many revealers of Reality. A hater of religious exclusivism, and
seeking above all things to initiate men into the liberty of the
children of God, his followers have honoured his memory by
re-erecting in a new place the barriers which he laboured to cast
down. But his wonderful songs survive, the spontaneous
expressions of his vision and his love; and it is by these, not
by the didactic teachings associated with his name, that he makes
his immortal appeal to the heart. In these poems a wide range of
mystical emotion is brought into play: from the loftiest
abstractions, the most otherworldly passion for the Infinite, to
the most intimate and personal realization of God, expressed in
homely metaphors and religious symbols drawn indifferently from
Hindu and Mohammedan belief. It is impossible to say of their
author that he was Brâhman or Sûfî, Vedântist or Vaishnavite.
He is, as he says himself, "at once the child of Allah and of Râm."
That Supreme Spirit Whom he knew and adored, and to Whose joyous
friendship he sought to induct the souls of other men, transcended
whilst He included all metaphysical categories, all credal
definitions; yet each contributed something to the description of
that Infinite and Simple Totality Who revealed Himself, according
to their measure, to the faithful lovers of all creeds.

Kabîr's story is surrounded by contradictory legends, on none of
which reliance can be placed. Some of these emanate from a Hindu,
some from a Mohammedan source, and claim him by turns as a Sûfî
and a Brâhman saint. His name, however, is practically a
conclusive proof of Moslem ancestry: and the most probable tale is
that which represents him as the actual or adopted child of a
Mohammedan weaver of Benares, the city in which the chief events
of his life took place.