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Mirabai

Hindu mystic poet (1499–1546)

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Kangra painting of Mirabai (alt. spelt as 'Meera Bai', 'Meerabai', or 'Mira Bai') playing the veena. A painting of the poet-saint Mīrābai (1498–1546). She was a female Bhakti saint. Images of this pai
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Most legends about Mirabai mention her fearless disregard for social and family conventions, her devotion to Krishna, and her persecution by her in-laws for her religious devotion. Her in-laws never liked her passion for music, through which she expressed her devotion, and they considered it an insult to the upper-caste people. It is said that amongst her in-laws, her husband was the only one to love and support her in her Bhakti, while some believed him to have opposed it. She has been the subject of numerous folk tales and hagiographic legends, which are inconsistent or widely different in details. According to legend, when her in-laws attempted to murder her with poison, Mirabai tied a sacred thread on a murti of Krishna, trusting in His divine protection, through which she was saved by divine intervention. This legend is sometimes cited as the origin of the ritual of tying rakhi on Krishna's murti.

Millions of devotional hymns in passionate praise of Krishna are attributed to Mirabai in the Indian tradition, but just a few hundred are believed to be authentic by scholars, and the earliest written records suggest that, except for two hymns, most were first written down in the 18th century. Many poems attributed to Mirabai were likely composed later by others who admired Mirabai. These hymns, also called Bhajan are very famous across India.

Some Hindu temples, such as one within Chittor Fort, are dedicated to Mirabai's memory. Legends about Mirabai's life, of contested authenticity, have been the subject of movies, films, comic strips and other popular literature in modern times.

Biography

Mirabai was born into a Rathore Rajput royal family in Kudki (modern-day Beawar district of Rajasthan), and spent her childhood in Merta. She was the daughter of Ratan Singh Rathore and granddaughter of Rao Dudaji of Merta, thus making her a great-granddaughter of Rao Jodha and a cousin of Jaimal Rathore.

Mirabai had an arranged marriage with Bhoj Raj, the crown prince of Mewar, in 1516. Her husband was wounded in one of the ongoing wars with the Delhi Sultanate in 1518, and he died from battle wounds in 1521. Both her father and father-in-law (Rana Sanga) died a few days after their defeat in the Battle of Khanwa against Babur, the first Mughal Emperor.

After the death of Rana Sanga, Vikram Singh became the ruler of Mewar. According to a popular legend, her in-laws tried to assassinate her multiple times. These attempts included sending Mirabai a glass of poison and telling her it was nectar, and sending her a basket with a snake instead of flowers. According to hagiographic legends, she was not harmed in either case, with the snake miraculously becoming, depending on the version, a Krishna idol or a garland of flowers. In another version of these legends, she was asked by Vikram Singh to drown herself. When she attempts to do so, she merely floats on the water. Yet another legend states that the third Mughal emperor, Akbar, came with Tansen to visit Mirabai and presented her with a pearl necklace. Scholars doubt this happened, as Tansen joined Akbar's court in 1562, 15 years after Mirabai's death. Similarly, some stories state that Ravidas was her guru (teacher), but there is no corroborating historical evidence for this.

As of 2014, the three oldest records that mention Mirabai are all from the 17th century and were written within 150 years of Mirabai's death. None mention anything about her childhood, the circumstances of her marriage to Bhojraj or whether the people who persecuted her were her in-laws or from some Rajput royal family. Nancy Martin-Kershaw states that to the extent that Mirabai was challenged and persecuted, religious or social conventions were unlikely to have been the cause, rather the likely cause was political chaos and military conflicts between the Rajput kingdom and the Mughal Empire.

Other stories state that Mirabai left the kingdom of Mewar and went on pilgrimages. In her last years, Mirabai lived in Dwarka or Vrindavan, where legends state she miraculously disappeared by merging into an idol of Krishna after being poisoned by her brother-in-law in 1547. While miracles are contested by scholars for the lack of historical evidence, it is widely acknowledged that Mirabai dedicated her life to Krishna, composing songs of devotion, and was one of the most important poet-saints of the Bhakti movement period.

Hagiographical variations

Scholarly analysis of Mirabai's hagiography shows significant regional variation. In contrast to the traditional Mewari depiction of Mirabai traveling to Vrindavan and Dwarka after conflicts with her in-laws at Chittor, an early 18th-century Punjabi text written in Gurmukhi titled Prem Ambodh Pothi ("Ocean of Love", composed c. 1693 CE and related to the court of Guru Gobind Singh) portrays her as sedentary and residing in Udaipur. In this version, she is married to a man named Giridhar (Mountain Lifter) and her own father attempts to kill her with a poison and then a sword, the action of which is thwarted after Krishna manifests wielding the sudarshan chakra.

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