Previous Year Question
Consider the following statements:
Saint Nimbarka was a contemporary of Akbar.
Saint Kabir was greatly influenced by Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Correct Answer: D
Detailed Solution
Statement 1 is incorrect. Nimbarka was an important teacher of the Vaishnava bhakti tradition and propounded the Dvaitadvaita/Bhedabheda philosophy. Scholars differ regarding his precise dates, but standard historical scholarship places him in the period close to and after Ramanuja, roughly within the eleventh–twelfth-century tradition. IGNOU likewise describes him as a younger contemporary of Ramanuja. Akbar, on the other hand, ruled from 1556 to 1605 CE. They therefore could not have been contemporaries.
Statement 2 is also incorrect. Kabir was a poet-saint of the Nirguna bhakti tradition of northern India. NCERT places him broadly in the fourteenth–fifteenth-century context. Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1563/64–1624 CE), on the other hand, was an important Naqshbandi Sufi of the Mughal period whose influence belongs principally to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Sirhindi thus belonged to a later period than Kabir, making any influence of Sirhindi upon Kabir chronologically impossible.