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 was perhaps illiterate, and he preached an abrasive, sometimes shocking, always uncompromising message exhorting his audience to shed their delusions, pretensions, and empty orthodoxies in favour of an intense, direct, personal confrontation with 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 anthologies, being the sacred book of the Kabir Panth and the main representative of the Eastern tradition of Kabir's verses.

SUKHDEV SINGH, the author of numerous books on Hindi language and literature, has produced the first critical edition of The Bijak of Kabir. He has done collaborative research with a number of foreign scholars, including Dr. David Lorenzen (Mexico), Dr. Edward Henry (U.SA.) And Dr. Pinuccia Caracchi (Italy).

LINDA HESS took her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley and has taught at the University of California, Barnard College and Dartmouth College. At twenty-one she first traveled to India where she began her study of Hindi. Among her awards are a Fulbright grant, a Phi Beta Kappa Fellowship, American Institute of Indian Studies grants, and a Smithsonian Institution grant. In addition of The Bijak of Kabir, to this translation, she has published articles on Kabir, Tulsidasa and the Ramlila of Ramnagar.

**Contents and Sample Pages**