Poet Saints of India


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Dadu - Life and Poems


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DADU: LIFE AND POEMS Translation & Introduction by Paul Smith Dadu Dayal (1544-1603) was a Bhakti poet/saint from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. 'Dadu' means brother and 'Dayal' means 'the compassionate one'. He was found by an affluent businessman floating on the river Sabarmati. He later moved to Amer near Jaipur Rajasthan, where he gathered around himself a group of followers, forming a sect that became known as the Dadu-panth. Dadu's compositions were recorded by his disciple Rajjab and are known as the Dadu Anubhav Vani, a compilation of 5,000 couplets, many of them bhajans and dohas. Dadu spent the latter years of his life in Naraiana. Five ashrams are considered sacred by the followers: Naraiana, Bhairanaji, Sambhar, Amer, and Karadala (Kalyanpura). He was born in 1544, and died in 1603. He made his living by sewing skins into bags for raising water from wells, until eventually he was initiated into the religious life by the sadhu Sundardas. Dadu had no book-learning but his natural genius and the vision gained by his devotion made him a lover of beauty and a poet. Here are 85 of his wonderful, powerful bhajans & dohas in the correct rhyming form for the first time. 120 pages. Introduction to Bhakti Poets Series TULSIDAS, KABIR, VRIND, LALLA DED, RAHIM, VYASA, JAYADEVA, DADU (approx. 110-120 pages each... others to follow) Paul Smith (b. 1945) is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets from the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu, Hindi and other languages including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Mu'in, Amir Khusrau, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Khayyam, Rudaki, Lalla Ded, Mahsati, Baba Farid, Iqbal, Vrind, Rahim and others, and his own poetry, fiction, biographies, plays, children's books and 12 screenplays. www.newhumanitybooks.com




星斗集英譯本


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★ 《星斗集:王建生現代詩選》英譯版本 ★ 作者王建生改以英文為載體,賦予詩集新生命。




Kabir, Kabir: The life and work of the early modern poet-philosopher


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A FASCINATING AND RIGOROUS EXAMINATION OF KABIR’S LIFE AND POETRY AND HIS RELEVANCE TODAY, FOR BOTH THE SCHOLAR AND GENERAL READER As the right wing tries to claim Kabir for itself, while other conservatives disown him and yet others portray him as a secular idol beyond religion, the poet has never been so misunderstood. Coming from the Nirgun bhakti tradition, the words of this fifteenth-century poet have the power to reach beyond time and speak to us today. Was he a Hindu or Muslim or was he beyond religion? Did he try to cultivate a new faith or did he eschew organised religion altogether? Was his modernity an exception or a reflection of the times he lived in? What does Kabir’s life and poetry tell us about this nation’s past and present? In this rare appraisal of Kabir’s writings and his life, Purushottam Agarwal approaches this timeless poet-revolutionary with little preconceptions, presenting him the way the poet wanted to be seen, rather than what his followers and fans want to see in him.




The Theosophist


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Dadu, the Compassionate Mystic


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Includes life and teachings of Dādūdayāla.




The Poet-historian Qian Qianyi


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Lawrence Yim focuses on Qian’s poetic theory and practice, providing a critical study of his theory of poetic-history (shishi) and poems from the Toubi ji. He also examines the role played by history in early Qing verse, rethinking the nature of loyalism and historical memory in seventeenth-century China.




Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India


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This Text Is An Attempt To Reconstruct The Bhakti Movement From The 8Th Century Tamil Nadu To The 16Th Century Punjab, In Its Totality, As A Connected Organic Phenomenon And As Perhaps The Earliest Indian Voice Of Deconstructive Modern Thought.




Bodies of Song


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Kabir was a great iconoclastic-mystic poet of fifteenth-century North India; his poems were composed orally, written down by others in manuscripts and books, and transmitted through song. Scholars and translators usually attend to written collections, but these present only a partial picture of the Kabir who has remained vibrantly alive through the centuries mostly in oral forms. Entering the worlds of singers and listeners in rural Madhya Pradesh, Bodies of Song combines ethnographic and textual study in exploring how oral transmission and performance shape the content and interpretation of vernacular poetry in North India. The book investigates textual scholars' study of oral-performative traditions in a milieu where texts move simultaneously via oral, written, audio/video-recorded, and electronic pathways. As texts and performances are always socially embedded, Linda Hess brings readers into the lives of those who sing, hear, celebrate, revere, and dispute about Kabir. Bodies of Song is rich in stories of individuals and families, villages and towns, religious and secular organizations, castes and communities. Dialogue between religious/spiritual Kabir and social/political Kabir is a continuous theme throughout the book: ambiguously located between Hindu and Muslim cultures, Kabir rejected religious identities, pretentions, and hypocrisies. But even while satirizing the religious, he composed stunning poetry of religious experience and psychological insight. A weaver by trade, Kabir also criticized caste and other inequalities and today serves as an icon for Dalits and all who strive to remove caste prejudice and oppression.







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