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The Indian religious poet Kabir (d. ca. 1518) often referred to his God using Vaishnava names, names that refer to the Hindu god Vishnu. Kabir also uses names for God that are not specific to Vishnu and even uses Muslim names. Vishnu is said to have been incarnated in several earthly avatars. The most important are Krishna and king Ramachandra. A traditional list names ten avatars. Kabir often refers to these earthly avatars, but he minimizes their importance in various ways such as emphasizing the fact that they all died. Most modern scholars have taken Kabir’s use of Vaishnava vocabulary to identify him as a Vaishnava, albeit an unorthodox one. Kabir’s rejection of the avatars and his focus on a supreme God without form or personality tends to put this identification in doubt., Kervan. International Journal of African and Asian Studies, V. 25 N. 1 (2021): Kervan

In the view of Max Weber, a theodicy refers to the way in which different religions represent how what happens to persons after death is determined by their actions in their present lives. The standard Hindu theodicy claims that our behaviour in this and previous lives leads to a better or worse rebirth. This essay discusses how this Hindu theodicy was modified by religious thinkers who wished to accommodate this system to a more egalitarian and fluid social system through the infusion and elevation of the concept of religious devotion or bhakti. The main example used is the work of a seventeenth-century Hindu poet named Jana Gopāla. His views are compared to those of earlier Hindu texts and to those of an eighteenth century Italian Christian missionary in India., Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, V. 24 N. 1 (2020)