Mirabai
Meera, better known as Mirabai, and venerated as Sant Meerabai, was a 16th-century Hindu mystic poet and devotee of Krishna. She is a celebrated Bhakti saint, particularly in the North Indian Hindu tradition. She is mentioned in Bhaktamal, confirming that she was widely known and a cherished figure in the Bhakti movement by about 1600. In her poems, she expressed the madhurya bhava towards Krishna.
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 are a type of Bhajan, and 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
Primary records about Mirabai are not available, and scholars have attempted to establish Meera's biography from secondary literature that mentions her.Mirabai was born into a Rathore Rajput royal family in Kudki, and spent her childhood in Merta. She was the daughter of Ratan Singh Rathore and grand daughter 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 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 is 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, 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 written within 150 years of Mirabai's death. Neither mentions anything about her childhood, the circumstances of her marriage to Bhojraj or that 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.
Poetry
A number of compositions by Mirabai continue to be sung today in India, mostly as devotional songs towards Krishna, though nearly all of them have a philosophical connotation. Her poems describe her love, salutation, and separation from Krishna, and her dissatisfaction with the world. One of her most popular compositions remains "Payoji maine Ram Ratan dhan payo". Mirabai's poems are lyrical padas in the Rajasthani language. Several meters are used within her padas, but the most common meter found is mātric poetic line. Rāgas or melodies are attributed to these padas, allowing them to be sung. While thousands of verses are attributed to her, scholars are divided as to how many of them were actually penned by Mirabai herself. There are no surviving manuscripts of her poetry from her time, and the earliest records with two poems credited to her are from the early 18th century, more than 150 years after her legendary disappearance in 1547.Hindi and Rajasthani
The most extensive collection of Mirabai's poems exists in manuscripts from the 19th century. To establish the authenticity of the poems, scholars have looked at various factors such as the mention of Mirabai in other manuscripts, as well as the style, language, and form of the poems. John Stratton Hawley cautions, "When one speaks of the poetry of Mirabai, then, there is always an element of enigma. There must always remain a question about whether there is any real relation between the poems we cite and a historical Mira."In her poems, Krishna is a yogi and lover, and she herself is a yogini ready to take her place by his side in a spiritual marital bliss. Meera's style combines impassioned mood, defiance, longing, anticipation, joy and ecstasy of union, always centred on Krishna.
Mirabai speaks of a personal relationship with Krishna as her lover, God and mountain lifter. The characteristic of her poetry is complete surrender.
Mirabai is often classed with the northern Sant bhaktis, who spoke of Krishna.
Ravidas as Mira's Guru
There is a small chhatri in front of Meera's temple in Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan which bears Ravidas' engraved foot print. Legends link him as the guru of Mirabai, another major Bhakti movement poet.Mirabai composed a song dedicated to Guru Ravidas, where she mentioned him as her Guru:
Sadguru sant mile Ravidas
Mira devaki kare vandana aas
Jin chetan kahya dhann Bhagavan Ravidas
-- "I got a guru in the form of Sant Ravidas, there by obtaining life's fulfillment."
Sikh literature
When the Adi Granth was compiled in 1604, a copy of the text was given to a Sikh named Bhai Banno who was instructed by Guru Arjan to travel to Lahore to get it bound. While doing so, he made a copy of the codex, which included compositions of Mirabai. These unauthorized additions were not included in the standardized edition of the scripture by the Sikh gurus, who rejected their inclusion.Prem Ambodh Pothi, a text attributed to Guru Gobind Singh and completed in 1693 CE, includes poetry of Mira Bai as one of sixteen historic bhakti saints important to Sikhism.
Mirabai's compositions
- Raag Govind
- Govind Tika
- Raag Soratha
- Meera Ki Malhar
- Mira Padavali
- Narsi ji Ka Mayara
Influence
The continued influence of Mirabai, in part, has been her message of freedom, her resolve and right to pursue her devotion to Krishna and her spiritual beliefs as she felt drawn to despite her persecution. Her appeal and influence in Indian culture, writes Edwin Bryant, is from her emerging, through her legends and poems, as a person "who stands up for what is right and suffers bitterly for holding fast to her convictions, as other men and women have", yet she does so with a language of love, with words painting the "full range of emotions that mark love, whether between human beings or between human and divine".
From the 18th century onward, Mirabai's story was actively retold and adapted to reflect the theological and social values of different communities. These accounts focused less on historical fact and more on serving as a form of religious practice to inspire devotion.