________________
OF THE HINDUS.
91
Kabír himself to Dharmadás, his chief pupil, and a follower of Rámánand's doctrines; it is said to be the work of SRUTGOPÁL, the first of Kabin's disciples.
From this authority it appears, that, although the Kabir Panthís have withdrawn, in such a very essential point as worship, from the Hindu communion, they still preserve abundant vestiges of their primitive source; and that their notions are in substance the same as those of the Pauránic sects, especially of the Vaishnava division. They admit of but one God, the creator of the world, and in opposition to the Vedanta notions of the absence of every quality and form, they assert that he has a body formed of the five elements of matter, and that he has mind endowed with the three Guías, or qualities of being; of course of ineffable purity and irresistible power: he is free from the defects of human natures, and can assume what particular shape he will: in all other respects he does not differ from man, and the pure man, the Sádh of the Kabir sect, is his living resemblance, and after death is his associate and equal; he is eternal, without end or beginning, as in fact is the elementary matter of which he consists, and of which all things are made residing in him before they took their present form, as the parts of the tree abide in the seed, or fleslı, blood and bone may be considered to be present in the seminal fluid: from the latter circumstance, and the identity of their essential nature, proceeds the doctrine, that God and man are not only the same, but that they are both in the same manner every