One Hundred Poems of Kabir (1915)

By Rabindranath Tagore

This vintage book contains a collection of one hundred poems by the fifteenth-century Indian poet Kabir, translated in 1915 by Rabindranath Tagore. These fantastic poems explore Hindu and Sufi philosophies and are highly recommended for all poetry lovers. Kabir's work significantly influenced Hinsuism's Bhakti movement and his writings are prominent in the Sikh scripture Adi Granth. Contents include: "mo ko kahân dhûnro bande", "Santan jât na pûcho nirguniyân", "sâdho bhâî, jîval hî karo âs'â", "bâgo nâ jâ re nâ jâ", "avadhû, mâyâ tajî na jây", "candâ jhalkai yahi ghat mâhîn", "Sâdho, Brahm alakh lakhâyâ", "is ghat antar bâg bagîce", "aisâ lo nahîn taisâ lo", "tohi mori lagan lagâye re phakîr wâ". Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473360778

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

Book preview

ONE HUNDRED POEMS OF KABÎR

BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

INTRODUCTION BY EVELYN UNDERHILL

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Rabindranath Tagore

INTRODUCTION

II

KABIR’S POEMS

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Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Thakur, anglicised to Tagore, was born on 7 May, 1861 to a wealthy family based in Calcutta, British India. Tagore composed beautiful songs, wrote elegant poems, novels and plays, created celebrated artworks and was a life-long political advocate of equality and freedom. He consequently denounced the Raj and British control of Indian life, inspirationally changing his region’s politics, literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, acclaimed for their contemplative nature mixed with an unflinching naturalism. Two of his compositions were chosen by India and Bangladesh as their national anthems. His legacy also endures in Visva-Bharati University; the establishment which Tagore founded himself. Tagore is still little known outside Bengal, however his profound, if smaller than deserved, reception has helped to introduce the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. Tagore started writing poetry when he was just eight years old, and released his first substantial collection of poems, The Songs of Bhanushingho Thakur, at the age of sixteen. These were published under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha (Sun Lion) and were immediately seized upon by the literary authorities; hailed as long-lost classics. However due to his father’s wishes for Tagore to become a Barrister, he moved to England at the age of sixteen and enrolled at a public school in Brighton. He briefly read law at University College London, but left to independently study the literature of Shakespeare, especially Coriolanus and Anthony and Cleopatra. The young man was impressed by the lively English, Irish and Scottish folk tunes, and he returned to Bengal in 1880, resolving to reconcile European and Brahmin traditions. In 1883 he married Mrinalini Devi, with whom he had five children. From 1890 onwards, Tagore managed his vast ancestral estates in Shelaida, and it was here that he released his Manasi poems (1890), probably his best known work. The period 1891-1895 was his most productive, and it was during this time that Tagore wrote more than half of the 84 story long Galpaguchchha. This collection revealed the poverty and suffering in an otherwise idealised rural Bengal. In 1901, Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram (a place of spiritual hermitage), it had an experimental school attached, beautiful groves of trees, substantial gardens and a well-stocked library. During his time at Santiniketan, Tagore’s wife and two of his children died. However he kept up his campaigns for social justice in the Indian provinces, as well as maintaining his prolific writing career. Tagore also kept composing, amassing a massive 2,230 songs to his credit. He became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for his Gitanjali: Song Offerings. Two years after this accolade, Tagore was knighted by George V, however he repudiated this award in 1919, after the outrages of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. He asserted that ‘the time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.’ As a result of his extensive travels, Tagore felt affirmed in his opposition to societal divisions and continued reflecting on such themes in his later works Chitra (1914), Dui Bon (1933) and Patraput (1936). Tagore died at the age of 80, in Calcutta, the place of his birth, on 7 August, 1941.

INTRODUCTION

The poet Kabîr, a selection from whose songs is here for the first time offered to English readers, 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 Râmânanda. Râmânanda had brought to Northern India the religious revival which Râmânuja, the great twelfth-century reformer of Brâhmanism, had initiated in the South. This revival was in part a reaction against the increasing formalism of the orthodox cult, in part an assertion