Kabir (Selected Couplets from the Sakhi in Transversion)

Kabir’s greatness as a poet-saint or saint-poet is unparalleled in the whole range of Hindi literature. For Hindus he is a Vaishnav and for Muslims he is a Pir. The followers of Kabir regard him as an incarnation of divinity. Modern nationalists regard him the pioneer of Hindu-Muslim unity. For neo-vedantists he was a philanthropist. For progressive thinkers Kabir was a social-reformer. The present volume is the transversion of Kabir’s Dohas. It opens a new vista in the sphere of verse translation in India. In the introductory part there is a departure from a mass of Hindi criticism. The bases of selection of dohas from the Sakhi are : (1) Kabir’s proverbial worldly wisdom, (2) analogy-finding gift, (3) richness and variety of imagery, (4) recurrent theme of death, (5) gift for satire, and (6) rhetorical powers. This introductory part primarily focuses on Kabir as a poet, which is his "real estimateâ".Thus, the introductory part is a piece of scholarly criticism judging and appreciating Kabir’s Sakhi on the canons of English literary criticism. The versification (four-line stanza-form in loose lambic tetrameter lines) has an easy flow and almost parallels the flow of Kabir’s dohas. With the Hindi version and notes, the book is a valuable reading especially for the English-speaking readers.