Kabir’s 15th century sayings are a living phenomena in India languages. Everyone in North knows a Doha or tow. Did any of these sayings pass on to Kashmiri? Nothing much is know and linguistics seldom studied with a sense of wonder.
-0-
I recently came across these lines from Kabir in a song sung by Meghval community of Rajasthan.
video link
“Pehle toh guruji main janmyaPeechhe bada bhai
Dhoom dhaam sa pita re janmya
Sabse peechhe maai
Ber chalya mera bhai…“
O wise one, I was the first to be born
Then my elder brother
With great fanfare my father was born
In the end my mother
Time is slipping away…
[trans. via sayskabir]
The lines reminded me of a Kashmiri saying (that goes something like this…and given by anthropologist T.N. Madan in his study of Kashmiri Pandits):
God’e zaas be
pat zaai maej
telli mol
ti adi bude’bab
First was born
I
then mother
then father
and then
was born my
grandfather
-0-
