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Verifiable biographical information about Mira comes from her own works and other subsequent works that mention her. But Mira was a legend in her own time, and there are, therefore, also a number of unverifiable stories about her that have come down through the oral tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story goes that Mira witnessed a wedding procession as a small child and asked her mother who her own bridegroom would be. One imagines the flustered mother looking around for inspiration, spotting an idol of Krishna, and telling little Mira, \u201cKrishna is your bridegroom, dear,\u201d little knowing that her daughter would take this literally for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mira lived in turbulent times. The Rajputs were at constant war with foreign invaders, first the Delhi Sultanate, and then the Mughals. To make matters worse, they were also fighting among themselves. Mira was married off into a rival Rajput family as part of a strategic alliance to fend off the invaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her heart, however, was not in the marriage. She firmly considered herself wedded to Krishna, and she made no secret of it. She would sing and dance ecstatically about her love for the Lord at the local temple, totally disregarding social norms and customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This must have made her a liability to her in-laws. The story goes that they tried to assassinate her several times, but Krishna saved her each time. They sent her poison, she happily drank it and continued to dance. They sent her a snake in a basket, it turned into a garland of flowers\u2026and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At some point, Mira left home and became a wandering ascetic, singing songs about Krishna and gathering followers where she went. She is thought to have died in Dwaraka at the age of 47\u201348. Legend says she merged into an idol of Krishna at a temple and vanished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mira composed in her native language, Rajasthani, as well as in Braj Bhasha in her later years. Her compositions have also been translated into several other languages, and continue to be popular to this day in all of these languages. Mira herself is semi-deified by her followers. A temple has been built to her in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mira\u2019s story is interesting enough, but it becomes even more interesting when taken together with the story of Andal, who is not as well known outside South India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Historians believe Andal<\/a> to have lived around 600\u2013800 A.D., at least 700 years before Mira. She was born in Srivilliputhur, a small town in Tamil Nadu. Andal is mainly known for two sets of hymns \u2014 the Tiruppavai (a set of 30 hymns), and the Nachiyar Tirumoli (a set of 143 hymns), both dedicated to Vishnu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is said that Andal was found as a baby in a temple garden by her adoptive father, Vishnuchittar, who took her home and brought her up lovingly. Vishnuchittar was a great devotee of Vishnu, and Andal grew up hearing stories about Vishnu, especially in his avatar<\/em> (earthly incarnation) as Krishna, and falling in love with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vishnuchittar made flower garlands for the Vishnu idol in the temple every day. One day, when no one was around, Andal decided to try on the garland to see if it looked good on her. When she was satisfied that it did, she put it back into its basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Vishnuchittar offered the garland to the deity that day, he noted with some surprise that the deity looked more resplendent than usual, almost beaming with pleasure. The same thing happened the next day, and the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then one day, Vishnuchittar found a strand of hair on the garland. He went home and asked Andal, \u201cHave you been trying on the garland I make for the Lord?\u201d She admitted to it, saying she wanted to make sure it looked good before she gave it to the Lord. He reprimanded her and made a new garland to take to the temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, he was surprised to find that the deity did not look as happy in the fresh garland. Vishnuchittar went home puzzled. That night, the Lord appeared in his dream and reproached him for depriving him of the pleasure of wearing the garland Andal had tried on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, from the following day, Andal was duly made to try on the garland before it was given to the Lord. As a result of this, she came to be known as the \u201cGiver of the Worn Garland\u201d (this is the name of an early 16th century epic poem about Andal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she grew up, Vishnuchittar asked Andal what kind of husband she wanted. She promptly responded that she would only marry Vishnu. Naturally, this was impractical, and her father tried to dissuade her, but Andal asked for a chance to try. She would undertake a holy vow, which involved writing hymns to Vishnu every day for the next 30 days (this is the set of 30 hymns that became famous as the Tiruppavai).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story goes that, after she completed her vow, she was decked up as a bride and taken to the Vishnu temple in Srirangam. When she stepped into the sanctum sanctorum, she merged into the Vishnu idol and vanished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While some parts of Andal\u2019s story can be verified from her own works and those of her contemporaries (her great love for Vishnu, her writing hymns as part of a holy vow, the fact that she tried on the garland meant for Vishnu, her place of birth and death, details about her adoptive father, and so on), naturally, her admirers and followers have taken some poetic liberties in fleshing out her life story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After her lifetime, Andal was deified as a consort of Vishnu, and a temple to her was built next to the Vishnu temple in Srivilliputhur, her birthplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stories of Mira and Andal bear striking similarities. Both women were in love with Krishna and wanted to be married to him. Both composed devotional love-poetry for Krishna that remain wildly popular to this day. Both were deified by their followers after their lifetimes. Are these just coincidences?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think so. Andal and Mira were both part of a larger trend \u2014 the Bhakti movement<\/a>. Understanding the motivations of these two women, so far removed in time and space, requires understanding the Bhakti movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bhakti means \u201cdevotion,\u201d and the Bhakti movement was a religious movement that started in South India, sometime around the 7th or 8th centuries A.D., and gradually spread across the length and breadth of India over the span of a thousand years, reaching its peak between the 15th and 17th centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It originally began as a reaction to the Vedic religion, which was heavily knowledge- and ritual-based. In the Vedic religion, the religious texts were all in Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the literary language, not the vernacular. You had to spend years studying it to be fluent. Vedic rituals were complex and esoteric, and performing them required years of studying the Vedas. Vedic priests were the custodians of religion, and it was only through them that the ordinary person had access to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bhakti movement was aimed at democratizing religion. The idea was that God should be accessible to everyone, whether a scholar of the Vedas or not. The important thing, the Bhakti movement said, was to have a personal relationship with God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A famous 8th century hymn by Adi Shankara<\/a> (Bhaja Govindam<\/em><\/a>), goes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWorship the Lord, worship the Lord, worship the Lord, O foolish one! For when the time comes (to meet your maker), the rules of grammar will not save you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The people mainly responsible for spreading the Bhakti movement were poets, singers, and storytellers, collectively called Bhakti saints. Influential Bhakti saints emerged in different parts of India at different times and acquired enormous followings. Many of these saints retold ancient stories from the Vedas<\/a>, Upanishads<\/a>, Puranas<\/a>, and Histories<\/a> (Ramayana<\/a> and Mahabharata<\/a>) in vernacular languages. In the process, they gave the teeming masses of Indians across the country a shared understanding of their ancient history and culture like never before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the Bhakti movement began in South India as a reaction to the highly esoteric nature of the Vedic religion, it rapidly gained steam in North India against the backdrop of India\u2019s fall to Arab and Turkic invaders and their attempts to forcibly change the country\u2019s religious character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bhakti saints came in many stripes. Some wrote or sang about God as an abstract idea, others about God as a specific persona \u2014 Rama or Krishna, Shiva or Shakti, or any of many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An important text that helped spread the Bhakti movement far and wide was the Bhagavata Purana<\/a>. \u201cPurana\u201d means ancient, and the Puranas are an important category of Hindu religious literature. There are 18 major and 18 minor Puranas, and each one is a compilation of ancient stories about the Gods. (Puranas also contain a wealth of information about the regions they are set in, including their geography, culture, dietary habits, history, pilgrimage spots, and more.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bhagavata Purana, for instance, is a compilation of stories about the different avatars<\/em> (earthly incarnations) of Vishnu. One of Vishnu\u2019s avatars<\/em> is as Krishna, and the Bhagavata Purana tells the entire life story of Krishna \u2014 as a mischievous child, a charming young man, a warrior par excellence, an able king, a good friend, a wise counsellor. Of course, interwoven effortlessly through all of this is the fact that he is an avatar<\/em> of Vishnu (God).<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the reasons for the popularity of the Bhagavata Purana may be that it has something for everyone. Those who have a maternal side find baby Krishna adorable. Young women fall hopelessly in love with Krishna the charmer. Devotees can relate to him as a friend, a mentor, a guide, a protector, or anything else their hearts desire. The Bhagavata Purana itself actively encourages people to have any kind of relationship they want with Krisha, the point being to have a relationship with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is in this context that one must understand Andal and Mira\u2019s love for Krishna (Vishnu) and their desire to marry him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most popular episodes in the Bhagavata Purana is the Raas Leela \u2014 the \u201cDance of Divine Love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Krishna is born into the Yadu clan, who are cowherds by occupation. His childhood and youth are spent idyllically in the villages of Braj, on the banks of the River Yamuna, herding cows, playing the flute, getting up to mischief, and charming everyone around him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Always adorable, Krishna grows up to be an irresistibly charming young man. The girls begin to notice him. The way he gazes at them, his devastating good looks (complexion as \u201cdark as a rain cloud,\u201d and yellow garments \u201clike a crack of lightning in the rain cloud\u201d), his divine music that entrances even animals and plants, let alone people. When he plays on his flute, the young cowherd girls (gopis<\/em>) of Braj forget what they\u2019re doing, where they are, even who they are. They adore and worship him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One lovely fall night, when the moon is red and heavy in the eastern sky, Krishna begins to play an especially enchanting tune on his flute in the forest near the village, and the gopis<\/em> become literally powerless to resist it. Gopis<\/em> milking their cows, cooking dinner, putting on their makeup, grooming their hair\u2026all drop what they\u2019re doing and hurry toward the forest in various states of dress or undress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There, they find Krishna, who divides himself up through his maya<\/em> (illusory powers) into many Krishnas, and dances with each girl individually. At one point, Krishna vanishes from their midst, leaving the gopis<\/em> bereft. They rush around desperately looking for him. Eventually, they find his footprints. But they are accompanied by another set of footprints, smaller, more delicate \u2014 a woman! One of themselves, no doubt. But who?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gopis<\/em> are bewildered! They follow the footprints, speculating about this special gopi<\/em> Krishna wanted to be alone with. Perhaps she was an especially devoted \u201caaraadhika<\/em>\u201d (adorer) of Krishna\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bhagavata Purana leaves the story about the special aaraadhika<\/em> tantalizingly unfinished. Eventually Krishna returns and dances with the gopis<\/em> again, and they dance the night away. Then at daybreak, they return home, back to their families and their chores, and it is like nothing has happened. The Raas Lila is explained as an illusion God created for the gopis<\/em> because they adored him so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unfinished story of the special aaraadhika<\/em> appears to have been taken up for creative exploration by Bhakti saints subsequently. Geet Govinda<\/a> by Jayadeva (a 12th century Bhakti saint) may be among the earliest major texts in which she features prominently, as Radha<\/a> (from \u201caaradhika\u201d<\/em>). Today, there is an elaborate mythology around Radha, and one can no longer think of Krishna without simultaneously thinking of Radha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the ways in which the Bhakti saints spread the idea of personal love for God was to go from town to town, temple to temple, singing their devotional songs and attracting huge followings. Music and singing have, therefore, always been central to the Bhakti movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, Bhakti music is not music for its own sake. The music is mainly a vehicle for storytelling or for achieving a trance-like state through communal singing that can take the devotee closer to God. In many cases, it is very simple music, music that the average person can join in with no prior musical training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having said that, there are several Bhakti traditions that give as much importance to the music as to the literature (lyrics). Jayadeva\u2019s Gita Govinda<\/a> (Odisha, 12th century~), Haveli Sangeet<\/a> (Mathura-Rajasthan, 15th century~), and Gurbani Kirtan<\/a> (Punjab, 15th century~) are some important examples of classically based Bhakti music. Compositions in these traditions have always been sung in the classical style, based on ragas, with specific ragas prescribed for each composition. Singers (kirtankars<\/em>) in these traditions are classically trained so they can preserve the original form of these compositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gita Govinda, Haveli Sangeet, and Gurbani Kirtan deserve a separate article of their own, given the magnitude of their direct contribution to Indian classical music as music. For now, here is an example of a 500-year old Haveli Sangeet composition in Raag Durga. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/v2\/resize:fit:384\/1*7hKC3gV4zR6_gRs3exTqnA.jpeg\")
The Bhakti Movement<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
The Bhagavata Purana<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Radha<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Bhakti Movement\u2019s Contribution to Indian Classical Music<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n