Mīrābāī—a Saint or a Rebel?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.03

Keywords:

Mīrābāī, biography, bhakti poetry, viraha, Krishna, Rajasthan, Old Rajasthani, Brajbhasha, Early Modern Hindi

Abstract

Mīrābāī—a Saint or a Rebel?

There have been many attempts to narrate the life of Mīrābāī, the 16th-century Rajasthani princess and sant poetess. The extent of the texts centred around her life ranges from a few verses in Nābhādās’s Bhaktamāl from the beginning of the 17thcentury to the 20th/21st-century monographs. It substantially increases with time, especially in the past century, as well as does the quantity of information these texts provide to their readers. This paper compares the life writings by/about Mīrā from the two centuries after Mīrā’s alleged death with recent biographical material on Mīrā’s life and tries to classify the specific tendencies in interpreting her life in the recent publications as well as to identify the reasons behind them.

PlumX Metrics of this article

References

Alston, A. J. 1980. The Devotional Poems of Mīrābāi. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Callewaert, W. M. 2000. The Hagiographies of Anantadās: The Bhakti Poets of North India. Richmond–Surrey: Curzon.

Caturvedī, P. (ed.). 2003 [1932]. Mīrāṃbāī kī Padāvalī. Allahabad: Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan.

Futehally, S. 1994. In the Dark of the Heart—Songs of Meera. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers.

Gokulnāth. 1970 [1948]. Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā. (Ed. Dvārikādās Parīkh). Mathura: Śrī Bajraṅg Pustakālay.

Hawley, J. S. 2005. Three Bhakti Voices: Mīrā, Sūrdās, and Kabīr in Their Time and Ours. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Hawley, J. S. and G. S. Mann. 2013. Mīrā at the Court of Guru Gobind Singh. In: T. De Bruijn and A. Busch (eds.). Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India. Leiden: E. J. Brill: 107–138. https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004264489_006.

Martin, N. M. 1996. Mīrā: Inscribed in Text, Embodied in Life. In: S. Rosen (ed.). Vaiṣṇavī: Women and the Worship of Kr̥ ṣṇa. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass: 7–46.

Melnikova, N. 2008. Stará hindština v poezii Mírá Báí. Unpublished MA thesis. Praha.

Mukta, P. 1994. Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mīrā. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Nābhādās. 1969. Śrī Bhaktamāl, with the Bhaktirasabodhinī commentary of Priyādās. (Ed. by Sītārāmśaraṇ Bhagavānprasād Rūpakalā). Lakhnau: Tejkumār Press.

Parashar, S. 2005. Mirabai Liebesnärrin—Die Verse der indischen Dichterin und Mystikerin. Kelkheim, YinYang Media Verlag.

Pauwels, H. 2009. Imagining Religious Communities in the Sixteenth Century: Harirām vyās and the haritrayī. In: International Journal of Hindu Studies, 13(2): 143–161. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11407-009-9073-4.

—. 1996. Review of Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mīrā by Parita Mukta. In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 59(2): 394–395.

—. 2010. Rāṭhauṛī Mīrā: Two Neglected Rāṭhauṛ Connections of Mīrā—Jaimal Meṛtīyo and Nāgrīdās. In: International Journal of Hindu Studies, 14(2–3): 177–200. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11407-011-9093-8.

Prabhāt, C. L. 1999. Mīrā: Jīvan aur Kāvya. Jodhpur: Rājasthānī Granthāghar.

Sangari, K. 1990. Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti. In: Economic and Political Weekly 25(27): 1464–1475.

Sethi, V. K. 2009 [1979]. Mira The Divine Lover. Dera Baba Jaimal Singh: Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Taft, F. 2002. The Elusive Historical Mirabai: A Note. In: L. A. Babb, V. Joshi and M.W. Meister (eds.). Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of Rajasthan. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 313–335.

Tejāvat, A. S. 2015. Mīrā kā Jīvan. Ilahabad: Lokbhāratī prakāśan.

Downloads

Published

2018-12-31

How to Cite

Melnikova, Nora. 2018. “Mīrābāī—a Saint or a Rebel?”. Cracow Indological Studies 20 (2):27-46. https://doi.org/10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.03.