SOURCE: Underhill, Evelyn. Introduction to One Hundred Poems of Kabīr, translated by Rabindranath Tagore with Evelyn Underhill, pp. v-xlii. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1961.

In the following excerpt, from a work originally published in 1914, Underhill recounts the legends surrounding Kabīr's life and discusses his reputation from his own time to the twentieth century, before examining his mystical poetry, which the critic says never loses its touch with common life.

The poet Kabīr … is one of the most interesting personalities in the history of Indian mysticism. Born in or near Benares, of Mohammedan parents, and probably about the year 1440, he became in early life a disciple of the celebrated Hindu ascetic Rāmānanda. Rāmānanda had brought to Northern India the religious revival which Rāmānuja, the great twelfth-century reformer of Brāhmanism, had initiated in the South. This revival was in part a...