No manuscripts of Mirabai’s poems survive from within two centuries of her death. Contemporary musicians think she sang her songs as she roamed. A loyal maid, Lalita, who had abandoned the palace with Mira and joined her on the road, transcribed the words into a great notebook, possibly noting down a raga for each song. Records from the Ranchhodji Temple at Dwarka refer to this notebook or a copy, but sometime in the seventeenth century a Muslim warlord plundered the temple and the manuscript vanished. For nearly five hundred years musicians have passed her songs on orally.
Modern collectors have located well over five thousand songs with the name Mirabai in the signature line. Scholars have tried to establish which might justifiably be thought hers, using linguistic evidence, and the popular Padāvali or edition of songs holds just over two hundred.
By the age of fifty Mira had arrived at the great Ranchhodji Temple at Dwarka, in Gujarat State, where she set up a kitchen to feed the poor. Around that time her husband’s family, long absent from her life, decided they wanted their princess home. Their motives were likely political. They had suffered a series of punishing military setbacks, and persistent rumors went through the countryside that their vicious treatment of Mira had turned the favor of the gods. So they dispatched an envoy of Brahmans to Dwarka to fetch her.
At first Mira refused to return with the envoy. But the Brahmans vowed to fast to death if she wouldn’t relent. This put her in a bind: If a Brahman should die on her account, the karma of his death would pursue her. Reluctantly, she agreed to return to Mewar. Before setting out, she asked for a final night alone in the temple with the image of Krishna. In the morning she did not emerge. The envoy forced open the temple doors, and found only Mira’s hair and her robe slung across the lap of the deity.
A modern biographer notes that behind the temple lies the ocean. Mirabai could have left through a rear passage, climbed into a waiting boat, and slipped off across the water.
:SURDĀS
(1478—1583?)
To what land has Krishna departed?
I’ll find him,
I’ll go out in drag
with a bowl and an antler,
I’ll be a saffron-robed, ash-pasted
beggar yoginī.
Matted hair and weird earrings I’ll
dress up as Śiva
and bring the dead yogin to life.
Dark One, it’s your fault that Surdās
has only one theme—
the torment of a god’s disappearance.
Body and mind
burnt to cinder, it’s ash he
offers
his Dark One.
:AS
Black night without love
is a she-cobra.
If the moon would rise I could
turn back the sting.
But spells have proved futile
charms worthless—
now even love is extinguished.
Without his Dark Lord, Sur is a lost
snakebitten girl
convulsing with
venom.
:AS
Surdās
SURDĀS IS THE renowned blind bhakti poet of North India. Along with Mirabai, he remains one of the most commonly presented by classical singers on the concert hall stage. An enormous corpus of songs attributed to him—amounting to four or five thousand but legendarily numbered at one hundred thousand padas—are collectively titled the Sursagar, the “Ocean of Sur.” (Pada is the loose term used all over Northern India for a poem or song-lyric. It stems from the Sanskrit, and literally means “foot,” referring to metrical feet.) Reliable facts about Surdās’s life have been long veiled by a sectarian hagiography, recorded in the Cauri Vaisnavan ki Varta, or “Conversation with Eighty-four Vaishnavas,” attributed to Gokulnath, whose birthdate of 1551 suggests that as a young man he might conceivably have met an elderly Surdās.
As with Mirabai, whose life also overlaps Surdās’s, what survives in written record and in popular culture cannot all be the work of a single author. We would do better to refer to a Surdās tradition, added on to by dozens or even hundreds of singers from the sixteenth century until recent times. The name, or more properly, the title, Surdās, has come to be used as a respectful address to a blind man, especially blind singers, met all over India today.
: Dadu Dayal
(1544—1604)
Sākhīs
I tell the truth,
there’s no doubt about it—
whoever takes the life of another creature
goes the dark
road to hell.
. . . . . . . . . . .
They cut animal throats, says Dadu—
and claim it’s their faith.
Five times a day at their prayers
standing on nothing.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The Lord of Wisdom, says Dadu
throws dice.
Nobody watches him.
He rules the universe and
you can’t stain him.
There’s a worm called Time
drilling into your body.
Every day, says Dadu, the end
draws closer.
. . . . . . . . . . .
He wouldn’t hurt his relatives
but heretics he’d kill.
Dadu says: you won’t see the light
if you don’t
kill yourself.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The worn-out clay pitcher is broken
that once had nine holes.
Did you imagine, asks Dadu,
it held water forever?
:AS
Dadu Dayal
BORN IN AHMEDABAD to low-caste parents, Dadu was a Tom of Bedlam or Crazy Jane truth-speaker. His life is closely associated with various districts in Gujarat and Rajasthan, and he may have lived in a cave beneath the “amber fort” of Amer for some time. Some say his father found him as a child adrift in a river, his cradle swirling downstream, and brought him home. Probably this is a later story intended to provide him a proper Brahman birth, and to erase the painful low-caste status so his poetry would seem properly orthodox.
Called Dayal, “the compassionate,” Dadu by caste and upbringing was a cotton-carder—an occupation in which low-status Hindus live at close quarters with Muslims. He drew the wrath of both religions for publicly spurning their scriptures. Ritual he savagely mocked—especially animal sacrifice, which he considered repulsive. His sākhīs (literally “witness” poems, two lines in the original Braj Bhaṣa dialect) owe much to Kabir and other North Indian poet-saints. A sect founded in his name, the Dadu Panth (creed or “path” of Dadu), exists to this day in Rajasthan. Painted images the Panth has produced show a youthful, turbaned, holy man. He wears a white robe, sports a thin moustache, and emanates tranquility, while a halo of golden light surrounds his head. I find this sanctified image hard to square with Dadu’s razor-toothed sākhīs, full of warnings about inevitable death, and blistering at hollow displays of holiness.
: PANJABI SONGS
(SUNG BY USTĀD ABDUL RAHĪM; RECORDED AND
TRANSLATED BY ANANDA COOMARASWAMY, CIRCA 1913)
I
When I go down to draw water, O Mother, at Jamna ghat
He catches my clothes and twists my hand—
When I go to sell milk,
At every step Gokula seeks to stop me.
He is so obstinate, what can I say?
He ever comes and goes: why does this Youngling so?
He seizes my arm and shuts my mouth and holds me close:
I will make my complaint to Kans Raja, then I shall have no fear
of Thee!
II
See, Sakhis, how Krishna stands!
How can I go fetch water, my mother-in-law?
When I go to draw water from Jamna,
There meets me the young boy of Nand!
III
What yogi is this, with rings in his ears and ashes smeared, who
wanders about?
Some perform meditation, some dwell in the woods, some call on
Thy name with devotion!
IV
To the hem of thy garment I cling, O Rama!
My refuge Thou art:
Thou art my Lord—
To the hem of thy garment I cling, O Rama!
V
How can I loosen the knot that binds the heart of my beloved?
All my comrades well-decked are embraced by their lovers,
But I sit alone eating poison.
VI
My Lord has not spoken, he sulks since the afternoon—
The wheat crops are ripe, the rose trees in bloom.
I need not thy earnings, only come to the Panjāb again!
Thou farest away on thy journey, but I am left desolate:
Oh! the empty house and the courtyard fill me with fear—
The wheat crops are ripe, the rose trees in bloom.
:AC
Panjabi Songs
ART HISTORIAN Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife, the British singer Ratan Devī, collected these lyrics and published them in 1913. Translated by Coomaraswamy, these versions—resting on the cusp between devotion and love song—are examples of the type of neo-Victorian translation that has largely disappeared from the English-speaking world. Within a year or two of their publication, modernism—Ezra Pound in particular—would sweep from England the grammatical inversions (“there meets me the young boy”), the capitalized Thee and Thou, and other archaisms. But Coomaraswamy’s translations are classics of their sort. He also gives an account of the singer, Ustād Abdul Rahīm, from whom he received the songs in their original Panjabi:
His ancestors were Brāhmans, forcibly converted at the time of Aurangzeb. Like many other Panjābī Musulmāns in the same case, the family retain many Hindu customs, e.g., non-remarriage of widows. Abdul Rahīm’s faith in Hindu gods is as strong as his belief in Islām and Moslem saints, and he sings with equal earnestness of Krishna or Allah, exemplifying the complete fusion of Hindu and Moslem tradition characteristic of so many parts of northern India today. He is devout and even superstitious; he would hesitate to sing dīpak rāg, unless in very cold weather.
Dīpak is the raga of the “lamp,” associated with fire. Musicians consider it dangerous and only the most adept would attempt it. Tansen, who invented it, a renowned musician at the court of Emperor Akbar, is said to have sung it reluctantly—the palace lamps began to flare dangerously—but disaster was averted because he’d instructed his wife to sing a rain raga in a nearby location at the same time.
These Panjabi lyrics refer to Krishna, Rama, and Śiva; a few may simply be love songs.
: JAYADEVA
A VERSE CYCLE FROM THE GĪTA-GOVINDA
(TWELFTH CENTURY)
“Clouds thicken the sky,
the forests are
dark with tamala trees.
He is afraid of night, Radha,
take him home.”
They depart at Nanda’s directive
passing on the way
thickets of trees.
But reaching Yamuna River, secret desires
overtake Radha and Krishna.
Jayadeva, chief poet on pilgrimage
to Padmavati’s feet—
every craft of
Goddess Language
stored in his heart—
has assembled tales from the erotic encounters
of Krishna and Śrī
to compose these cantos.
If thoughts of Krishna
make your heart moody;
if arts of courtship
stir something deep;
Then listen to Jayadeva’s songs
flooded with tender music.
Krishna stirs every
creature on earth.
Archaic longing awakens.
He initiates Love’s
holy rite with languorous blue
lotus limbs.
Cowherd girls like
splendid wild animals draw him into their
bodies for pleasure—
It is spring. Krishna at play
is eros incarnate.
Krishna roamed the forest
taking the cowherdesses one after
another for love.
Radha’s hold slackened,
jealousy drove her far off.
But over each refuge
in the vine-draped thickets
swarmed a loud circle of bees.
Miserable
she confided the secret
to her friend—
Radha speaks
My conflicted heart
treasures even his infidelities.
Won’t admit anger.
Forgives the deceptions.
Secret desires rise in my breasts.
What can I do? Krishna
hungry for lovers
slips off without me.
This torn heart grows only
more ardent.
His hand loosens from the
bamboo flute.
A tangle of pretty
eyes draws him down.
Moist excitement on his cheeks.
Krishna catches me
eyeing him in a grove
swarmed by young women—
I stare at his smiling baffled face
and get aroused.
Krishna speaks
Every touch brought a new thrill.
Her eyes darted wildly.
From her mouth the
fragrance of lotus,
a rush of sweet forbidden words.
A droplet of juice
on her crimson lower lip.
My mind fixes these absent
sensations in a samādhi—
How is it that parted from her
the oldest
wound breaks open?
Radha’s messenger speaks
Her house has become
a pulsating jungle.
Her circle of girlfriends
a tightening snare.
Each time she breathes
a sheet of flame
bursts above the trees.
Krishna, you have gone—
in your absence she takes shape
as a doe crying out—
while Love turns to Death
and closes in
on tiger paws.
Sick with feverish
urges.
Only the poultice of your body
can heal her, holy physician of the heart.
Free her from torment, Krishna—
or are you
cruel as a thunderbolt?
The messenger speaks to Radha
Krishna lingers
in the thicket
where together you mastered the secrets
of lovemaking.
Fixed in meditation,
sleepless
he chants a sequence of mantras.
He has one burning desire—
to draw amṛta
from your offered breasts.
Sighs, short repeated gasps—
The thicket deserted.
He pushes back in, his breath
comes in a rasp.
He rebuilds the couch of blue floral branches.
Steps back and studies it.
Radha, precious Radha!
Your lover turns on a wheel,
image after
feverish image.
She ornaments her limbs
if a single leaf stirs
in the forest.
She thinks it’s you, folds back
the bedclothes and stares
in rapture for hours.
Her heart conceives a hundred
amo
rous games on the well-prepared bed.
But without you this
wisp of a girl
will fade
to nothing tonight.
At nightfall
the crater-pocked moon as though
exposing a crime
slips onto the paths of
girls who seek lovers.
It casts a platinum web
over Vrindavan forest’s dark hollows—
a sandalwood spot
on the proud face of sky.
The brindled moon soars above.
Krishna waits underneath.
And Radha
wrenched with grief
is alone.
The lonely moon
pale as Krishna’s sad, far-off
lotus-face has
calmed my thoughts.
O but the moon is also Love’s planet—
a wild desolation
strikes through my heart.
Let the old doubts go,
anguished Radha.
Your unfathomed breasts and
cavernous loins
are all I desire.
What other girl has the power?
Love is a ghost
that has slipped into my entrails.
When I reach to embrace your
deep breasts
may we fulfill the rite
we were born for—
Krishna for hours
entreated
the doe-eyed girl
then returned to his thicket bed and dressed.
Night fell again.
Radha, unseen, put on radiant gems.
A girlish voice pressed her—
go swiftly.
Her companion reports—
“She’ll look into me—
tell love tales—
chafing with pleasure she’ll draw me—
into her body—
drakṣyati vakṣyati ramsyate”
—he’s fearful,
he glances about. He shivers for you,
bristles, calls wildly, sweats, goes forward,
reels back.
The dark thicket closes
about him
Eyes dark with kohl
ears bright with creamy tamala petals