Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das's Kabir Parachai

Download or read book Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das's Kabir Parachai written by Professor Centre of Asian and African Studies David N Lorenzen and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the first systematic collection and analysis of the principal legends about Kabir Das, a fifteenth-century poet-saint. It focuses on the ways in which the legends embody and reflect the often changing social and religious needs of those who created and listened to them. Particular attention is paid to the earliest known collection of legends, Ananta-das's Kabir Parachai. This book makes available for the first time an English translation of this text, with detailed notes on its variant readings, as well as a corrected Hindi edition based on a comparison of over a dozen manuscripts. The various historical synchronisms between Kabir and his leading contemporaries, including Ramananda and King Virasimhadev Baghel, are reevaluated, and a solution is proposed to the longstanding debate about Kabir's dates.