The Kabir Panth (Kabirpanthis)

What the Kabir panth is

Kabir was a saint-poet who lived in Varanasi and died at Maghar; his couplets and songs are sung all over North India, and some of his verses are also in the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs (Burn, 1914). Kabir’s life will have its own page in this directory later; this page is about the panth that follows his teaching. Westcott writes that the information available does not allow one to say when either branch of the panth came into being, but that both main branches were probably founded by Hindu disciples of Kabir. Kabirpanthis call the Kabir Chaura branch “Bap” (father) and the Dharamdasi branch “Mai” (mother), and according to Westcott the math at Puri is a place of pilgrimage for both branches.

According to Burn (1914) the ground of Kabir’s teaching is belief in one Supreme Being: the name “Ram” is used, but it does not mean the avatar of Vishnu; salvation comes not through knowledge or ritual but through bhakti; Kabir rejected outward marks, caste distinctions and the worship of many gods, and held a guru to be necessary, but a guru tested before being accepted. In his teaching the highest place belongs to the “Shabda”, the true Word. According to Westcott, Kabir stressed religious teaching in the people’s own language and the company of good men, and this is why the guru holds an unusually high place in the panth. Burn records that the 1901 census returned 843,171 Kabirpanthis in the Central Provinces, the United Provinces, Central India and Bombay, and adds that the number is certainly too low.

Kabir Chaura and Maghar

According to Westcott the Kabir Chaura math in Varanasi stands on the spot where, by tradition, Kabir taught his disciples. It has a preaching platform on which a pair of wooden sandals stands for the feet of the guru; Kabir’s gaddi, behind which, not on which, his representative the mahant sits; and the samadhis of earlier mahants. The court across the lane, which tradition holds to be the site of Niru’s house (Niru Tila), is set apart for women renunciants (“Mai log”). Worship is held morning and evening with aarti and the washing of the guru’s feet, and the charanamrit is given out with tulsi leaves. The math’s most valued possessions are held to be Kabir’s cap and woollen necklace (seli), the sandals, his picture and the Bijak.

According to Westcott, in the Kabir Chaura line of mahants Surat Gopal (c. 1559) is generally regarded as the founder of the panth; he thinks the existence of the three mahants listed before him highly doubtful. Kabir died at Maghar; there two maths stand side by side, one of the Muslim Kabirpanthis, containing Kabir’s tomb, which was restored in 1567 by Nawab Fidai Khan, an officer of the Mughal army, and one of the Hindu Kabirpanthis, under the mahant of Kabir Chaura. According to Burn (1914) one account dates the appointment of the first Hindu mahant at Maghar to 1764.

The Dharamdasi branch

This branch comes from Dharmdas, whom tradition describes as a wealthy merchant of Bandhogarh. In the common telling Kabir rebuked him for image worship first at Varanasi, then at Vrindavan and finally at his own home in Bandhogarh, after which Dharmdas and his wife both became Kabir’s disciples. By tradition Kabir himself installed his son Churamani on the gaddi and said that his descendants would occupy it for forty-two generations; so the head mahants of this branch marry, and a son succeeds his father (Westcott).

According to Westcott (1907) the headquarters of this branch were first at Bandhogarh in the Jabalpur country, then moved to Kudarmal, and only a few years before he wrote to Damakheda. According to Wikipedia the seat of “Kabir Dharmnagar Damakheda” is today in the Baloda Bazar-Bhatapara district of Chhattisgarh, on the Raipur–Bilaspur road. Westcott writes that in his day the Dharamdasi branch was the more influential of the two. Its texts include the Sukh Nidhan (by tradition written about 1729) and the Amar Mul, and according to Wikipedia the Anurag Sagar, in which Kabir is said to tell Dharmdas the story of creation, is counted with the Bijak among the panth’s most sacred books.

Rules and practice

According to Westcott, one who joins the panth must give up the worship of many gods, accept belief in one God, and make these promises: to eat no meat and drink no wine; to bathe daily and sing hymns to God morning and evening; to forgive one who wrongs him up to three times; to keep away from bad company and coarse jesting; never to put away his lawful wife; not to lie; not to hide another’s property; and not to bear false witness against a neighbour or speak ill of anyone on hearsay. At initiation complete devotion to the guru is expected.

At initiation the mahant puts a kanthi of tulsi beads round the disciple’s neck, which only a mahant may do, and gives a mantra into his ear; women too may wear the kanthi, but according to Westcott only after marriage. The panth has both householders and renunciants (bairagis); women too may become bairagis after a probation of two years, and the mahants of the branches visit their disciples every year to teach them. Followers are encouraged to fast every Sunday and on the full moon and to join the “chauka” in the evening, at which the mahant reads the service, hymns are sung, and coconut and betel leaf are shared as prasad; the full chauka, with the mahant present, is held twice a year, in Phagun and Bhadon (Westcott; Burn).

The Bijak and the panth’s books

According to Burn (1914) Kabir’s teaching was oral, and the most authoritative collection of his sayings is the Bijak (literally an invoice or account book), which tradition says was compiled by Bhagodas, one of Kabir’s direct disciples. Westcott writes that the oldest written collections of Kabir’s teaching are the Bijak and the Adi Granth, and that probably neither was made earlier than fifty years after Kabir’s death. The Bijak contains ramainis, sabads and sakhis (couplets); the editions with the commentaries of Maharaja Vishwanath Singh of Rewa and of Baba Purandas are well known.

Beyond the Bijak, the panth’s literature grew over time. According to Burn, Wilson listed 20 works in the “Khas Granth” of Kabir Chaura, and Westcott gathered references to 82 more, most of them still in manuscript. Westcott also cautions that we have no right to assume that what the mahants of the panth teach today is the same as Kabir’s own teaching.

Where the sources differ

• Kabir’s dates: the panth’s tradition, Macauliffe and Drik Panchang give his birth as VS 1455 (1398 CE) and his death as 1518, a life of about 120 years; Westcott and Burn give c. 1440–1518. Bhandarkar (1913) accepts 1518 as the year of his death but sets out both views of his birth.
• The number of branches: H. H. Wilson (Religious Sects of the Hindus) listed twelve branches of the panth, which Westcott thinks “quite fanciful”; Westcott gives two main branches and writes that it is doubtful whether the branches in Bombay, Gujarat and elsewhere regard themselves as independent of these two.
• Dates of the Dharamdasi branch: tradition gives Churamani’s birth as 1516; according to Westcott the date seems to have been chosen to bring the birth within Kabir’s lifetime, and no weight can be given to the dates linked with the founding of the panth. Adding up the terms of office of its mahants, he puts the start of the branch somewhere between 1625 and 1694, by different reckonings.
• Kabir and Ramananda: Burn writes that Kabir was almost certainly a disciple of Ramananda; Bhandarkar writes that Ramananda’s name does not occur in the works of Kabir that he had seen, and that the link is possible only if Kabir’s birth is put in 1398.
• Where Damakheda is: Westcott (1907) places the branch’s centre in “the Chhattisgarh District, Central Provinces”; the present district (Baloda Bazar-Bhatapara) we found only in Wikipedia.

Frequently asked questions