The Bijak of Kabir

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.

Hess has liberated this fresh and stunning voice from centuries of pious encrustation on the Indian side, and decades of unwitting conventionality on our own

Résumé
Kabir was an extraodinary oral poet whose works have been recited by millions throughout North India for half a millennium. Thousands of poems are attributed to Kabir, but only a few written collections have survived over the centuries. The Bijak is one of the most important.

Contenu

• Preface

• Transliteration and Abbreviations

• INTRODUCTION

• 1: Kabir's Life and work

• 2: Rough Rhetoric

• 3: The Untellable Story

• 4: 'Numskull, You've Missed the Point!'

• TRANSLATIONS

• 1: Sabda

• 2: Ramaini

• 3: Sakhi

• APPENDICES

• A: Upside-down Language

• 1. The Tradition

• 2. The Cow is Sucking at the Calf's Teat: Interpreting

• Kabir's Upside-down Song

• B: A Note on Meter and Rhyme

• C: Versions and Editions of the Bijak and Errors in the Hindi Edition