Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 82

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MODERN HINDUIS.N.
dressed the people in the vernacular Hindi, and largely helped to make it a literary language. The inclusion of lower-caste men among Ramanand's chief disciples is a proof that his reaction was directed against Brahman exclusiveness, and it embraced many features of Buddhism, including the monasteries or retreats for the mendicants.
Kabir, the greatest of Ramanand's disciples, is notable for his effort to combine the Mohammedans with the
Join Hindus in one religious fraternity. The caste Kabir.
• system and Brahman arrogance, as well as image-worship, found in him a strong opponent. He taught that the god of the Hindu is the same as the god of the Mahometan. “To Ali (Allah) and to Rama" (writes one of his disciples) “we owe our life, and should show like tenderness to all who live. What avails it to wash your mouth, to count your beads, to bathe in holy streams, to bow in temples, if, while you mutter your prayers or journey on pilgrimage, deceitfulness is in your heart? The Hindu fasts every eleventh day; the Mussulman on the Ramazan. Who formed the remaining months and days, that you should venerate but one? ... Behold but one in all things. He to whom the world belongs, He is the father of the worshippers alike of Ali and of Rama.” Kabir recognised in all the varied lots and changes of man, his hopes and fears and religious diversities, the one Divine Spirit; when this was recognised, Maya, or illusion, was over, and the soul found rest. This was to be obtained, not by burnt-offerings or sacrifices, but by faith and meditation on the supreme Being, and by keeping his holy names for ever on the lips and in the heart. Kabir had a vast number of followers, especially in Bengal; the headquarters of his sect is the Kabir Chaura at Benares.
The worship of Juggernaut, more properly Jagannath (literally, the Lord of the world) dates only from the Chaitanya beginning of the 16th century, being mainly
ancame>* propagated by Chaitanya, who was so great a preacher of the Vishnuite doctrines that since his death he has been widely worshipped as an incarnation of