SOURCE: Vaudeville, Charlotte. “Kabir and Interior Religion.” History of Religions 3, no. 1-2 (1963): 191-201.

In the following essay, Vaudeville links Kabir's spirituality with his status as a poor weaver, explaining that the poet's work is evidence of a “profound contempt joined with the most resounding indignation” for the influence and statutes of institutionalized religion.

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...