First published 1915 by Macmillan and Co., Limited
This edition published in India by Macmillan
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Copyright © Rabindranath Tagore 1915
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INTRODUCTION
The poet Kabir, 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 Ramananda. Ramananda had brought to Northern India the religious
revival which Ramanuja, the great twelfth-century reformer
of Brahmanism, had initiated in the South. This revival
was in part a reaction against the increasing formalism
of the orthodox cult, in part an assertion of the demands of the heart as against the intense intellectualism of the
Vedanta philosophy, the exaggerated monism which that
philosophy proclaimed. It took in Ramanuja's preaching the
form of an ardent personal devotion to the God Vishnu, as representing the personal aspect of the Divine Nature:
that mystical "religion of love" which everywhere makes its
