Kashi's King and the Kabir Chaura Math

The Kabirchaura Math has found favour with kings and rulers right from the beginning. The king of Kashi, Maharaja Veerdev Singh Ju Baghel was Kabir’s disciple. Right from Kabir’s times till the 19th century the kings of Kashi were closely associated with the Math. The Math’s eighteenth guru, Shri Rangi Sahab and the then Kashi ruler had had some disagreement following which there was severing of the close ties. But the Math still has three wells, two of which are extremely old, and the relatively new one carries the name of Eeshwari Narayan Singh. All three wells have names of old and new rulers of Kashi engraved on them.

One of the rulers, Raja Chet Singh was associated with the Math. He got inspiration for the freedom struggle from the Math. His mother, Panna Rani who lived in Jaunpur, was a prominent disciple in the Math. A lot of land that the Math holds was by means of grants by the royal family. The documents related to these lands are safely deposited with the royal family of Ausaaav Ganj. The Math earlier had 16 acres of land. Gradually the Kabirchaura residential area began expanding and the borders of the Math started to recede. Once when Panni Rani came to the Math and saw that people were occupying Math land for selfish purposes, she became apprehensive.

The Rani was going on a long journey, but before leaving, she gave the Math’s mahant some gold coins and told him to draw a boundary around the remaining land. The poor living conditions of the saints made the mahant decide that it was a waste of money to invest it on brick and stones. The Math never kept any monetary reserves and the day’s feast and business was settled on that very day itself. The mahant, thus, used the money to arrange a grand feast for the saints, for all the saints preferred to go by the saying ‘udar samata ann le, tanheen samata cheer’.

After about a year when the Rani returned to Kashi, and came to the visit the Math, she was astonished to see yet more people settling themselves on the Math’s land since there was no boundary line drawn anywhere. But she was well aware of the sad state of the sants, and this time she personally made sure the construction of a boundary wall for the Math. The boundary wall is still intact, even after over a hundred years.