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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Vaişņava Saints of ....
651
worship. As Underhill says, from the point of view of orthodox sanctity whether Hindu or Mohammedan. Kabir was plainly a heretic; and his frank dislike of all institutional religion, of all external observances – which was as thorough and as intense as that of the Quakers themselves -- completed, so far as ecclesiastical opinion was concerned, his reputation was as a dangerous man. He held that each soul can independently contemplate on the Divine and enter into a direct communion with God without the assistance of religious institutions and rites and other external observances. He denounced the Hindu and Moslem means of piety like the temple and mosque, idol and holy water, scriptures and priests and sharply criticised the Yogins as well as the Mullahs and maintained that the God resides neither in the temple nor in the mosque, but he held that "All the men and women of the world are His living forms”.? He denounced the necessity of observing the external forms of religious worship like clearing mouth, counting beads, performing ablution, bowing before the deities, keeping beard and lock of hair, muttering the name of God without real faith in it, going to the sacred places and shrines like Mecca and Medina, etc., dyeing clothes, piercing ears, clean shaving of the head, etc.) He disbelieved in the significance of the scriptures like the purāna and koran and says they are all futile (jhūțhat)
1 Tagore Rabindranāth (Tr.): Kabir's Poems, Introduction, p. XV.
2 Ibid. Poems 67, 68, 69, pp. 70–72.
3 Dvivedi Hajariprasad : Kabir (Hindi), Poem 66, pp. 271, 272.
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