SOURCE: Vaudeville, Charlotte. “Selected Verses.” In A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical and Historical Introduction, pp. 131-47. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Vaudeville discusses the authenticity and origin of verses and sayings attributed to Kabir.

The measure of authenticity to be attributed to the various recensions of the Kabīr-vānīs or The Sayings of Kabīr, is a particularly vexing one. Scholars agree that Kabīr, born towards the middle of the fifteenth century in Benares or in nearby Magahar, as a Muslim weaver, must have been illiterate—or at most half-literate. It is unlikely that he himself wrote down any of his compositions and even more unlikely that he composed any literary work. His famous utterances, couched in a form of old ‘Hindui’ must, therefore, have been transmitted orally at least one century before they were first...