Mīrābāī

Mīrābāī is the best-loved woman saint of North Indian bhakti, though her life is known largely through tradition and later hagiography. By the standard account she was a Rajput princess of the Merta region married into the ruling house of Mewar (Chittor), who scandalized her royal in-laws by her complete absorption in devotion to Kṛṣṇa — whom she took as her only true husband — singing and dancing among devotees regardless of caste and rank, and surviving (in legend) several attempts on her life. Her many bhajans, in a Rajasthani-tinged Hindi, express an intimate, surrendered love for Kṛṣṇa and remain among the most widely sung devotional songs in India. Her dates are traditional and uncertain (commonly c. 1498–1547, with a competing later death-date), and much of the poetry now sung under her name is of later composition; the historical core of her life is thin behind the devotional legend, which tradition ends with her merging into the image of Kṛṣṇa at Dwarka.