70 RELIGIOUS SECTS 



95. Wlien the master is blind, what is to become of the scholar : when the blind leads 

 the blind, both will fall into the well. 



96. Yet the master is helpless when the scholar is unapt : it is blowing through a bambUf 

 to teach wisdom to the dull. 



97. The instruction of the foohsh is waste of knowledge ; a maund of soap cannot wash 

 charcoal white. 



98. The tree bears not fruit for itself^ nor for itself does the stream collect its waters : 

 for the benefit of others alone, does the sage assume a bodily shape. 



99. I have wept for mankind, but no one has wept with me ; 7ie will join my tears, 

 who comprehends the word. 



100. All have exclaimed, master, master, but to me this doubt arises ; how can they 

 sit down with the master, whom they do not know. 



The preceding will serve as exemplifications of the compositions of this 

 school : they are necessarily unsatisfactory, as amongst some hundreds of similar 

 passages, the business of selection, when confined to the few admissible in 

 this place, is unavoidably perplexing and incomplete : they are, however, suf- 

 ficient for the present purpose, as the perusal of the entire work from which 

 they have been selected, would not convey any more positive notions of the 

 doctrines of Kabir: these we shall now proceed to state according to the 

 authority of the Suk'h Nidhd?i. 



The Suk'h Nidhdii is supposed to be addressed by Kahir himself to Dher- 

 madds, his chief pupil, and a follower of Rdmdnand's doctrines j it is said to be 

 the work of Srutgopal, the first of Kabir's disciples. 



From this authority it appears, that although the Kahir Panfhis have 

 withdrawn, in such a very essential point as worship, from the Hindu commu- 

 nion, they still preserve abundant vestiges of their primitive source ; and that 

 their notions are in substance the same as those of the Pauranic sects, espe- 

 cially of the Vaishnava division. They admit of but one God, the creator of the 



