8. Brahma is dead with Siva who lived in Kāshi; the immortals are dead. In Mathura, Krishna, the cowherd, died. The ten incarnations (of Vishnu) are dead. Machhandranāth, Gorakhnāth, Dattātreya and Vyās are no longer living. Kabīr cries with a loud voice, All these have fallen into the slip-knot of death.
9. While dwelling in the womb there is no clan nor caste; from the seed of Brahm the whole of creation is made.
Whose art thou the Brāhman? Whose am I the Sūdra? Whose blood am I? Whose milk art thou?
Kabīr says, ‘Who reflects on Brahm, he by me is made a Brāhman.’
10. To be truthful is best of all if the heart be truthful. A man may speak as much as he likes; but there is no pleasure apart from truthfulness.
11. If by wandering about naked union with Hari be obtained; then every deer of the forest will attain to God. If by shaving the head perfection is achieved, the sheep is saved, no one is lost.
If salvation is got by celibacy, a eunuch should be the first saved. Kabīr says, ‘Hear, O Man and Brother; without the name of Rāma no one has obtained salvation.’
The resemblance of some of the above ideas to the teaching of the Gospels is striking, and, as has been seen, the story of Kabīr’s birth might have been borrowed from the Bible, while the Kabīrpanthi Chauka or religious service has one or two features in common with Christianity. These facts raise a probability, at any rate, that Kabīr or his disciples had some acquaintance with the Bible or with the teaching of Christian missionaries. If such a supposition were correct, it would follow that Christianity had influenced the religious thought of India to a greater extent than is generally supposed. Because, as has been seen, the Nānakpanthi and Sikh sects are mainly based on the teaching of Kabīr. Another interesting though accidental resemblance is that the religion of Kabīr was handed down in the form of isolated texts and sayings like the Logia of Jesus, and was first reduced to writing in a connected form by his disciples. The fact that Kabīr called the deity by the name of Rāma apparently does not imply that he ascribed a unique and sole divinity to the hero king of Ajodhia. He had to have some name which might convey a definite image or conception to his uneducated followers, and may have simply adopted that which was best known and most revered by them.
4. The Kabīrpanthi Sect in the Central Provinces.
The two principal headquarters of the Kabīrpanthi sect are at Benaires and at Kawardha, the capital of the State of that name, or Dāmākheda in the Raipur District. These appear to be practically independent of each other, the head Mahants exercising separate jurisdiction over members of the sect who acknowledge their authority. The Benāres branch of the sect is known as Bāp (father) and the Kawardha branch as Mai (mother). In 1901 out of 850,000 Kabīrpanthis in India 500,000 belonged to the Central Provinces. The following account of the practices of the sect in the Province is partly compiled from local information, and it differs in some minor, though not in essential, points from that given by Bishop Westcott. The Benāres church is called the Kabīrchaura Math and the Kawardha one the Dharam Dās Math.