Kabir’s verses first lived in the breath of singers and devotees rather than on the printed page. In these early centuries, his words circulated through oral traditions and were gathered by communities such as the Kabir Panth and the Sikh tradition, which preserved many of his hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib. Interpretations in this phase were primarily devotional and sectarian, seeing him as a nirguna bhakti saint devoted to a formless God, and as a figure who challenged ritualism and caste while pointing toward a direct, experiential relationship with the Divine. Hindu, Sikh, and Islamic readers each found in him a mystic whose language could be harmonized with their own theological emphases, whether devotional, monotheistic, or aligned with emerging bhakti currents.

As manuscripts and collections like the Bijak began to be treated as semi-canonical, leaders within the Kabir Panth and other traditions produced commentaries that gradually stabilized certain readings. These efforts often standardized meanings and sometimes softened the sharp edge of his social and religious critique into more orthodox, moralizing interpretations. Sikh exegesis tended to frame him as a bhakta whose teachings resonated with Guru Nanak’s emphasis on the One God, while minimizing the most confrontational aspects of his critique of organized religion. Across these traditions, the living, many-voiced Kabir of oral performance slowly became a more fixed textual figure, even as regional and sectarian variations continued to thrive.

With the advent of colonial scholarship, Kabir’s poetry entered a new interpretive arena. Early English translations by British scholars, and later influential renderings such as those associated with Rabindranath Tagore, often portrayed him as a religious reformer and universal mystic, comparable to other great spiritual figures and congenial to rational, monotheistic sensibilities. These versions tended to highlight his criticism of caste, ritual, and sectarianism, and to present him as a symbol of Hindu–Muslim unity and social reform, sometimes smoothing out his rough vernacular, paradoxes, and biting satire. In this way, a more “timeless” and universal Kabir emerged, one that could speak to liberal and spiritual-universalist audiences while being partially detached from his specific North Indian social milieu.

Later academic and literary translators turned back toward the texture of Kabir’s original speech and the complexity of his historical context. Scholars and translators such as Charlotte Vaudeville, Linda Hess, and others compared multiple recensions and oral traditions, attending to the challenges of his mixed dialects, his nirguna vocabulary, and his satirical, often abrasive tone. Their work sought to preserve the colloquial immediacy, ambiguity, and irony of the verses, and to foreground Kabir as a radical critic of caste, religious identity, scriptural authority, and social hypocrisy, rather than only as a gentle mystic of universal love. In more recent interpretive currents, including socially engaged and postcolonial readings, Kabir’s voice is often heard as both profoundly spiritual and deeply concerned with justice, a poet whose words continue to be retranslated—textually, musically, and philosophically—as each age seeks its own reflection in his uncompromising songs.