Author Description

LALLA DED, NUND RISHI, KABIR Three Great Sufi/Bhakti Poets of India of the 14th-15th centuries. SELECTED POEMS Translation & Introduction Paul Smith THE BHAKTI AND SUFI MOVEMENTS in India played an important role in bringing harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims. Three of their greatest poets of integration are here represented in large selections of their poems in the correct rhyming form. LALLA DED is the famous female poet/saint from Kashmir who lived at exactly the same time as Hafiz of Shiraz (1320-1392). Her vakhs (poems/sayings) are sung even today in Kashmir. She was married at a young age but the marriage was a failure and she walked out at the age of twenty-four. She became a disciple of Siddha Srikanth. It must have taken a lot of courage on her part to walk out of a marriage and to walk around unclothed as she did. She was treated with contempt by some and much reverence by others, seeing her as a saint and eventually as God-realized. Her two hundred vakhs are some of the oldest examples of Kashmiri written. She was a bridge between Hindu mysticism and Sufism. NUND RISHI ('Rishi' meaning Kashmiri Sufi) or Shaikh Nur ud-din, as he was afterwards named, was born in Kashmir in 1377. He used his poetry as tool to spread the knowledge of the absolute and criticized the mullas and other pseudo-scholars and gave expression to the lives of the common people. He also composed many poems on the pitfalls of the spiritual path and on the love of the devotee for God. His poetry is called valkhs as in the case of his mentor Lalla Ded. He was popular as a Sufi Perfect Master in Kashmir in his lifetime and still is. KABIR (meaning 'great') was born near Varanasi (Banaras), India, in 1398 A.D. and died towards the end of the 15th Century. He was brought up by an elderly Muslim weaver-couple named Niru and Nirna, having been abandoned shortly after birth. He learnt the same trade as his new parents and used the imagery of weaving often in his poems. It is said that h