SOURCE: Vaudeville, Charlotte. “Kabīr and Interior Religion.” History of Religions 3 (1964): 191-201.

In the following essay, Vaudeville emphasizes that Kabīr's religious beliefs were nonconformist and stressed the interiority and mystical nature of the spiritual experience, as he satirized religious orthodoxy and showed contempt for pious sages and prophets.

Kabīr (1440-1518)—from his true name Kabīr-Dās, “the servant of the Great (God)”—is one of the great names of the literature and religious history of North India. He belongs to that first generation of poets of the “Hindi” language who composed couplets and songs for the people in a language which they understood: a mixed Hindī dialect, a kind of dialectal potpourri which is not amenable to the classifications of the linguists. This jargon was first used by the innumerable itinerant preachers who at the time, as from all antiquity, traversed the country in all...