KABIR, the most notable of the Vaishnava reformers of religion in northern India, who flourished during the first half of the 15th century. He is counted as one of the twelve disciples of Ramanand, the great preacher in the north (about A.D. 1400) of the doctrine of _bhakti_ addressed to Rama, which originated with Ramanuja (12th century) in southern India. He himself also mentions among his spiritual forerunners Jaideo and Namdeo (or Nama) the earliest Marathi poet (both about 1250). Legend relates that Kabir was the son of a Brahman widow, by whom he was exposed, and was found on a lotus in Lahar Talao, a pond near Benares, by a Musalman weaver named 'Ali (or Nuri), who with his wife Nima adopted him and brought him up in their craft as a Musalman. He lived most of his life at Benares, and afterwards removed to Maghar (or Magahar), in the present district of Basti, where he is said to have died in 1449. There appears to be no reason to doubt that he was originally a Musalman and a weaver; his own name and that of his son Kamal are Mahommedan, not Hindu. His adhesion to the doctrine of Ramanand is not a solitary instance of the religious syncretism which prevailed at this time in northern India. The religion of the earlier Sikh _Gurus_, which was largely based upon his teaching, also aimed at the fusion of Hinduism and Islam; and the example of Malik Muhammad,[1] the author of the Padmawat, who lived a century later than Kabir, shows that the relations between the two creeds were in some cases extremely intimate. It is related that at Kabir's death the Hindus and Musalmans each claimed him as an adherent of their faith, and that when his funeral issued forth from his house at Maghar the contention was only assuaged by the appearance of Kabir himself, who bade them look under the cloth which covered the corpse, and immediately vanished. On raising the cloth they found nothing but a heap of flowers. This was divided between the rival faiths, half being buried by the Musalmans and the other half burned by the Hindus.[2]
Kabir's fame as a preacher of _bhakti_, or enthusiastic devotion to a personal God, whom he preferred to call by the Hindu names of Rama and Hari, is greater than that of any other of the Vaishnava spiritual leaders. His fervent conviction of the truth and power of his doctrine, and the homely and searching expression given to it in his utterances, in the tongue of the people and not in a learned language remote from their understanding, won for him multitudes of adherents; and his sect, the _Kabirpanthis_, is still one of the most numerous in northern India, its numbers exceeding a million. Its headquarters are the _Kabir Chaura_ at Benares, where are preserved the works attributed to Kabir (called the _Granth_), the greater part of which, however, were written by his immediate disciples and their followers in his name.