MIT International Journal of English Language & Literature, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2015, pp. 56–62
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Lyrical Aspect of Kabirdas and
Sarojini Naidu
Dr. Arti Kumari
Educator
Muzzaffarpur, Bihar, India
Abstract
Kabir was no doubt the greatest lyric poet and mystic of early Hindi literature. He was called the ‘Indian Luther
of 15th century, who may rightly be regarded as the creator of sacred literature in Hindi.
Sarojini is firmly rooted to the soil. She is a superb singer who loves to sing her melodious songs on Indian
myths, festivals and rituals with the ease and abundance of a bird of spring,
Kabir was not addressed as the Nightingale of India like Sarojini; no glory was thrusted upon his head but
Kabir is definitely superior to Sarojini because his songs do not follow the rules led down by the critic’s. They
both are the portrait gallery of the life which lends more charm to the viewers.
Key words: Literature, Poet, Singer, Song, Mystic, Sacred, Spring.
Kabir was no doubt the greatest lyric poet and mystic of early Hindi literature. He was called the ‘Indian Luther
of 15th century, who may rightly be regarded as the creator of sacred literature in Hindi. He based his teachings
on the monotheism of the Upanishads. He was a great singer and avadhoot, an advocate of Adwaitwad.’
Many of his poems are purely devotional that teach humility. The hallmark of Kabir’s poetry is that he conveys
in his two line poems (doha), what others may not be able to do in many pages. His ideas are in the form of
small poems, which are quite popular even today and sung in India. The best thing about the poems is the
simplicity. His poems emphasize devotional aspect.
Kabir was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth.
Kabir was a highly contemplative artist, who always made an attempt to communicate to us the nature of
his communion with the super- sensuous reality. It is the beauty of his poetry that he picks up situations that
surround our daily lives. The lyrical style of Kabir’s poems can be well judged by few poems taken from KABIR. 2
The translation is absolutely wonderful as it preserves the essence of the original.
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On the Guru’s greatness
What can I give in return,
so great is the Name of Ram?
What gift of mine could please the Guru?
The wish remains [unfulfilled] in my heart
On [God’s] omnipotence
I have done nothing and nothing can I do,
this body is capable of nothing:
Whatever is done is the work of Hari,
It is He who made Kabir ‘Kabir’!
On Death
Kabir, the lute is silent
for all its strings are broken:
What can the poor instrument do,
When the Player has departed?
On The Living Death
Death after death, the world dies,
but no one knows how to die:
The servant Kabir has died such a death,
that he will never have to die again!
On Slander
Keep the slanderer near you,
build him a hut in your courtyard —
For, without soap or water,
He will scurb your character clean!
On The Experience
When I was, Hari was not,
now Hari is and I am no more:
All darkness vanished,
When I saw the Lamp within my heart.
He expresses his gratitude to Satguru and speaks;
Guru Ko Keijai Dandavat, Koti-Koti Parnaam
Keet Na Jaane Bhringa Ko, Guru Kar Le Aap Samaan.
A Guru’s greatness is infinite. Guru under the influence of his true knowledge takes his dear disciple to his
own heights.
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He believes that the main motive of poetry is to preach, so in his ulat- banshi, we get the mystic approach,
full of realities and preaching.
Brother, see what comforts manit’s an untellable story.
Lion and tiger are yoked to a plow
sowing rice in a barren field.
The wild bear is pulling weeds,
the billy goat runs the farm.
The nanny goat married a lion
while a cow sang wedding songs.
The dowry was an antelope,
the bridesmaid was a lizard.
The crow washed all the laundry
while the heron gnashed its teeth.
The fly shaved its head, shouting,
I must join the marriage party!
Kabir says, can you figure out this
poetry?
If so I’ll call you
scholar, genius, devotee. (sabda-55)
Kabir interprets that the lion is jiva (living being) and the tiger is mana (mind). The male goat is the false
guru, master of Maya (the female goat who turns up as the bride in a later verse). In the farming allegory
the male goat is the farmer who hitches up jiva and mana like a pair of oxen and sets them plowing with the
plow of karma in the barren field of samsara (the world of desire, birth and death). Kabir says that they sow
many seeds of desires and hopes and the teachings of their false gurus. The bear is another false teacher or
pandit who maintains the samsara- field with his “weeding.” The word for bear (bhaluiya) is bent to become
bhulavanahara- one who causes delusion.
In the couplet about crow, heron and fly, the crows are again interpreted as false teachers. Indian crows
are in fact big, black, obnoxious birds, whose hunger is insatiable, whose crowing is cacophonous, and who
continually swoop down on garbage and do not hesitate to rip the food out of each other’s beaks. These dirty,
corrupt creatures, try to wash other people’s laundry; that is, they promise to purify the ignorant with their
soiled teachings. But after such laundering one only becomes a heron- proverbially a false holy man, white on
the outside but crafty, greedy, and violent; standing stock still in meditation, but only waiting for a chance to
spear a fish. If a hansa (swan, symbol of the liberated jiva) comes near, the heron scares it away by grinding
its teeth- an idiomatic expression for getting angry. The fly is a deluded being who desires liberation. All the
gurus say, “come on, I’ll shave your head,” meaning “I’ll initiate you.” And off run the shaven flies to join
the marriage party, which they think is heading for moksha (salvation). But this marriage is in fact between
the jiva-lion and Maya, the female goat. The lizard is a bridesmaid, who according to a Maithili folk, always
travels in the bridal palanquin. In the same manner, the restless jiva enveloped by Maya goes on many palanquins, or bodies, with sensuality as its companion.
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The poem ends with a typical mischievous challenge to work out the meaning and earn the right to be
called a real Pandit, a knower, a devotee.
To understand poetry, Kabir puts stress on three things: to understand references, simplification of creative
emotions and feelings and to develop consciousness by understanding its meaning. The need of consciousness
is available in the following lines.
Pandit hoi su padhi vichare, murish nahin boojhe 3
It is clear that when we read poetry, we have a certain enjoyment; this enjoyment may be due in one
place to a sound effect, to a striking idea in another, and to the emotional movement in still another; but it is
all the same one relish”.4
For Kabir, experience is the main source of inspiration for poetry. A bhakti poet does not care for rules of
poetry or its principles. We find the spontaneous overflow of emotions in his poetry based on his experience.
He says confidently;
Main kahata huin aankin dekhi, Tu kagaj ki lekhi. 5
For the writings of devotional poems, Kabir says that only the study of Shastra, Granth or traditional
teachings are not so important as the blessings of Guru who enlightens the path of knowledge by giving us
the light (torch)
(i) Pachhe laga jai tha lok ved ke sathi
Paire main satguru mila, Dipak diya hathi
(ii) Kabir satguru na milaya, rahi adhuri sikh7
The chief source for our understanding about Kabir is, of courses, his poetry. Kabir couplets are
considered as rich gems for their spiritual message and worldly wisdom. Kabir’s extempore outpourings of
songs and couplets numbering thousands have been hailed widely for their deep spiritual fervour and poetic
quality. Kabir’s utterances are not only lyrical, they make us enthrall and transport into world of reality. The
lines quoted below project Kabir’s feelings for such saints who are no saints at all:
Tan ko jogi sab kare, Man ko kare na koye
Sahajai sab sidhi paate, jo man jogi hoye.
Everyone, wearing an austere garb, gives an appearance of a saint to his body, but none becomes saintly from
within. If one makes a saint of himself from within, he will very easily attain all achievements i.e. he will
achieve the ultimate fulfillment of his life. Kabir had such transcendental and pious eyes that he could not
find a person whom he could call bad, as he himself says,
‘Bura jo Dekhan main chalaa, Bura na miliya koye
Jo dil khoja aapna, mujh sa bura na hoye
On the other hand, Sarojini is firmly rooted to the soil. She sings of Indian myths, festivals and rituals. She
speaks of the events of day to day life in an enchanting voice. She is poles apart from Kabir who is a sadhu,
a fakkar, who sings of the truth only. Sarojini is a superb singer who loves to sing her melodious songs with
the ease and abundance of a bird of spring. In fact, poetry came to her as a natural gift and she could not help
writing it when the mood overpowered. She longs, in her own words, to be “wild free things of the air like
the birds with a song in my heart”8. She is essentially a song-bird whose spontaneous and rapturous notes
remind one of ’Shelley’s Skylark: ‘singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.’ 9 Her songs possess the
same naturalness, the same light-hearted case, and perhaps, the same expending movement as possessed by the
melodies of bird’s song. Even the gusts and exuberance is the same. One cannot say much about the mystery
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of poetic creation but this may generally be admitted that a true poet, to a certain extent, shows the ease and
naturalness of a bird’s song. The songs of the plays of Shakespeare have fresh, natural bird-like quality. Even
when the poet develops his first rapture of joy, there remains in his lyric something of this quality of song.
The Times of London remarked on the release of “The Golden Threshold”: ‘Her (Sarojini’s) poetry seems to
sing itself as if her swift thoughts and strong emotions sprang into lyrics themselves’. 10 Every phrase and
every word becomes a song in itself. It is this ease and naturalness that lends the real charm to her poetry.
The first thing that at once holds the reader in a spell is its haunting music and delicacy of feeling blended
with freshness and exuberance of spirit. The emotional urge and romantic impulse, with all its exuberance of
colour, sound and perfume, result into memorable expression in her delicate quivering songs. Sarojini’s poetry
projects a sensuously romantic vision and a buoyancy of her spirit. Looking out on Florence on a beautiful May
morning, she cries out in excitement: ‘God: How beautiful it is; and how glad I am that I am alive today’.11
She is by nature dreamy and fanciful, and her imagination weaves out exotic patterns of colour and beauty.
It is perhaps her body remained in perpetual suffering that her spirit craves to leap out of its frame and enjoy
beauty and love. Nature with its vast treasure of beauty drags her sensibility and she bursts into the rapture of
song. Sarojini’s poems are mostly short lovely spells of fancy. Each lyric is concerned with a single emotion.
Each is an expression of the divine essence. The lightning flash of an instant is a powerful phenomenon to
fire her imagination and quicken her spirit to rapturous notes. Her work, she modestly acclaims: ‘poor casual
little poems seem to be less than beautiful....I mean….that final enduring beauty that I desire.’12
Some of her poems are effusions of the rapture of spring, some take us to the colourful Indian spectacle, some
transport us into the world of inner ecstasy but there are many which burn with the passion of love.
More than anything, Sarojini has a delicate and playful fancy. She says: “Do you know I have some very
beautiful poems floating in the air and if the gods are kind to me, I shall cast my soul like a net and capture
them”. This is what she really does in her poems. In ‘Medley’ she says: “Dreams and delicate fancies / Dance
thro’ a poet’s mind’, and in “The Poet’s Love Song” she tells us about her mad dreams:
Mad dreams are mine to bind
The world to my desire, and hold the wind
A voiceless captive to my conquering song. (p. 36)
There are poems which are lovely webs of fancy, such as “Golden Cassia”. Sarojini’s imagination is so
plastic and so original that it can give the best of her genius even in her short lyrics.
Sarojini’s lyrics are possessed of an individual beauty, and are a product of her fine sensibility, acutely
responsive to the external world. They are pre-eminently characterised by spontaneity, warmth and exuberance.
The fact that she does not write any blank verse in the manner of modern poets also suggests that her genius
is essentially lyrical. She is fully sworn of the fact that the melodic lyrical mould is her forte, for it can best
express her short flights of fancy. There is an air of romance about what she writes. All the time she seems to
sing and be lost in the rapture of beauty.
“To my Fair Fancies” is a charming lyric which arrests out attention with its sheer airy and smooth
lines and lilting melody. The poet wishes to bid farewell to her “fair fancies” in order to accommodate her
thought–worn songs and loneliness. Though the attraction of the fanciful world is irresistible, she, now in her
advanced age, with mature thought and outlook, can no longer afford to cling to it. She bids farewell to her
early age fancy and dreams:
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Nay, no longer I may hold you,
In my spirit’s sort caresses,
Nor like lotus leaves enfold you
In the tangles of my tresses.
Fair fancies, fly away
To white cloud–wildernesses,
Fly away. (p. 26)
The poet now desires to turn her gaze from her early age ecstasies to the complexities of adult life.
Even though the youthful freshness and virginal delicacy are not quite gone, the poet appears to have moved
some way on the thorny path of life. Though the poem is one of her early lyrics, graver note begins to be
audible. In the midst of the graceful patterns of beauty that her imagination weaves out for her, she is, at times,
haunted by the truth of life. She turns thoughtful and ponders over “Life’s high and lonely places”:
Now I am a thought–worn singer
In life’s high and lonely places.
Fairy fancies, fly away,
To bright wind-in woven spaces,
Fly away. (p. 26)
It is a lovely poem in which lines run smoothly like a fairy’s soft feet. The alliteration in “fairy fancies” and
“light-hearted” adds to the delicacy and melody of the poem. The frequency of ‘s’s’ and ‘es’s’ sound creates
a dreamlike atmosphere of softness and beauty. The poem moves from innocence to experience, and creates a
sense of exile, nostalgia and yearning. But inspire of this farewell poem, sweet fancies form a big part of her
poetry. She remains all her life essentially a poet of fancy and imagination.
In some of her lyrics, Sarojini enters the children’s world to capture their innocence and tenderness. They
are, in fact, songs of innocence which she derives from vernacular models of lullaby. “Cradle song” opens in
the fertile drowsy landscape of Indian village with its paddy fields, neem trees and fireflies.
The words like ‘spice’, ‘eyes’, ‘flies’, ‘stars’, ‘press’, and ‘caress’ create sweet whispering note of lullaby,
befitting the atmosphere of children’s world of fancy and dream. The intense fragrance of neem and poppybole is intoxicating, and is quite suggestive in the case of a child falling to sleep. The poet has woven a dream
motif into a dawn-to-dusk pattern of the poem. The poem is cast in three stanzas which correspond beautifully
to the three states of a child falling to sleep. There is the waking child who is induced by Nature to sleep, then
the child falling to sleep intoxicating fragrance of neem and poppy-bole, and finally, the child dreaming. The
rhythmic movement suits the tender theme; it evokes the image of a mother rocking the cradle of her beloved
child. The poem can be called a master-piece of creation, for here superb fancy has been blended with equally
superb craftsmanship.
Kabir and Sarojini were two such great geniuses of their time that they appear just like two parallel
lines which can’t meet and whose greatness can’t be measured. To encage these two great souls in words is
impossible. If we see them as angles, it may appear exaggeration, but it contains a truth underneath. Kabir
composed his verses and songs in a mixed language of his own which is now called ‘sadhukari’. Sadhukari
explodes the realities of life. It is a panorama of variegated forms of life. It is a perennial source of joy to all
classes of people.
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Kabir does not sing like Sarojini. He does not give that pleasure which is given to us by Sarojini.
Kabir is not such a patriot who worked for the nation but he surpassed everyone. He worked for the worldwide
agitation, worked for the reformation of the human race. He can be classed with the supreme mystics like
Saint Augustine, Ruys-broeck and Jalaluddin Rumi who may be said to have achieved the synthetic vision of
God. He was a highly contemplative artist who always made an attempt to communicate to us the nature of
his communion with the super sensuous reality. Both of them were melodist. Both of them sang beautifully.
But Kabir appears surpassing all limits because his songs exploded the truth.
“The emphasis on taste was an indication of the subjective approach in criticism; a work was to be judged,
not as a thing in itself, but by its effect on the reader.”
Kabir is definitely superior to Sarojini because his songs do not follow the rules led down by the critic’s.
Some of his lines are prosaic but we feel instinctively driven towards the thoughts of Kabir and musicality is
hidden behind. Kabir was not addressed as the Nightingale of India; no glory was thrusted upon his head. He
was born great and he achieved greatness by his rare virtues. He was far above Sarojini because for him the
material world is mutable. He realised it in the marrow of his bones and discarded whatever appeared inessential and pompous to him. Almost all his dohas, sakhis, are the picturesque description of the reality. They
are the portrait gallery of the life which lends more charm to the viewers.
Works Cited
Publisher’s Note in the first edition of Bishop Westcott’s book, 1907.
Introduction and translation from Hindi and notes by Vaudeville Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974.
Kabir Granthawali, Shyam Sundar Das p. 121.
Studies on some concepts of the Alankara shastra, Dr. V. Raghavan, p. 268.
Kabir Vachanavali, Harioudh p. 225.
Kabir Granthawali, Dr. Parasnath Tiwari, p. 137.
Kabir Vachanamrit, p. 5.
Symons, Arthur, “Introduction” The Golden Threshold p. 20.
Hutchinson, Thomas Ed, Shelley: Poetical works Oxford University Press, 1943, p. 602.
Quoted here from Dwivedi, A.N., Sarojini Naidu and Her Poetry, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, 1981, p. 650.
Symons, Arthur, op. cit., pp. 21-22. Symons, Arthur , ‘Introduction’ , the Golden Threshold, p. 13.