Why did Kabir go to Magahar to die?

The short answer

The oldest texts do not say why he went, only that he did. Kabir's songs in the Guru Granth Sahib, compiled in 1604, say he came to Magahar at the end of his life, and that Kashi and Magahar are the same if Ram is in the heart.

The usual reason, that he went to prove wrong a belief that whoever died at Magahar was reborn a donkey, is tradition. We found the donkey line in one collection only, the Bijak, whose oldest copies date from about 1800. The flowers found under his sheet come from later retellings.

Kabir, the poet and weaver of Kashi (Benares, today Varanasi), is said to have left it at the end of his life to die at Magahar (मगहर), a small town near Gorakhpur. The usual explanation: dying in Kashi brought liberation, dying at Magahar rebirth as a donkey, and Kabir went to show the belief was empty.

We read the oldest texts that name Magahar to see which part of that story each holds. This piece looks only at which text says what.

What Kabir sang about Kashi and Magahar

Three songs of Kabir in the Guru Granth Sahib name Magahar. Compiled in 1604, the scripture is, with the Mohan Pothi (a Sikh manuscript) of about 1570, among the oldest collections of his songs (Imre Bangha, a scholar of the early Kabir manuscripts, pp. 136–137). The Gurmukhi is the standard text, cited by ang (page); the plain renderings are ours.

Ang 326, Raag Gauri (text). The refrain is a worried question:

ਅਬ ਕਹੁ ਰਾਮ ਕਵਨ ਗਤਿ ਮੋਰੀ ॥ ਤਜੀ ਲੇ ਬਨਾਰਸ ਮਤਿ ਭਈ ਥੋਰੀ ॥

"Now tell me, Ram, what is to become of me? I left Benares; my sense grew small."

ਸਗਲ ਜਨਮੁ ਸਿਵ ਪੁਰੀ ਗਵਾਇਆ ॥ ਮਰਤੀ ਬਾਰ ਮਗਹਰਿ ਉਠਿ ਆਇਆ ॥

"I wasted my whole life in Shiva's city; at the time of death I got up and came to Magahar."

A later stanza counts Kashi and Magahar the same. The mood is worry and humility, not defiance. The last line, "Kabir died repeating Ram's name", is in the past tense. Bangha hears the voice in a related Magahar song as that of the dying or dead Kabir (p. 156).

Ang 692, Raag Dhanasari (text). It asks what favour it would be to Ram if Kabir gave up his body in Kashi, and closes:

ਕਿਆ ਕਾਸੀ ਕਿਆ ਊਖਰੁ ਮਗਹਰੁ ਰਾਮੁ ਰਿਦੈ ਜਉ ਹੋਈ ॥

"What is Kashi, what is barren Magahar, if Ram is in the heart?"

The same song is in the Mohan Pothi and in the Panc-vani (a Dadupanthi anthology). In its earliest forms, Bangha finds, it is a call to inward devotion (pp. 156–157).

Ang 969, Raag Ramkali (text). He has settled in Magahar, and then:

ਪਹਿਲੇ ਦਰਸਨੁ ਮਗਹਰ ਪਾਇਓ ਫੁਨਿ ਕਾਸੀ ਬਸੇ ਆਈ ॥

"First I had your sight at Magahar, then I came and settled in Kashi."

ਜੈਸਾ ਮਗਹਰੁ ਤੈਸੀ ਕਾਸੀ ਹਮ ਏਕੈ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਨੀ ॥

"As Magahar, so Kashi; I take them as one."

So the songs place his death at Magahar (ang 326) and treat Magahar as equal to Kashi (all three). They do not say that dying at Magahar brings a bad rebirth, or that he went to prove anything.

The donkey line and where it comes from

The donkey is in the Bijak, the collection kept by the Kabirpanth. Its version of the ang 692 song is sabad 103 in the numbering of the translators Hess and Singh and in Ahmad Shah's English version of 1917 (p. 144). It adds three lines found in none of the older sources Bangha compared (pp. 158–159). One, in his romanisation, diacritics dropped:

magahara marai so gadaha hoya, bhala paratita rama se khoya

"Who dies at Magahar becomes a donkey; fine, you have lost your trust in Ram."

In the Bijak the song becomes a polemic against brahmanical orthodoxy (Bangha, p. 159). The oldest known Bijak manuscript is dated 1797/98 or 1802/03 (its colophon's era is unclear); the Bodleian copy was made in 1805 (Bangha, pp. 132–134). The collections of 1570 to 1681 have the song without the donkey line. Bangha reads the Bijak version as a late eighteenth-century reshaping, moulded to the story of Kabir's death at Magahar (pp. 159–160).

Why he went: what tradition says

Tradition says Kabir went to Magahar to prove the donkey belief wrong. The Sant Kabir Nagar district page prints it that way, the Gorakhpur district page in softer words; neither gives a source. Pushpa Pal Singh, editor of a 1965 Kabir Granthavali, held that Kabir went to uproot the belief that dying at Magahar led to hell. The songs do not say it.

The story of his death

Bangha, citing Lorenzen's study of the Kabir legends, writes that Kabir legends composed from about 1600 onward always mention his death at Magahar (p. 160, note 109). Anantadas's Kabir Parachai is dated about 1590 by Purushottam Agrawal; we could not open a text of it, so we cannot say whether it tells the story below.

Most retellings of Kabir's death (कबीर की मृत्यु) end with flowers. The earliest we read is H. H. Wilson's survey of Hindu sects, published in Calcutta in 1828 (1861 reprint, pp. 72–74). Hindus wanted to cremate the body and Muslims to bury it. Kabir appeared and told them to lift the cloth; under it they found a heap of flowers. Half went to Raja Bir Singh of Benares, and in Wilson's telling its ashes lie at Kabir Chaura; the other half was buried at Magahar under a tomb raised by Bijli Khan Pathan.

Westcott's Kabir and the Kabir Panth (Cawnpore, 1907, pp. 22–24) adds a scene before the death: his disciples urge him to die in Kashi, saying those who die at Maghar become a donkey, and Kabir rebukes them.

A government gazetteer ends differently. In H. R. Nevill's gazetteer of Basti district (1907, pp. 225–226), the body was buried; Kabir, said to be still alive at Brindaban, sent word to open the grave, and it held only a fragrance.

Magahar today

Two memorials stand side by side at Magahar, a samadhi and a mazar; the district page says Hindus built the first and Muslims the second.

Führer's survey for the Archaeological Survey of India (1891, p. 224) found a cenotaph east of the town on the river Ami, said to have been raised in 1450 by Bijli Khan and restored in 1567 by Nawab Fidai Khan, with a shrine for Hindus nearby. He gives no source for 1450. Bangha notes a Mughal land grant for the tomb's upkeep, dated 1698–99 (p. 129) and 1688–89 (p. 160), both from Lorenzen.

What is documented, and what is still open

Documented: three Guru Granth Sahib songs (1604) naming Magahar, one also in collections from about 1570; the donkey line in the Bijak (copies from about 1800); that Wilson (1828) and a gazetteer (1907) end the story differently.

Tradition: that he went to prove the donkey belief wrong; the dispute over his body; the flowers.

Still open:

• When he died. 1518 (Samvat 1575) is the traditional year, given by the Hindi scholar Hazari Prasad Dwivedi in his Kabir of 1942 and by the district page. A verse Wilson quotes (p. 72) gives Samvat 1505, which is 1448. Scholars are split (Wikipedia summarises them). Even the month differs: Magh on the district page, Agahan in Dwivedi and in Wilson's verse.
• The order in ang 969. Dr Saranam Singh, cited in the 1965 Granthavali, notes that many copies put Kashi first. Some editors read the line as evidence Kabir was born at Magahar; others read "darsan" as a vision of God.
• The belief itself. We found no text before the Bijak that says a death at Magahar means rebirth as a donkey. A verse in the 1965 Granthavali (pada 345) already turns a belief about dying in Benares or Magahar upside down; we could not trace which manuscript it comes from.