Concept

Mirabai

Overview

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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Mirabai is.
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These ideas may also have been reinforced by the belief (not even yet entirely extinct) in soul animals, into which the psyche disappears at the moment of death. Whether the Brahmans had as yet come to the notion that transformation into an animal is a simpler and more natural way of conceiving the future of the soul than ideas of a supermundane and a subterranean beyond, need not concern us. In any event, it is…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Mirabai; the term itself is not named.
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Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. The words "arms," "killing," "maiming," are to be found neither in the fragments of the Shastah that have reached us, nor in the Yajurvedah, nor in the Kormovedah. At least, I can affirm that I have not seen them in either of these two latter collections; and it is most singular that the Shastah, which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no…
Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 02
Close in meaning to Mirabai; the term itself is not named.
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