This translation presents the hymns of Kabir from the Adi Granth (the holy book of the Sikhs), which has been neglected because it is written in Gurmukhi script rather than Devanagari. The Introduction contextualizes these songs and proceeds to examine their construction of meaning. Most songs have explanatory notes, and there is a Glossary of names and terms that appear in Kabir's work.

This complete and accessible translation of the songs of the saints from the Sikh holy book, the Adi Granth, provides access to the hymns written by Hindu and Muslim devotional writers of north India, who flourished from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. The songs of the saints hold a unique position in Sikhism in that they provide the faith with a prehistory that reaches back to the dawn of north Indian Bhakti and Sant traditions. These works provided a ground upon which Sikh gurus laid the foundations of their faith. The songs also mark the earliest beginnings of Hindi literature. Although the literary output of these saints comes down to us in various stages of corruption, the works which appeared in the Adi Granth are unchanged since their inclusion in that work in the early 1600s.

An accessible translation of the songs of the saints from the Adi Granth, the Sikh holy book.

Life and works of a Hindu saint poet.

A New York Review Books Original Transcending divisions of creed, challenging social distinctions of all sorts, and celebrating individual unity with the divine, the poetry of Kabir is one of passion and paradox, of mind-bending riddles and exultant riffs. These new translations by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, one of India’s finest contemporary poets, bring out the richness, wit, and power of a literary and spiritual master.

This book offers an analysis of key issues concerning the phenomenon of scriptural adaptation. It offers a new understanding of religious pluralism, stressing the need to enter into dialogue with an 'open attitude' by honoring the individual commitments and maintaining differences in mutual respect and dignity.

This Text Is An Attempt To Reconstruct The Bhakti Movement From The 8Th Century Tamil Nadu To The 16Th Century Punjab, In Its Totality, As A Connected Organic Phenomenon And As Perhaps The Earliest Indian Voice Of Deconstructive Modern Thought.

Kabir was an extraordinary oral poet whose works have been sung and recited by millions throughout North India for half a millennium. He may have been illiterate and he preached an abrasive, sometimes shocking, always uncompromising message that exhorted his audience to shed their delusions, pretentions, and empty orthodoxies in favor of an intense, direct, and personal confrontation with the truth. Thousands of poems are popularly attributed to Kabir, but only a few written collections have survived over the centuries. The Bijak is one of the most important, and is the sacred book of those who follow Kabir.

Voice, Text, Hypertext illustrates brilliantly why interest in textual studies has grown so dramatically in recent years. For the distinguished authors of these essays, a “text” is more than a document or material object. It is a cultural event, a matrix of decisions, an intricate cultural practice that may focus on religious traditions, modern “underground” literary movements, poetic invention, or the irreducible complexity of cultural politics. Drawing from classical Roman and Indian to modern European traditions, the volume makes clear that to study a text is to study a culture. It also demonstrates the essential importance of heightened textual awareness for contemporary cultural studies and critical theory—and, indeed, for any discipline that studies human culture.