SECONDARY SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF KABIR AND KABIRPANTH

The 19th century scholars on Kabir and the Kabirpanth used to prepare lists of works attributed to Kabir and during this period, several seemed to have been unable to push their acquaintance with Kabir any further than this. The earliest reference to Kabirpanth occurs in the ethnographic work of H.H.Wilson,1 written in the early nineteenth century. Considering Kabirpanth as a Hindu religious sect, Wilson commented on his social composition, organizational form, myths and rituals. He has based his account on some devotional texts, individual interviews, and a few religious scriptures of the panth. Some of the secondary sources directly relate to the history of Kabirpanth. The first historian of Hindi literature, Garcin de Tassy, between 1837 and 1847 composed his famous work,2 in which he devotes fourteen pages to Kabir alone. De Tassy seems to have relied largely on H.H.Wilson, who, in 1828 and 1832, had published various Kabirpanthi works in Asiatic Researches