Social Scientist

Medieval Popular Monotheism and Its Humanism: The Historical Setting

Author(s): Irfan Habib
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 21, No. 3/4 (Mar. - Apr., 1993), pp. 78-88
Published by: Social Scientist
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3517632
Accessed: 17-11-2016 08:41 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Social Scientist is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Scientist

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
IRFAN HABIB*

Medieval Popular Monotheism and Its

Humanism: The Historical Setting**

Religion has been an undoubted component in human civilisation in its

various stages of evolution. The time is past-if ever there was, except
in a very simplistic variant of Marxism-when one could dismiss reli-
gion as either too insignificant a factor in history or, alternatively, a
mere reflex of social environment, which could itself be narrowed to a
few standard 'modes'. Contemporary events have retold us with
renewed force that ideas, prejudices, superstitions, the entire complex,
that is, that goes to construct the mental part of religion, does not arise
automatically out of certain economic phenomena, or disappear with
them, but has a life, a momentum of its own, which acts and reacts upon
the whole social structure. For the present theme it is not of much rele-
vance to defend Marx here, or to recall his many statements, indeed his
whole theoretical work on capitalism, which placed ideas at the cen-
tre of the universe of practice. What is unfortunate is that we have
often tended to forget in our discussions of conveniently standardised
stages of social evolution, the important truth that historical com-
plexities go far beyond any possible simple unilinear schemes; and
that the history of class-struggles, carried on consciously or uncon-
sciously, loses its richness and lessons for us when it is forced into the
artificial mould of a blind and automatic process. Religions has
played its role not only in the suppression of popular revolts, but also,
on the other side, in rallying the rebels.
This history of religion has, then, to be studied seriously. But such a
study must be subject to the same universal criteria of scientific enquiry
as apply to all other aspects of history. It is absurd to demand that
any religion must be analysed only on its own terms, that is, only after
accepting certain premises which its followers declare to be indis-
putable truths. No historian can regard any religion or any religious
belief as ipso facto true or untrue, or as absolutely original or God-
given, subject to no precedent or influence and to no change or evolution.
For purposes of its historical significance, as against its theology, any

Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

* This article is based on a lecture delivered at New Delhi on 30 December 1992, as part
of Anhad Garje, a festival organised by Sahmat.

Social Scientist, Vol. 21, Nos. 3-4, March-April 1993

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 MEDIEVAL POPULAR MONOTlEISM AND ITS HUMANISM 79

religion or religious system has to be seen as it was understood

followers (and different groups of them), as well as by outsiders, at
each different point of time. How it is understood by the believers now
is only a matter for contemporary history, not for earlier epochs.
In illustrating these general principles by a reference to processes
which are relevant to our understanding of the genesis of the mono-
theistic movements of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, I
may first refer to our very easy assumption that 'Hinduism' as a single
religion can be projected back to very early times. The use of the word
'Hindu' in Indian languages is a medieval loan-word from Arabic and
Persian, being derived from the ancient Persian (or Achaemenian)
word 'Hindu' (= Sindhu) for Sind, whence the Greek 'India'. That
there is no alternative Sanskrit or indigenous term to define a person
who held beliefs that are today held by Hindus, e.g. an Indian, let us
say, who was not a Buddhist or a Tain, li-ving in AD 400, shows that the
concept of 'Hinduism' and of 'Hindu', as a votary of it, is not applica-
ble to ancient times. When Asoka spoke of religious persons he spoke of
'Sramanas and Brahmanas'. Brahmanism, the large pool of divergent
ideas held by various schools of Brahman priests and philosophers,
was a basic fact of Indian religious history; it was distinct from
Buddhism and Jainism, or, in the west, Parsi-ism. But what defined
dharma, the rules of conduct, was the caste system and social ritual
which in practice engulfed all, the devotees and patrons of the
Brahmanas, Buddhists and Jains alike. The creation out of this of
'Hinduism' as a single religion- was a process which took place in the
medieval centuries, though in a sense its completion belongs to modern
times.
Within Hinduism, certain important changes took place identifi-
ably within the early centuries of the present millennium. Though
Alberuni (fl. 1030) studied a mass of Sanskrit literature with access to
learned Brahman informants, he shows no knowledge of the term
'Vedanta' and has no reference to Sankaracharya. He inferred that
monotheism was present in India from his knowledge of texts like the
Bhagavadgita.1 Similarly, the Gita is also the source for his location
of pantheism in Indian thought.2 He is unaware entirely of
Sankaracharya's elaborate system which, through the doctrine of
Illusion (Maya), sought to reconcile pantheism with seemingly con-
trary beliefs in deities and rites. Yet by the seventeenth century, it was
recognised by a well-informed observer that Sankaracharya, 'select
among the later seers,' had put his stamp on the Vedanta, if not on
Hinduism.3 It has been held popularly for long that Sankaracharya's
views spread rapidly during his own lifetime (c. 800), with his far-
flung maths serving for radiation points. If they had not reached
northern India in any strength by the eleventh century, they are, of
course, likely to have spread more slowly, so as to obtain wide accept-
ance some time before the seventeenth century. Indeed, treatises show-

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
80 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

ing the influence of his thought multiply 'in the late middle ages',
with Sadananda's Vedantasara (c. 1500) as something of a landmark
since it attempts a synthesis of Sankara's Vedanta with the Samkhya
tenets.4 This makes us raise a question propounded earlier by Tara
Chand, but in a different form. While it seems out of question that
Islam had even exercised an indirect influence on Sankaracharya's
thought,5 it is still possible to argue that the wider spread of his great
synthesis was due in part to the challenging stances with which Islam
counterposed monotheism to polytheism. In such a situation a system
which justified the coexistence of both could become extremely rele-
vant. But here I am straying away from my theme. My concern in show-
ing that Sankacharya's variant of Vedanta was not in occupation of its
all-pervasive position before the seventeenth century simply is to sug-
gest in advance its unlikelihood as a source of, or influence upon, the
popular monotheism of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Coming to Islam, the facile view has long prevailed among modem
apologists that it arrived as a fresh wind of equality in this land of
Homo Heirarchicus. This led even R.C. Majumdar to say that 'the
democratic ideas of the Muslims, leading to a wonderful equality
among the brothers-in-faith, offered a strange contrast to the caste
system and untouchability of the Hindus.'6 There is, however, no sign
of commitment to any such equality among the writings of theologians
and scholars of the period. Minhaj Siraj, himself a theologian of emi-
nence, speaks (1260) or the importance of the ruling class being confined
to 'Turks of pure lineage of Taziks of select birth'.7 A hundred years
later Zia Barani, acutely orthodox and massively learned in Islamic
theology and history, gave a vocal and uncompromising exposition of
rigid hierarchy, which, alas, could not in practice be fully realised.8 It
is therefore, characteristic that while Hindus were denounced as
'infidels', polytheists and image-worshippers, there is in the entire
range of medieval Islamic literature no word of criticism of the caste
system, the theory of pollution and the oppression of untouchables
that marked medieval Hinduism. In the sixteenth century Abdu'l
Qadir Badauni in a work on theology claims no superiority for the
social ethics of Muslims over others, but concedes that Muslims had
additional vices, including that of selling free people into slavery,
though he claims this had abated somewhat in his own time.9 Indeed,
the sanction for full-fledged slavery in Islamic law should strongly
modify any attribution of equality to historical Islam.
There was a difference, however, between the social inequalities
that the Islamic law and usage sanctioned, and those of the Indian
caste system. Most notably, whereas upward or vertical mobility was
restricted in both to varying extents, the caste system also hindered
horizontal or inter-craft and inter-professional mobility, a restriction
absent in Islamic societies. This relative flexibility might have had
some significance in making the economies of the caliphates and their

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 MEDIEVAL POPULAR MONOTHEISM AND ITS HUMANISM 81

successor-polities more open to technological change such as could be

absorbed within the framework of manual crafts. Moreover, except for
slavery, hierarchy in Islam tended to be based mainly on the posses-
sion of wealth and political power, birth playing a part on the basis
principally of inheritance. The institutions of kharaj and igta, i.e. tax-
rent and temporary assignments of revenue, led to greater dependence
on the sovereign's will than was probably the case within the structure
of 'Indian feudalism' of late ancient times, where the 'feudatories'
(ranakas, etc.) were practically hereditary potentates.
The establishment of the Delhi Sultanate was, therefore, accompa-
nied by certain social and economic changes. In so far as the caste sys-
tem pressed down the subsistence costs and wages of the lower and
menial castes serving as labourers and craftsmen, it increased the sur-
plus out of which revenues came. It was, therefore, not to the interest of
any ruling class, whatever its faith, to take up cudgels against the sys-
tem. The Arab government in Sind, right from Muhammad ibn Qasim's
time (713-14) characteristically enforced the disabilities and humili-
ations imposed on the pastoral Jatts of Sind, in line with those
imposed by the previous Brahman dynasty.10 In spite of the view se
forth by Professor Mohammad Habib that the Ghorian conquests were,
in one respect, a 'liberation' of the low-caste craftsmen,11 there is no
specific evidence that any previous rules of caste were deliberately
overthrown by the new regime. In fact, the reference to Alauddin
Khalji (1296-1316) even withdrawing tax-concessions from the
village-menial, balahar, on his small service-holding,12 shows not
only that the menial castes were kept in their place, but that their
members could not now claim the customary exemption necessary for
their subsistence.
The preservation and protection of the caste system was, however,
accompanied by the simultaneous process of the expansion of communi-
ties of Muslims, among whom caste could not legally be the basis of
hierarchy. The Muslim populations grew by immigrations initially,
not only from Central Asia and Iran, but also from Sind and the
Panjab.13 (From the Panjab the rich and important Hindu communit
Multanis also came.14) Most of the immigrants from the Islam
countries had, of course, no caste-backgrounds. Then, there were the
large numbers of captives made slaves-whose augmentation was a
continuous process marking the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Tom from their original castes and localities, the slaves were made to
work as labourers, artisans and domestic servants. Converted to Islam
simultaneously with enslavement and later freed, they must have
formed a significant group among Muslims15-their original enslave-
ment being simultaneously a 'liberation' from caste. As Badauni notes
towards the end of the sixteenth century, the slave trade (and, there-
fore, enslavement) was then in decline. It is possible to ascribe this
decline and the relatively unimportant position of slavery in the

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
82 SOCIAL SCIENWTIST

Mughal Empire to the relative fall in profitability of using slaves

when free artisans became available in large numbers to pursue crafts
and skills not in existence-or extensive use earlier.16
To the caste-free core of Muslim populations formed by immigrants
and slaves were then added infusions of free converts, quite possibly
passing over in groups as their headmen took to the new religious alle-
giance. Unfortunately, the entire process is still obscure, and later tra-
ditions of large group- or clan-conversions (or fictitious collective
migrations) can hardly be cited as reliable evidence in support of our
supposition. If such group-conversions occurred, caste customs and barri-
ers would continue until, in course of time, the spread of Shari'a con-
straints would begin to dilute the earlier customs. It is possible to argue
that around 1500 Kabir was a member of such a weaver community in
transition, to judge, for example, from his indifferent use of Kori and
Julaha for himself.17
These groups marked their conversion by beef-eating, celebrating
'Id, and revering Shaikhs and pirs as Ravidas said of Kabir's
family.18 But, next to them, were still other professional gr
converted, and yet living and working closely with Muslims. Hindu
masons in thirteenth-fifteenth centuries have left their epigraphic
marks on the Qutab Minar and Jaunpur mosques. This is certainly
remarkable since in building construction there was such a massive
importation of technique, forcing a shift from trabeate to arcuate, and
from stone to brick and rubble, and the use of cement-mortar.
It is difficult to say why some artisan-groups converted to Islam,
and others did not. It is, however, important to see that there was a
pull not so much from the deliberate blandishments of an alien egali-
tarian faith as the demand created for craft and urban labour by a new
series of changes. When Kosambi (1956) spoke of 'Islamic raiders ...
breaking down hidebound custom in the adoption and transmission of
new techniques',20 he made an insightful suggestion which has been
justified by subsequent detailed work. Besides the changes in construc-
tion techniques and the arrival of paper manufacture that were
already known, we now know that devices like the spinning wheel,
pedals in the loom, pindrum gearing for the 'Persian wheel', tinning,
more efficient liquor distillation, etc. were also adopted and diffused
in the wake of the Sultan's armies.21
Simultaneously, the urban demand for craft-goods was enlarged by a
more efficient (possibly more oppressive) and successful system of
revenue-extraction from the countryside, well achieved by the time of
Allauddin Khalji; a marked expansion of trade, shown by the growth
in the Sultanate gold and silver coin-minting; and a sizeable urban
expansion, so well attested by archaeological remains.22
It should be inferred that the technological infusion and the new
demand created not only the ground for expansion of new professions but
also for a larger number of entrants into old professions. This could ini-

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 MEDIEVAL POPULAR MONOTHEISM AND ITS HUMANISM 83

tially, but only partly, be met by immigration and enslavement, then

by conversion, and, finally by adjustments within the established (or
Hindu) caste system. It could be argued that the very flexibility pro-
vided by a relatively caste-free labour within the Muslim fold
imparted strength to the caste system, which could continue with its
own rigidities in its own as yet unchallenged domain. However, the
enslavement, the conversions, and the new professions, would all
introduce an instability in which old barriers of both caste and religi
would be brought into question among groups affected by the new eco-
nomic and social pressures.
It seems to me that here must be sought the explanation for one of
the most dramatic aspects of the popular monotheistic movement,
namely, its low-caste, artisan character. While Chaitanya, Mira Bai,
Tulsidas and Surdas, who represented the sagun bhakti movement,
belonged to either the priestly or the aristocratic class, the leaders of
popular monotheism whom Dhanna Jat listed in a memorable hymn
composed in his name by Guru Alan (d. 1606), came from the opposite
side of the social spectrum: Namdeo, 'the petty calico printer' (adh
dam ko chhiparo); Kabir, 'the low-caste weaver' (nich kula jolahra);
Ravidas, 'the carrion-remover' (dhuvanta dhor); and Sain, 'the barber
and village-menial' (nai butkaria). Their access to God (Govind)
encouraged Dhanna too, though 'a mere Jat' (jataro), or peasant, to
Him.23 This list could of course be extended: Guru Nanak, the petty
trader or accountant (khatri), whose successors would make such a
strong appeal to the Jat peasantry and lower classes of the Panjab;24
Dadu, a cotton-carder (naddaf); and Haridas (d. 1645), a Jatt slave.25
They were not unconscious of their roots: Kabir himself almost trium-
phantly proclaimed his own profession of weaving.26 Well might
Tulsidas (c. 1575-76) exclaim that the appearance of shudras as reli-
gious preachers was the most certain sign of the degradation of Kali-
jug, the Kali Age.27 He must have been disturbed still more at what
the shudras taught: a wholesale rejection of Hinduism and Islam, new
preaching addressed solely to the poor, an acceptance of God and rejec-
tion of formal religion. The immense radicalism of such wholesale
rejection was unprecedented in the history of India-even, perhaps, of
mankind.

The Hindu when dying, cries out 'Ram!', the Musalman 'O Khuda!'
Says Kabir, he (alone) is alive, who never accepts this duality.
Kaba then becomes Kasi, Ram becomes Rahim
The (coarse grain) Moth becomes fine flour, and Kabir sits down to
enjoy it.28

Kabir was recognised in the sixteenth century, not as a sufi or a

bairagi, or as a Muslim or Hindu, but eminently as a 'monotheist'
(muwahhid). This is the purport of a conversation which Abdu'l Haqq

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
84 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

reported as having taken place between his grandfather and father as

early as 1522.29 And Abu'l Fazl gave two celebrated notices of Kabir in
1595:

Many truths emanating from his speech and reports of his actions
circulate among the people. Out of the broadness of his path and the
elevatedness of his vision, he held in affection both Muslims and
Hindus. When he left this physical frame, the Brahmanas came to
cremate him, the Muslims to take him to the graveyard.

Elsewhere

He lived in the time of Sikandar Lodi (reigned, 1489-1517). The

door of spiritual truth became open to him somewhat, and he
abandoned the obsolete customs of the age. He has left behind many
Hindi verses containing the truths he preached.30

Another early summary of his teachings comes from Nabhaji's

Bhaktmal (c. 1600):

Kabir refused to recognise caste rules (varnashram) and the six

[Brahmanicall schools. He held that without devotion (bhakti),
religion (dharm) would be irreligion (adharm). Asceticism (jog),
fasting and charity are useless without adoration (bhajan). By
means of ramainis, shabdis and sakhis, he preached to both Hindu
and Muslims (Turaks). He showed no partiality to any one, but
spoke for the benefit of all. He spoke boldly and never tried to say
what would please the world.31

This is how Kabir's preachings were seen by those who had access to
his compilations within a century of his death. It is not necessary here
to support these very accurate near-contemporary perceptions by quot-
ing chapter and verse from Kabir. These assessments, however, did not
locate the source of Kabir's thought in any single tradition. Yet
attempts to find precursors for Kabir were soon not lacking. One legen-
dary precursor was Namdeo, the dyer or calico-printer from
Maharashtra, whose verses find a place in the Guru Granth Sahib,
and who, in the seventeeth century tradition, was a monotheist very
much after the model of Kabir.32 This would then essentially place
the origin of Kabir and his school only within itself. In the seventeeth
century the story is first told of his being a disciple of Ramanand,
which led the author of the Dabistan-i Mazahib to class him among
the Vaishnavite bairagis.33 Possibly his frequent use of the name of
Ram for God is the only justification for the supposed Vaishnavite
affiliations. But references either to Ram's family, or to the Vaishna-
vite pantheon, are entirely absent in his verses. Kabir's 'Ram' has as
much affinity to the deity Ram, as the Muslims' Allah has to the god
of that name in the idol-house of the pagans of Mecca. More recently,
there has been a tendency strongly emphasised by Hazariprasad

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 MEDIEVAL POPULAR MONOTHEISM AND ITS HUMANISM 85

Dwivedi, to see in Kabir a continuation or reassertion of the Saivite

Nath-Yogi tradition.34 Here one must distinguish between Kabir's use
of terms and words, familiar to himself and his hearers, borrowed from
the popular Yogic tradition, and his own ideas. In the latter realm,
except for the rejection of Brahmans, there is little Yogic or Tantric
element in Kabir. On the other hand, there is a scornful rejection of the
claims set forth by the Yogis. Any further discussion of this question is
not necessary here, because of a fairly full treatment of it by
Vaudeville.35 We can dispense with the supposition of any impact of
Sankara's Vedanta on Kabir, because as we have seen, it had probably
not yet achieved popularity; nor is there any reflection of it in Kabir's
verses, where Maya can normally be rendered in its earlier significance
of Temptation rather than Illusion.
Less competently discussed has been the influence of Islam on Kabir.
That there was little direct influence of Muslim theology and its voca-
bulary can be easily demonstrated linguistically. In the sphere of
belief and ritual, Kabir rejected Kaba and mosque, just as he rejected
images and temple. It has often been supposed that he was influenced
by Sufism. We must remember that Sufism is a doctrine which essen-
tially rests man's obedience to God only on his love for God as the
Beloved. The rigour of mentor (pir)-disciple (murid) relationship is
based entirely on the esoteric path of this supra-sexual love. The sufic
doctrine and discipline had been fairly well developed by the thir-
teenth century. And yet in Kabir's verses the emphasis on love as the
cornerstone of the man-God relationship is very weak (weaker still in
the Guru Granth Sahib rescension than in the Dadu-Panthi). While it
is justifiable to see the sufic concept of communion or self-effacement
(fana) in some verses of Kabir, the 'pantheism' of Ibn-al-Arabi (d.
1240), brought to India by the late fourteenth century, and thereafter
spread among sufic circles,3 is not recognisable. Most predominant is
God's position as the Judge, which is, perhaps, the most central ele-
ment in non-sufic Islam. On this Kabir uses imagery (God as Money-
lender or Merchant) unacceptable or unfamiliar to orthodox Islam, but
yet corresponding to its central notion.

Kabir the capital belongs to the Sah (Usurer), and you waste it all.

There will great difficulty for you at the time of the rendering of
accounts.

My Lord (Sain) is a Baniya (Merchant). He conducts his commerce

righteously (sahaj).
Without scales and balances, He weighs the entire universe.38
Is it not fitting to ask whether this sense of Divine Judgement on
human thought and deed simply comes from Islam as seen by ordinary
people, to whom the Quranic insistence on Reward and Punishment,

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
86 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

seemed the major reason for obedience to decrees Divine? We have

here again in Kabir the characteristic distillation of a common belief
to obtain first principles.
Kabir, indeed, develops a monotheism which in its total surrender
to God and rejection of all ritual, goes far beyond orthodox Islam. The
unity of God becomes for Kabir the means of comprehension of the unity
of man; and so there comes an absolute rejection, explicit and vocal, of
the concept and practice of caste purity and pollution, and of all ritual.
Not only Kabir's verses, but also the anecdotes related of him became a
perennial means of popular expression of revulsion against untoucha-
bility and religious differences.39 The devotee of God became for the
common man the apostle of uncompromising humanism.
Tracing Kabir to his various ideological contexts and sources is
important. Equally important, however, is to see his action as essen-
tially a negation of the inequities of our culture, and not a mere synthe-
sis of its divergent elements. I have attempted in this modest contribu-
tion to examine the circumstances, material, social and ideological,
which provided the pressures to which Kabir and other like-minded
preachers responded. But the radicalism of the response was their
own; and its vision and boldness is a precious national heritage and a
source of inspiration to us all.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Edward C. Sachan (tr.), Alberuni's India, Vol. I, London, 1910, pp. 122-23.
2. Ibid., pp. 73-74,76.
3. 'Mobid', Dabistan-i Mazahib, Bombay AH 1292/1875, pp. 131ff., refers to the
'numerous works in this field' (Vedanta) by Sankaracharya, and gives a fairly
knowledgeable description of his system. Mobid' completed his work c. 1653.
4. Cf. A.B. Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature, London, 1920, p. 478.
5. Cf. Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, Allahabad, 1963, p. 107.
6. History and Culture of the Indian People, VI, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, p. 624.
7. Tabaqat-i Nasiri, edited by, Abdul Hai Habibi, Kabul, 1343, II, p. 66.
8. This view Barani expounds in his introduction and then repeats throughout his
great work Tarikh-i Firuz Shahi, edited by, Saiyid Ahmad Khan, Bib. Ind.,
Calcutta, 1860-62. Cf. my paper 'Barani's Theory of the History of the Delhi
Sultanate', Indian Historical Review, VII (1-2), New Delhi, pp. 99-115.
9. Nijatu'r Rashid, edited by S. Moinul Haq, Lahore, 1972, pp. 239-40.
10. Chachnama, edited by Umar bin Muhammad Daudpota, Hyderabad-Dn., 1939,
pp. 4748, 214--15; al-Balazuri, translated by Murgotten, Foundations of the
Islamic State, II, pp. 216-19, 23.
11. Introduction to Elliot and Dowson, History of India as Told by Its Own Histori-
ans, reprint, Aligarh, 1952, pp. 54ff.
12. Barani, op. cit., p. 287.
13. On such migrations see I.H. Siddiquli, 'Social Mobility in the Delhi Sultanate',
AMedieval India-1, Aligarh/New Delhi, 1992, pp. 23ff.
14. See Irfan Habib, 'Merchant Communities in Pre-Colonial India', The Rise of
Merchant Empires, edited by James D. Tracy, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 381-82.

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 MEDIEVAL POPULAR MONOTHEISM AND ITS HUMANISM 87

15. On slaves in the Delhi Sultanate, see T. Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib,
Cambridge Economic History of India, I, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 89-93, where full
references are provided. See also Irfan Habib, 'Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate,
13th and 14th Centuries-Evidence from Sufic Literature', Indian Historical
Review, XV (1-2), pp. 248-56.
16. Cf. Irfan Habib, 'Econonmic History of the Delhi Sultanate', Indian Historical
Review, IV(2), p. 294.
17. See Hazariprasad Dwivedi, Kabir, Bombay, n.d., pp. 5-6 and n.; and Ct.
Vaduville, Kabir, I, Oxford, 1974, pp. 83-85, 87-89. In U.P. in 1891 there were
919,614 Koris (Ihindu weavers) as against 7,80,231 Julahas (Muslims). [Crooke,
Tribes and Castes of North Western Provinces, IIIj pp. 70, 73; IV, pp. 94, 96.]
18. Quoted by Vaudeville, op. cit, p. 29, from Guru Granth Sahib, Nagari edition,
Amritsar, 1952, p. 1293. I have used the same edition.
19. Pushpa Prasad, Sanskrit Inscriptions of Delhi Sultanate, Delhi, 1990, pp.
xxviui-xxx.
20. D.D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, 2nd edition,
Bombay, 1975, p. 370.
21. For a preliminary effort see my 'Technology and Society, 13th and 14th
Centuries', Presidential Address, Medieval India Section, Indian History
Congress, Varanasi Session (Proceedings, pp. 139-61); for a subsequent one,
'Medieval Technology: Exchanges between India and the Islamic World',
Aligarh Journal of Oriental Studies, II (1-2), pp. 197-222.
22. Cf. Irfan Flabib, 'Economic History of the Delhi Sultanate', IHR, IV(2), pp. 289-
97. The archaeological evidence has to be set side by side with that adduced by
R.S. Sharma for urban decline till c. 1000 in his Urban Decay in India (c. 300-c.
1000), New Delhi, 1987.
23. Guru Granth Sahib, Nagari text, pp. 487-88.
24. For a seventeenth-century comment on this, see Dabistan-i Mazahib, p. 186.
25. Ibid., pp. 173-74.
26. As in the verses beginning Gaj nay, gaj das, gaj ikkis puria ek tanai (Guru Granth
Sahib), p. 335; Kabir Granthavali, edited by Shyamsundar Das, Kashi, V.S.
2008/1951, p. 281.
27. Ramcharitmanas, Uttarkhand (Gita press edition, Gorakhpur, V.S. 2046, pp.
520-22).
28. Kabir Granthavali, p. 54. Also found in the Rajasthani versions (Vaudeville,
Kabir, p. 263).
29. Akhbaru'l Akhyar (Takmila), Deoband, 1332/1913-14.
30. A'in-i Akbari, II, Naval Kishor edition, 1893, pp. 53, 78.
31. Shri Bhaktmal, edited by Ganeshdas, Ist edition, Govardhan, n.d., p. 171.
32. Dabistan-i Mazahib, pp. 160-61.
33. Ibid., p. 159. Priyadas' ascription of the connexion with Ramanand is some 60
years later (1712) (Vaudeville, p. 31). But Ramanand is a simple iconoclastic
monotheist in the only composition ascribed to him in the Guru Granth Sahib, p.
1195; Vaudeville, p. 112).
34. H. Dwivedi, Kabir, Bombay, n.d.
35. Kabir, pp. 85-89, 120-148.
36. Cf. S. Athar Abbas Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Agra, 1965, pp. 43 ff.
37. Kabir Granthavali, p. 42. The verse occurs in the Dadupanthi version; but there
is no sanction for Vaudeville's (p. 269) reading of the Sah as Destiny. Kabir is no
believer in prescribed destiny; and there could then have been no 'rendering of
accounts'.
38. Kabir Granthavali, p. 62.
39. Abul Fazl (1595) had already referred to the popular reports about Kabir. The
earliest anecdotes are found in the Dabistan-i Mazahib (c. 1653), pp. 159-60. We

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
88 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

are told how Kabir made fun of Brahmans when they refused to drink Ganges
water from his hands because he was 'weaver-born and therefore of a low class
of people'. Another tells us how he ridiculed image-worship; and yet another
recalls his desperate poverty. Finally, the author gives the anecdote of how
both Muslims and Hindus claimed his body, and how a recluse (faqir) came to
tell them Kabir was 'a gnostic ('arif), and free (farigh) of both these religions'.
He ends by quoting for Kabir the celebrated couplet of 'Urfi the Persian poet at
Akbar's court:

So live with the good and bad, O 'Urfi,

that when you die
The Muslim washes your body in holy water
and the Hindu cremates it!

This content downloaded from 14.139.45.241 on Thu, 17 Nov 2016 08:41:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms