New devotional paths: Kabir, Baba Guru Nanak, Mirabai — and Shankaradeva

Detail

Who were the "new" paths — and why "new"?

• From about the 14th century, a fresh set of saint-poets taught nirguna bhakti — love for a God with no form and no image.
• They wrote in local languages, not Sanskrit. So ordinary people, including "low caste" groups and women, could join.
• They rejected the middle-men: priests, temples, idols, pilgrimages, fasts.
• Four figures stand out in the NCERT account: Kabir, Baba Guru Nanak, Mirabai and Shankaradeva.

Kabir (c. 14th–15th centuries)

Three collections, all compiled after his death

• Kabir Bijak — kept by the Kabirpanth in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh.
• Kabir Granthavali — linked with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan.
• Many poems also sit inside the Adi Granth Sahib of the Sikhs.
• The three traditions are distinct but overlap — the same poem can appear in more than one, in different words.
• By the 19th century printed collections of his verses were sold from Bengal to Maharashtra.
• A copy of the Bijak of Kabir is held in the rare-books collection of the Indian Culture Portal, Ministry of Culture [2].
• One printed 19th-century study in the same collection is titled Kabir and His Followers (Religious Life of India series) [3].

How he wrote

• He used sant bhasha — the special mixed language of the nirguna saints, made to travel across regions.
• He loved ulatbansi — "upside-down sayings". Riddle-like lines that shock you into thinking.
• "the lotus which blooms without flower"

• "fire raging in the ocean"

• The point: God cannot be caught in normal words, so the words are twisted on purpose.

Where his ideas came from — three streams mixed

• Islam: he names God as Allah, Khuda, and uses Hazrat and Pir.
• Vedanta: alakh (the unseen one), nirakar (the formless), Brahman, Atman.
• Yoga tradition: shabda (sound/word), shunya (emptiness).
• Some poems attack polytheism (worship of many gods) and image worship in sharp, mocking words — one God only.
• Other poems are gentle: nam-simaran (remembering the Divine Name), close to sufi zikr (repeating God's name) and ishq (love for God).

The life we cannot pin down

• All the hagiographies (devotee-written life stories) come from the 17th century onward — about 200 years after he lived. So they are late evidence.
• They disagree: some say he was born a Hindu (Kabirdas) and then brought up by Muslim julahas — a weaver group that had recently converted to Islam.
• His name, "Kabir", is Arabic for "great".
• Tradition says Ramananda initiated him. The dates do not fit, so this is doubtful.
• His own verses speak of a guru/satguru, but name no teacher at all.
• His ideas took shape in argument and talk with sufis and yogis in Awadh (eastern Uttar Pradesh).

  Note: Britannica gives Kabir firm dates (born 1440, Varanasi; died 1518, Maghar), says a Muslim weaver adopted him, and dates the Bijak to about 1570, completed by a disciple [4]. NCERT deliberately leaves the birth, the dates and the Ramananda link open — follow the NCERT version in the exam.

Baba Guru Nanak (1469–1539)

Early life

• Born in a Hindu merchant family at Nankana Sahib, near the river Ravi in Punjab.
• Trained as an accountant and studied Persian — the office language of the Sultanate. So he was a literate, town-connected man, not a forest ascetic.
• He kept company with sufis and bhaktas and travelled widely.
• Britannica gives his birth date as 15 April 1469, at Rai Bhoi di Talvandi (today Nankana Sahib, Pakistan) near Lahore, and his death in 1539 at Kartarpur [5].

His message — nirguna bhakti

• He rejected animal sacrifices, ritual bathing, worship of images, and harsh bodily austerities.
• He also rejected the scriptures of both Hindus and Muslims — an unusual, even-handed stand.
• The Absolute he called "rab" — with no gender and no form.
• The only way to reach it: repeat the Divine Name.
• He put his teaching in shabad — hymns he composed in Punjabi.
• These were sung, to the rabab (a string instrument) played by his attendant Mardana.

What he built

• He set up sangat — congregational worship, where followers sit together, sing, and eat together.
• He appointed Angad as his successor. This began a line of gurus that ran nearly 200 years.
• NCERT's position: he did not wish to start a new religion. The separate Sikh identity hardened later.
• Britannica records that in his last years at Kartarpur he began Guru ka Langar, the community kitchen [5].

How the tradition was consolidated after him

• Guru Arjan, the fifth guru, compiled the Adi Granth Sahib.
• It holds the hymns of Nanak and his four successors, plus Baba Farid (a sufi), Ravidas/Raidas and Kabir.
• These hymns are called "gurbani" and are in several languages.

• Britannica dates the compilation to 1604, using the earlier Goindval Pothis prepared under Guru Amar Das [6].

• Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur. The enlarged book became the Guru Granth Sahib.

• He also founded the Khalsa Panth — "army of the pure" — with five symbols:
• uncut hair
• dagger
• shorts
• comb
• steel bangle

Mirabai (c. 15th–16th centuries)

• The best-known woman poet of the bhakti tradition.
• We know her life mainly from bhajans passed on by mouth, sung long before they were written down. So her story is devotional memory, not court record.
• She was a Rajput princess of Merta in Marwar, married against her will into the Sisodia clan of Mewar.
• She refused to accept her husband. She took Krishna as her lover.
• Her in-laws tried to poison her. She survived and left, becoming a wandering saint.
• Her famous line of defiance: "What can Mewar's ruler do to me?"
• Some traditions say her preceptor was Raidas, a leather worker — a caste seen as "untouchable". Accepting him as guru broke caste rule directly.
• She wore either the white of a widow or the saffron of a renouncer — both refuse the role of wife.
• She founded no sect and left no organisation. Yet her songs are still sung by the poor and "low caste" people of Gujarat and Rajasthan.
• Why that matters: her power was social, not institutional — she survived through singing, not through a monastery.

Shankaradeva (late 15th century, Assam)

• The leading voice of Vaishnavism (devotion to Vishnu) in Assam.
• His path is called Bhagavati dharma, built on the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Purana.
• Core teaching: absolute surrender to Vishnu.
• Practice: naam kirtan — singing God's names — done in sat sanga, gatherings of devotees.
• Institutions he founded, both still working today:
• satras — monasteries.

• naam ghars — prayer halls in the village.

• His major work: the Kirtana-ghosha.

• Note the contrast: Mirabai left no institution; Shankaradeva left a whole institutional network — which is why Assam's devotional life survived in an organised form.

Common thread across the four

• All four used local speech, not Sanskrit — Punjabi, Rajasthani/Gujarati, Assamese, sant bhasha.
• All four used music as the main carrier — shabad, bhajan, naam kirtan.
• Three of the four (Kabir, Nanak, Shankaradeva) are nirguna or surrender-based; Mirabai is saguna — she loves a God with a form, Krishna.
• Two left lasting institutions (Nanak — sangat/guruship; Shankaradeva — satras); two did not (Kabir's panths formed after his death; Mirabai none).

Prelims Hooks

• Kabir Bijak → Kabirpanth, Varanasi/UP; Kabir Granthavali → Dadupanth, Rajasthan.
• Ulatbansi = "upside-down sayings" — e.g. "fire raging in the ocean".
• Sant bhasha = the special language of the nirguna poets.
• Kabir's name is Arabic for "great"; the julahas were weavers who had converted to Islam.
• Baba Guru Nanak: born 1469 at Nankana Sahib on the Ravi; died 1539; called the Absolute "rab".
• Mardana was Nanak's attendant and played the rabab; Nanak's hymns are shabad, in Punjabi.
• Guru Arjan (5th guru) compiled the Adi Granth Sahib — in 1604 per Britannica [6]; Guru Gobind Singh (10th) added Guru Tegh Bahadur's hymns and founded the Khalsa Panth.
• Khalsa's five symbols: uncut hair, dagger, shorts, comb, steel bangle.
• Mirabai: princess of Merta (Marwar), married into the Sisodia clan of Mewar; Raidas named as her guru in some traditions.
• Shankaradeva: Bhagavati dharma; institutions = satras (monasteries) and naam ghars (prayer halls); text = Kirtana-ghosha.
• Non-Sikh saints inside the Adi Granth: Baba Farid, Ravidas/Raidas, Kabir.

Mains Points

• Language chose the audience. By dropping Sanskrit for sant bhasha, Punjabi and Assamese, these saints moved religion out of priestly hands. Devotion became something a weaver, a leather worker or a woman could perform without permission.
• The Kabir problem shows how history is made. Every life story of Kabir is 17th century or later — about 200 years after him — and the traditions disagree on his birth and his guru. His own verses name no preceptor. Later groups needed a founder with a proper lineage, so they supplied one (Ramananda). Useful example for a question on hagiography as a source.
• Institution-building decides survival. Nanak created sangat and a succession of gurus; Shankaradeva created satras and naam ghars that still run. Mirabai created neither and lives only in song. The same devotional energy produced very different long-term outcomes depending on organisation.
• Protest, but of different kinds. Kabir attacks ritual and caste with mockery; Nanak rejects the scriptures of both faiths and builds an alternative community; Mirabai's protest is personal and gendered — against marriage, in-laws and caste rules; Shankaradeva works within Vaishnavism and channels devotion into village institutions. Bhakti was not one single "movement" with one single target.