Word is in speech and in hearing
          Word makes the image and the form
Word is Ved and word is the sound
          Word is the scripture sung variously
Word is the visible and the invisible
          Word creates the entire universe
Kabir says you test the word
          Word is God, O brother!

[Kabir Vachanavali, p. 189]

Whether mystic poetry should be judged by the same poetic norms as are applied to pure poetry is the subject of a long-drawn debate amongst Sanskrit rhetoricians and Western aestheticians. Partly it is the age-old distinction between the sublime and the beautiful. The Indian eclectic writers on poetics in Sanskrit resolved the conflict by calling the joy derived from poetry as akin to divine bliss (Brahma-ananda-sahodarah)—the two being twin brothers. On the other hand, there are not a few orthodox and conservative critics in Hindi, even today, who do not consider Kabir as a poet, but count him among the saints and devotees who also indulged in some sort of uneven versification. Such critics perhaps put undue premium on polish in technique and perfection of style, etc. But if individuality is one of the characteristics of a major poet, Kabir is without doubt one.

He uses images and symbols that are at times obscure, though not more obscure than the private imagery of some modernist poets. Like Blake or Rilke, he has many passages which sound simple and yet are deeply charged with metaphysical meaningfulness. The truth is that Kabir was much more than a mere poet. He lived in two dimensions at the same time. For him God-consciousness and poetry were not two analysably separate states of mind. As the mystic Meister Eckhart rightly pointed out, ‘For a man must himself be One, seeking unity both in himself and in the One, which means that he must see God and God only. And then he must “return”, which is to say he must have knowledge of God and be conscious of his knowledge.’ Kabir seemed to be possessed of the same frenzy and so he questions: ‘O lotus, why did you fade? The water of the pond was at your stem. You were born in water, lived in water, all the time surrounded by water. No fire was there nearby. And yet why did you die?’

LANGUAGE

One of the important keys to this problem of extra-poetical sensibility communicated through poetry is the language used by the poets. Every poet chooses his own idiom, and addresses his own imaginary audience. The greatness of Kabir lies in the fact that he did not care for the language of the sophisticated in those days, namely Sanskrit or the court-language Persian, but composed his verses and songs in a mixed language of his own, which is now called by Hindi scholars Sadhukkari (language of the sadhus). As Dr Govind Trigunayat says in his Kabir ki Vichardhara, ‘Kabir did not use one language. In his bani, one comes across a mixture of Hindi, Urdu, Persian and many dialects like Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Marwari and so on. The first authentic collection of Kabir's works is Kabir Granthavali, edited by Dr Shyamsundar Das on the basis of two manuscripts dated Samvat 1561 and 1881 (a.d. 1508 and a.d. 1828); the other is Sant Kabir by Dr Ramkumar Varma which contains Kabir's writings in the Granth Saheb too. In both these works we find (1) Punjabiness, (2) noun and verb forms of Bhojpuri, (3) some Khari Boli forms, (4) language according to subject-matter, (5) many words from regional languages, (6) simple and direct expression, (7) symbolism and technical allusiveness, (8) no adherence to any one standardised form.’

Acharya Ramachandra Shukla writes in his Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas that the saint-poets of Hindi used Khari Boli which they received as a legacy from the Siddhas. But Dr Trigunayat differs from this opinion and maintains that Kabir did not confine himself to Purbi (eastern U.P. dialect of Banaras) only but made use of many other dialects so as to make himself more communicable to saints coming from other regions. Kabir uses Persianized Hindi when he talks of Hindu Pandits. In his language one comes across Bengali verb forms like ‘achhilo’. There are also words from Rajasthani and Lahanda. His language has a peculiarity that it is at once simple and yet difficult to interpret. Added to it is the great difficulty which scholars have to contend with, namely, the different forms of the same text—due, maybe, to oral transmission. Many words have undergone such transformation and even corruption that it is difficult to decipher and excavate the correct original form. Kabir's language in Ult-bansiyan is also called, on account of its obscurity and vagueness of meaning, Sandhabhasha (according to Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya) or Sandhya Bhasha, the language of the meeting-point or the language of the evening. Dr Das Gupta has discussed it in his Obscure Religious Cults, and given different reasons for such riddle-like usages. Either they were deliberately done to confound the opponent, or because of the mixture of Apabhramsa and Hindi, or such was the language on the borders of Bengal and Bihar. In Sanskrit ‘Sandhi’ is used even for an allegorical language and, maybe, poets like Kabir used it consciously, as the Tantriks did, to hide some secret notions or esoteric practices not considered proper in ordinary society. Whatever the reasons, in Kabir one comes across many such poems which apparently seem to be contrary to all rational meaning. Maybe, Kabir did it in fun to confound the Pandit who took recourse to very intricate Sanskrit. Some examples of this kind of Sandhabhasha are given below under ‘paradoxes’.

PARADOXES

These padas of Kabir are also called Ult-bansiya or Ult-batiya (inverted bamboos or inverted talks). One example is in Kabir Granthavali (p. 14):

Such wonderment did the guru tell
          I remained stunned
The mouse fought the elephant
          one rarely sees
The mouse entered into a hole
          serpent afraid ran
Contrarily, mouse devoured the serpent
          it was a great wonder
The ants uprooted the mountain
          and brought in open
The cock fought the human
          the fish ran after water.
The cow was milking the calf
          the calf was giving milk
Such wonderment happened
          the deer killed the tiger
The hunter hid himself in the thicket
          the rabbit shot arrows
Kabir says make him a guru
          who tells you the meaning of this poem.

Dr Hazari Prasad Dwivedi discusses these poems in a chapter entitled ‘Yogic Allegories and Ult-bansiyan’, and quotes from Kabir Granthavali another passage, given below, and gives a chart of the three different interpretations by Vishvanath, Vichardas and the traditionalists of 23 such symbolic terms in this pad:

[SANTAN JAGAT NEEND NA KYAI …]

Saints don't sleep while awake
Death does not eat, epochs don't cover
          the body is not eroded by old age
Contrari-wise the Ganges absorbs the ocean
          and darkness eclipses the sun
The sick man kills nine constellations
          the reflection in water gives light
Without feet one runs in ten directions
          without eyes sees the world
The rabbit devours the lion, such wonder who can solve?
The inverted pitcher does not sink in water
          the straight one is filled with it
The reason why men are different
          with guru's grace they get through
Inside the cave one sees the whole world
          outside nothing is seen
The arrow upturned and killed the hunter
          only the brave can follow
The singer when requested cannot sing
          the dumb sings always
The juggler's game is seeing the onlookers
          Anhad cause is increased
The statement inspects itself
          all this is an inexpressible tale
The earth enters into the sky
          this is the word of a man
Without glasses nectar oozes
          the river keeps away the water stored
Kabir says he alone is immortal
          who drinks Ram-rasa.

Obviously in their first reading such compositions sound very much like irrational mutterings. But all these words have some symbolic meanings: the mind is generally compared with fish, weaver, hunter, elephant, niranjan; the soul is referred to as son, calf, hunt, lion, mouse, bee, yogi; the maya is harlot, woman, she-goat, cow and cat; the world is like a forest or an ocean; the senses are the five maidens and friends and so on. Such songs also refer to certain numbers: five stands for elements or senses; three for qualities or three tenses or worlds; eight for the Hathyogi's eight centres in the body, more or less like the glandular endocrinic seats secreting hormones. In a doha like—

Sixty-four lamps lighted in fourteen moons
What moon is there in the house where Govind is not

sixty-four stands for arts and fourteen for Vidyas or achievements.

Such paradoxes have a long tradition dating from the Upanishads. The inverted tree and the two birds are well known. In Taittiriyopanishad there is a passage which says, ‘the sky rests in the earth and the earth rests in the sky.’ It was carried further by Vajrayana Buddhists. Perhaps Kabir got it through them.

METRES

One does not come across a variety of metres or any virtuosity in their use in Kabir. He uses the common metres like doha or sakhi, sabad and Ramaini which were chaupais or chaupai-dohas. Mainly they are two-line pithy couplets or longer pads set to music. Many tunes are taken from folk-songs. It is possible that community singing was responsible for the many repetitions that occur in them. None of the metres used are bound by any rigid rules of prosody. They seem to have their own rules and Kabir follows his own pattern of internal rhymes.

M. A. Ghani wrote in his History of the Persian Language at the Moghul Court that the six lines beginning with Haman hai ishk mastane haman ko hoshiyari kya might be deemed as the first Urdu ghazal ever composed. But this statement is not verified. There are earlier ghazals in the Dakhni variety of Urdu and a ghazal by a Brahmin named Chander is mentioned in A History of Urdu Literature by Rambabu Saksena. Though Urdu or Persian metres were not adopted by Kabir, it seems that he had heard the poetic compositions of Sufis and many allusions to love and divine intoxication in Kabir seem to be patterned on them.

Kabir was not a conscious urbane poet. He wanted to communicate his ecstasy and agony in any language which came handy to him. He did not wait for the chiselled word or care for the applause of the connoisseur. So there is a roughness and ruggedness about his writing which lends it a rare charm. His verse-pattern is very simple and yet haunting. Most of his dohas and pads end with the composer's name woven in it. It was a kind of copyright in those days, as there were innumerable imitators and plagiarists. The seal of originality was necessary and so in the medieval songs of saint-poets one always comes across such lines as ‘Mira says, O Girdhar Nagar’ or ‘Tulsidas says …’ or ‘Surdas remembers Shyam …’ and so on.

Kabir's dohas should be given a special mention as later Hindi poets have written several compilations of 700 dohas called satsais on the lines of the medieval Arya-saptashatis, though Kabir did not care for the magic number 700.

OTHER POETIC QUALITIES

Marathi poet Namdev, Punjabi poet Nanak, Telugu poet Vemana, Kannada poet Basaveshwar and Gujarati poet Akho share with Kabir a rare kind of catholicity and humanism which broke all conventions of caste, creed or cult. This was all the more difficult in that age when orthodoxy had a firm hold over the minds of the people. Kabir is being re-evaluated as the first rebel poet and the earliest modernist in Hindi criticism (see in Purbi Times, Kabir Special Number, June 1966, articles by Yashpal, Sampurnanand, Amritlal Nagar, Ali Sardar Jafri, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Prakashchandra Gupta, E. Chelyshev and others). One young critic has in all seriousness gone to the extent of calling Kabir the grandfather of Beat poetry in Hindi.

All these articles referred to above emphasise on the way Kabir takes the reader or listener almost by storm. The impression left after reading Kabir is that of a person who is transformed or touched to the core. This Kabir achieves by drawing from his own personal experience as a weaver or as a person persecuted by high-caste Hindus or conservative Muslims, and transforming his material into a universal and deeply moving concern. His personal protest becomes the voice of the dumb millions.

According to Firaq Gorakhpuri, Kabir charged the language of the rural masses of eastern U.P. with a new meaning. He electrified their dialect. Firaq cites various examples of this metamorphosis wrought by Kabir, who was formally unlettered and yet one of the greatest contributors to Indian literature. Kabir regarded human life as a passing phase and so was aware of the ‘horror in the handful of dust’, as T. S. Eliot would have said. The feeling of this ‘worm within the rose’ is well expressed in such dohas as—‘We know not what the quarter of a second may bring and yet we make plans for the morrow; death comes suddenly as the hawk pounces down on the partridge.’ ‘The gardener comes to the garden and seeing him the buds cry out: the full-blown flowers are culled today, tomorrow our turn will come.’ ‘The earth said to the potter, why do you trample on me? The day will come when I shall trample on you.’ A similar rubai is found in Omar Khayyam's Kuza-namah.

Gandhiji included the following song of Kabir in his daily prayer book—(Jhini jhini bini chadariya …)

What is the warp and what is the woof
          what are the threads from which the chadar is woven?
Ingla and Pingla are the warp and woof
          Sushaman are the threads from which the chadar is woven.
Eight are the lotuses and ten are the spinning wheels
          five are the elements and three the qualities of the chadar.
The Master required ten months to weave it
          and made it well-woven by hitting it and beating it.
This chadar the gods, men and sages used
          and used and soiled the chadar.
Kabir Das has used it very carefully
          and kept the chadar back as it is.

Weaving was the profession of Kabir. Gandhiji also gave much weight to spinning and weaving. In several matters there is great similarity in these two great men of India, though functioning in different periods of history and in different circumstances.

Kabir's poetry has another great quality: it does not stale. Kabir tried to put his finger on the basic yearnings of man, the eternal quest for internal peace, the ‘angst’ of a person functioning in a maladjusted society. Where religions turn into hidebound ritualistic codes, where philosophies turn into mere verbal jugglery and linguistic labyrinths, where there is a crisis of conscience and the leadership is lame, Kabir's poetry serves as a great inspiration. At times he seems to shock us by ripping open the shams and exposing the double-talk and double-think of the so-called respectable learned; yet there is no note of despair. Kabir's poetic world is not a vale of tears, not merely a dark night of separation, not an abyss which can never be crossed. He has the robust and rebellious spirit of a rustic. He has always a Hope Beyond. No doubt the springs of this Hope are spiritual and it may be argued that today in an age of ‘no values’, all that sounds unreal. But Kabir has much left in his poetry, even when one does not agree with his theism, and so to enjoy Kabir one need not be a Kabir-panthi. Herein lies the secret of his ever-continuing greatness as a poet: he transcends time and place. His poetic vision is larger and higher. He did not bother about what kind of political set-up was in Hindustan in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; he did not even care for the literary heresies or traditional tentacles of his times. He just did what Nietzsche would have said, his ‘Yea-saying’. This requires great courage in any age. Kabir had that daring to say the truth and the heroism to suffer its consequences. Kabir's poetry, therefore, stands in a very different category, as it breaks through many conventional bondages. It is the poetry of a Free Spirit.