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RELIGIOUS SECTS
thing that lives and moves and has its being. Other sects have adopted these phrases literally, but the followers of Kabir do not mean by them to deny the individuality of being, and only intend these texts as assertions of all nature originally participating in common elementary principles.
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The Paramapurusha was alone for seventy-two ages, for after the Paurániks the Kabir Panthis maintain successive and endless creations: he then felt a desire to renew the world, which desire became manifest in a female form', being the Máyá, from whom all the mistaken notions current amongst mankind originate with this female the Adi Bhavání Prakriti or Sakti, the Parama Purusha, or first male, habits, and begets the Hindu triad, Brahmá, Vishnu and Siva: he then disappears, and the lady makes advances to her own sons: to their questions of her origin and character, she tells them, she was the bride of the first great invisible being, without shape and void, and whom she describes agreeably to the Vedanta notions; that she is now at liberty, and being of the same nature as themselves, is a fit associate for them: the deities hesitate, and Vishnu especially, putting some rather puzzling queries to Máyá, secured the respect of the Kabir Panthis, and excited the wrath
These notions are common to the whole Hindu systemdiversified according to the favorite object of worship, but essentially the same in all sects; we shall have occasion to discuss them more fully under the division Saktas, or worshippers of SAKTI.
