Chapter 7
The Bhakt Paradigm
Mira Bai

I like Mira because she gained enlightenment (moksh). She wasn't a pativrata, though. She didn't sacrifice for her husband. But in my estimation, she had taken Lord Krishna as her husband before she married. . . .I think what she did was not wrong because she did it out of devotion. Maybe she sang in the streets, but at least she sang only songs of devotion.

Mira left everything because of her puja. I can't comment on that. Well, she shouldn't have left. Rajput ladies are very much tradition-minded. They are expected to mind their homes.

Mira was very dedicated [to Krishna]. She abandoned everything, whereas a Rajput woman living in a family must perform her duties. A Rajput woman wouldn't dare to go out; everybody can't be like Mira.

I certainly admire Mira. When people were so orthodox that they wouldn't step out [of parda] at all, she had the guts to step out. Maybe because I can't step out, I admire her so. She was not a pativrata; she was devoted to Krishna. So, we don't consider her an ordinary Rajput woman . . .
—Comments of four noblewomen

The human exemplars examined to this point are all protectors of their husbands' welfare, honor, and duty. They show that heroism entails an inversion of pativrata norms in serving its aims. Thus, Padmini and the others physically transgress the zanana boundary and logically transcend the pativrata category but are pativratas nonetheless.

Mira Bai is a different matter.^[1] Although Rajput women list Mira as one of the two women they most admire, they are aware that she radically and finally departs from the pattern that the military heroines establish. On the one hand, they say that they admire Mira as a Rajput woman because of her exceptionally good character. As we have seen, Rajput women understand a woman of good character as a pativrata . On the other hand, they assess Mira as an exemplar of good character who is not a pativrata .^[2] The reason: rather than serve her (human) husband, Mira opts to dedicate herself to God. She is a devotee, a bhakt , of Lord Krishna. Many Rajput women celebrate her even though or perhaps because she radically oversteps the limits of the pativrata paradigm.^[3] Appreciating the dramatic nature of Mira's transgression requires a good look at the way her story is told in Rajasthan. The account here is the standard variation known to women I interviewed.^[4]

The Story of Mira Bai

Mira was born a princess in the Mertiya branch of the Rathaur clan. As a child, she adored the cowherd god, Krishna, an image of whom she treated as a doll. One day, while watching a wedding procession Mira asked her mother, "Who will be my bridegroom?" Caught by surprise and unsure what to say, her mother replied, "Lord Krishna."

Having matured into an attractive young woman, Mira was married to Mewar's heir apparent.^[5] Her love for Krishna undiminished, she set off for her new home at Chitor. Soon after she arrived, her in-laws began to pressure her to abandon her affection for Krishna and to venerate Ekling Ji (the incarnation of Shiv associated with the royal household) as well as the royal kuldevi . As a daughter-in-law Mira was supposed to revere the deities of her husband's family; even so, she cared only for Krishna. She spent her days composing love songs for Krishna and dancing for him in a temple she had persuaded her husband to build.

[1] Because Mira's behavior is difficult to explain, it simply produces more voluntary and detailed exegesis than the behavior of other heroines, as will become apparent.

[2] A few women accord to Mira the title of pativrata but, they specify, not in the usual sense.

[3] As the first quotation above illustrates, being a bhakt , Mira sings and dances in the street, behavior thought appropriate for courtesans, not proper Rajput ladies; even dancing for God has seductive associations. For a vivid example of the tension between pativrata devotion and bhakti , see Bennett, Dangerous Wives , 221–25; also Marglin, God-King .

[4] It generally agrees with the biography in A. J. Alston, The Devotional Poems of Mirabai (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980), 4–7.

[5] Although women never named him, many local people identify this person as Bhoj Raj.

Mira's impudence enraged the household. Adding insult to injury, Mira denigrated her marriage by speaking of Krishna as her true husband and refraining from sexual contact with her human husband, whom she regarded as a brother. Thus not only did Mira reject wifely duties, she refused to be a wife at all. Some women say her husband was infuriated by her behavior. Others say he did not mind; he hardly ever interfered with her puja .

Mira's husband died young and heirless. Later, when her father-in-law died, her husband's younger brother (devar ) came to the throne. The devar resented Mira's attitudes, particularly her unwillingness to act as a widow on the grounds that her true husband, Lord Krishna, was alive. Having failed to induce the princess to behave properly, the devar plotted to have her killed. First he ordered her nightly drink to be laced with poison. The princess drank this down, but Krishna rendered the poison harmless. Undiscouraged, the king sent Mira a basket of fruit in which a cobra was concealed. Once again Mira escaped injury. Some say Krishna turned the snake into a flower garland. Others say the snake bit her, but its poison became ambrosia.

At this point Mira thought it prudent to leave Chitor. Taking up the life of a mendicant ascetic, she communed with male ascetics (sadhus or yogis)^[6] and as she traveled, danced and sang for Krishna along the roadways and in the woods. In time she arrived at Brindavan, the forest home of Krishna's youth.

After some time Mira traveled to Dvaraka, Krishna's home in his later years. There she spent her days attending Krishna at one of his temples. By this point, much to the royal family's dismay, Mira had gained widespread fame as a bhakt . At the same time that her reputation was spreading, Mewar was suffering from various problems, some political, some military. Many felt that these problems were either caused or aggravated by the shame that the errant princess was bringing the royal family. They viewed her activities as robbing the king and so his kingdom of dignity and strength. To rectify the situation the Maharana dispatched a retrieval party.^[7] When the party members arrived in Dvaraka and entered the temple where Mira served Krishna, they discovered that Mira had disappeared into Krishna's icon. Her sari, draped on the icon, was all that remained to testify to the miracle.

[6] Rajput women use these words interchangeably to refer to wanderers seeking enlightenment.

[7] This detail is at odds with Priyadas's account, in which the Maharana sends for her because he begins to appreciate Mira's greatness; see the Bhaktirasasambodhini (cited in John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 126).

Recounting this story and reflecting on Mira's character, many women emphasize her courage. Mira had to be brave, they say, in order to withstand social criticism and cruelty from her husband's household.^[8] Moreover, she had to be brave in order to leave the security of even an unpleasant sasural in order to search for Krishna.^[9] Several women compare Mira to Padmini on this point. They believe that Mira's courage allowed her to seek God, just as Padmini's courage allowed her to liberate her husband.

Such a comparison ought not to obscure a crucial distinction that Rajput women perceive. Mira's courage does not arise from her life as an ordinary pativrata —a woman devoted to the man she has married. Rather, her courage originates from God and is sustained by her love for God. Because Mira sees herself as God's wife, she is able to abandon her family. This distinction is the basis for the crucial qualification mentioned above: although Rajput women tend to think that as a bhakt saint Mira had good character, they also think that Mira was not a pativrata . Some were quite frank about their difficulty in understanding her behavior; others looked uncomfortable when narrating her departure from conventional norms. While admiring Mira, women clearly recognize her unmistakable, even shocking, deviation from the female role they aspire to fulfill. As one young noblewoman expressed her reservations: "I like Mira because of her dedication to Krishna. Just the dedication I like—she wasn't a pativrata . She was married to such a handsome man, but still she wasn't a pativrata !" Another said, "Mira was stubborn and caused trouble in her marriage. Bhakti is a high calling, but Mira was married. After marriage it is wrong to leave and become a bhakt ." This woman ultimately concluded, as two others did, that she could not even admire Mira.^[10] Her reaction, however, is exceptional: an overwhelming number of women mentioned Mira as a woman they admired. To understand this admiration tempered with consternation, let us examine the disjunctions and confluences Rajput

[8] One woman said the main reason she admired Mira was "because of what she [Mira] bore from her in-laws." This woman seemed to think this detail was crucial in revealing good character.

[9] Cf. John Stratton Hawley, "Morality Beyond Morality in the Lives of Three Hindu Saints," in Saints and Virtues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 55–59.

[10] Another gave the same reason for not admiring Mira even though she was a descendant of Mira's family: "I feel that if she was a devotee following Krishna, she shouldn't have got married. Once she was married, she should have performed her duties as a wife and rani . I don't admire her." A third said, "Mira served Krishna but in the Rajput community, one has to marry [a mortal]."

women perceive between performance of pativrata duty and contemplation of the divine.

As one might suspect from the tenor of the young thakurani 's remark, although Rajput women admire Mira's courage they cannot say that they would have done what she did. They believe that an ordinary Rajput woman should aspire to be a pativrata by performing pativrata duties and not aim to be a great bhakt , which mandates renunciation of pativrata duties. In the words of another noblewoman, "Mira was above the Rajput rules and regulations. That's okay only if you're a saint."

These comments (and Mira's disobedience) notwithstanding, Rajput women say that Mira's bravery springs from her constitution as a Rajput woman. One noblewoman remarked, "There was only one Mira. It was difficult to produce even one Mira. Only in the Rajput community was that possible. Because she was a Rajput, she had strength of character." Hence most Rajput women are proud that Mira is one of them and feel that because she is one of them she was able to accomplish what she did (fig. 26). According to another woman, the courage Mira demonstrates in rejecting Rajput custom compares to the courage enabling the ordinary Rajput woman to suffer the pains and deprivations endemic to life as a pativrata . Rajput women are able to admire and aspire after the courage Mira possesses while rejecting for themselves the course of action it enables her to take.

In other words, Rajput women who admire Mira emulate her as a moral exemplar, but they do so obliquely. They wish to be pativratas as Mira is a bhakt . This oblique emulation is very different from women's emulation of kuldevis and satimatas . To the extent that Rajput women emulate kuldevis and satimatas , they do so because they have vowed to protect their husbands to the utmost of their ability, though of course they cannot perform the superhuman acts of protection of which kuldevis and satimatas are capable. By contrast, when women emulate Mira obliquely, they feel not simply that they could not but rather that they should not do what she did. One woman neatly summarized the situation: "Mira was a bhakt . Whatever she did she did because of God; she didn't like her husband. She got moksh , which was good for her, but it is good for us to do everything for the husband."

What then of the question of contingent emulation? Would a Rajput woman do what Mira did if she were in Mira's exact position? We have seen that most women believe ordinary women should not try to follow Mira's example by leaving their families, even if they wish to search for

26.
Mira Bai dances for Krishna (cover of a devotional pamphlet).

God. As a few women noted, although Mira was truly a great woman, they could not be like her because they would never be in Mira's unique situation. Many factors brought Mira to it: the childhood betrothal to Krishna, the persecution by in-laws, the death of her husband, heartless relatives, and so forth. Not being stereotypical, it is very different from the situation of a sativrata who, like many women throughout history, must decide whether to die with or live without her husband. Mira does not, then, play out a scenario. She creates an incomparable and intensely personal relationship with God. Thus, her behavior cannot be measured against our merely human standards. Her devotion to God has taken her out of the social realm, the realm of norm and custom. In the words of one woman, "Mira we can't say was just human; she was something superhuman." The implied question: so how are we to judge her?

Echoing this woman's sentiments, most Rajput women would never condemn Mira for acting as she did, yet they certainly feel they would be reprehensible for acting now as she did then. They point out that even though Mira's situation was intolerable—she was mercilessly persecuted by her in-laws—still, ordinary pativratas in harsh conditions should concentrate, even meditate, on their devotion to their husbands or, if widowed, to their husbands' memories. Nonconformity is the privilege of saints. For ordinary Rajput women, it is better to aspire to be pativratas rather than great bhakt saints. As one woman who admires Mira remarked, "Mira only did bhakti ; she had no faith in society. She didn't like Rajput society, only puja, bhakti . She cut off all her social relationships. In general I don't think that is a good thing; it's better to be a pativrata . . ."

Closely related to the matter of emulation is the question of how women mediate the disparity between Mira's good character and her actions. This mediation appears to be accomplished symbolically. Once again, Rajput women focus on her intention revealed by death. As the story says, Mira's life ends through absorption into Krishna. As in the case of other heroines, Mira's death validates her motivations and sanctions her objectives. When Mira melds with Krishna's image, she attains her life's purpose, union with God. She shows that she has lived as a human being but that she has done so in the context of a transcendent mystical association with God. Because her death is miraculous, her character cannot be judged by mundane criteria.

In addition to validating her character, Mira's death confirms her

claims of divine marriage, for it certainly connotes sati immolation. The sati 's ashes commingle with those of her husband, and so the sati unites with him in a way not possible during life. When Mira's body dissolves into stone, she also unites with her beloved in a miraculous manner. In both cases, a wife partakes of her husband's essence and destiny. One woman makes this association in her comment that "a sati dies in a fire, but Mira disappeared!" Her point is that Mira's death is not just equivalent to sati immolation; it is even more impressive as testimony to her greatness.

Moreover, the dissolving of Mira's body into stone recalls commemorative sati stones. In Rajasthan, many of these memorials depict satis standing alongside their heroic husbands. What joins the spouses physically and symbolizes their shared destiny is the stone itself. Just such a union is indicated by the embrace of Mira's sari and Krishna's image.

David Shulman cites a parallel instance, that of a Tamil princess who merges with a stone image of God after she has been wed to him by the king whom her father had intended for her husband. The image, a ling , absorbs her body, except for her hand, which continues to protrude. Shulman posits a correspondence between this hand and the hand insignias found on sati stones: "The woman's hand emerging from the linga has an iconic analogue in the sati stone. Sometimes these stones show an arm bedecked with bangles emerging from a pillar; the bangles suggest a woman whose husband is still alive."^[11]

Though Mira is a bhakt , not a pativrata (at least as this term is normally understood) like the Tamil princess, she is transcendently vindicated. The validation of her intention to love only God makes it possible for women to admire her and to emulate her obliquely. Being a transcendent validation, however, it emphasizes the chasm between the transcendent world of the saint versus the ordinary world of the Rajput woman. Hence in speaking of Mira, Rajput women can say that loving God does not legitimize leaving a family, for one should never leave a family. Rather, loving God legitimizes loving a husband.

In affirming a form of behavior that she explicitly violates, then, Mira resembles Padmini, though only to a certain point. Comparing affirmations of the pativrata role reveals the limits of Padmini's transgression and the limitlessness of Mira's transgression. Comparison also discloses the nature and place of bhakti in the lives of ordinary women.

[11] Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths , 64.

Mira and Padmini: a Comparison

Mira resembles Padmini in at least three significant ways. Both Mira and Padmini violate the convention of parda , take on male roles, and demonstrate unequivocal devotion. But they differ in the extent of and reasons for their transgressions, as we shall see. In the first instance, they cross out of parda , which is the basis of household organization and gender identity. A Rajput woman is and should be an insider; she performs pativrata duties inside the women's quarters, which are inside the household. Outside it men work as performers of caste functions; by tradition, Rajput men are conquerors, rulers, and defenders of territories. Nevertheless, Padmini leaves the zanana to launch a military offensive that will liberate her husband. Mira leaves the zanana to travel the road leading to God. In both instances, boundary symbolism is clearly critical. Both departures signal a crossing out of social convention and into arenas where danger is to be encountered and distinction becomes possible. When Padmini leaves parda , however, she clearly intends to die. Her body becomes hot with sat , which states that her intentions are chaste and suggests that if she lives through the ambush, she will return to the palace to die properly, as a sati . Padmini's exit, then, begins the first half of a circle that her return and death complete.

Mira also risks her reputation but does so without an intention to return. In fact, when she leaves the palace for the road she abandons her reputation.^[12] As this chapter's epigraphs indicate, she rejects parda and sings "in the streets."^[13] She further disgraces her family by unabashedly mixing with male ascetics. A woman who withdraws from supervision, even a woman who does so in order to seek God, draws to herself the suspicions of those who remain in the household and so continue to observe social norms and mores. In going outside, she rejects a fundamental norm. Such an unsupervised woman is thought to be (as we might say in English) a "loose woman," a "public woman," a "streetwalker."^[14] Of course, such suspicions lead to damaged reputations: Mi-

[12] Many poems attributed to Mira focus on this: for example, P. Chaturvedi's Mirambai ki Padavali poem 93 (English trans. in Alston, Devotional Poems , 72).

[13] Carstairs reports that the people in the village he studied found a film about Mira sexually suggestive. It was shown by a traveling cinema on three successive evenings. Carstairs says: "The film was 'Mirabai' . . . and it was noticeable here, as in Udaipur, that it was the singing and dancing which most powerfully gripped the audience's attention: and both of these were at once religious and sensual . . . many of the villagers went each night to see the three-hour film over again" (Twice-Born , 95).

[14] For comparative insights on female imagery of binding and loosening, see (1) Alf Hiltebeitel, "Draupadi's Hair," Purusartha 5 (1981); (2) Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and (3) Holly Baker Reynolds,

"An Auspicious Married Woman," in The Powers of Tamil Women , ed. Susan Snow Wadley (Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1980). On this theme and Mira's behavior, see Lindsey Harlan, "Abandoning Shame" (paper presented at the conference, Representations of India's Past, Varanasi, India, December 1989).

ra's reputation and because of hers, the reputations of Mira's husband and his family. Therefore although Mira's admirers think of her as beyond reproach, they note that she did harm her husband and sasural at the time.^[15] A bad reputation always diminishes family honor, which Rajputs are particularly keen to preserve.

Her behavior elicits two further criticisms. Mira is a widow and has therefore failed to perform a pativrata 's primary purpose, protection of her husband. Worse, she is a widow who refuses to act as a widow. Having rejected the role of wife, she then refuses to think of herself as a widow when her husband dies. As one woman said rather heatedly, "Even when she was a widow, she continued to wear suhag [pativrata ] clothes!"^[16] Here we encounter a situation that resembles that of the sativrata . Mira both is and is not a widow. As a widow, she violates parda . But from the transcendent perspective she does not understand herself as married to her prince and cannot violate parda , for God lives everywhere. Therefore Rajput women both call Mira the prince's wife (then widow) and deny that she is the prince's wife (then widow); both statements are true from distinct but valid perspectives.

In this sense, then, Mira's shifting identity as wife–not wife and later as widow–not widow recalls the way in which the sativrata procession both symbolizes and denies widowhood. Mira has left home but has not yet found God. Having left the palace and taken to the road, she crosses out of society and its constraints. She drifts from place to place seeking salvation in the form of a lasting union with God.

[15] All accounts cite the bad fortune of Chitor as reason for her attempted retrieval but specify no problems. One noblewoman from Jaipur said that because of this bad fortune Mewari women still tend not to respect Mira and that in Udaipur Rajput women will not even sing her bhajans ; she said in Udaipur only common people sing Mira's songs, but in Jaipur and Jodhpur everybody does. Only one other woman mentioned such resentment against Mira in Udaipur. I found no evidence that Mira is especially disliked in Mewar, and the Ban Mata temple in the Udaipur City Palace is adorned by a series of large Mira paintings. Moreover, I found concern about Mira's bad behavior distributed among women in all parts of Rajasthan. The Mira bhajans many women know these days in Udaipur and elsewhere they have learned from the radio. In the village where I worked, few people are familiar with Mira Bai's story; they consider it something only educated people would know.

[16] Another woman noted how strange Mira's reaction to widowhood is, even by contemporary standards: "Mira was a widow; widows are like vegetables. They're not supposed to take part in merrymaking. They're supposed to wear black, white, or maroon [drab colors]."

The road leading away from society takes Mira into the forest, where she associates with sadhus , men who have utterly renounced the social order. The classic (Sanskritic) Indian notion of social order is summed up by the concept of varnashramadharma . At its core, varnashramadharma explains the caste system's division of labor and sets out four stages of life for high-caste men.^[17] Ideally, during the first two stages of life a man lives as a chaste student (brahmacarin ) and then, having finished his studies, becomes a householder (grihastha ), an upholder of society and a contributor to social order. He raises a family and performs his caste occupation to support that family. Then when his children are grown, alone or perhaps accompanied by his wife, he leaves his household to become a forest dweller (vanaprastha ). This third stage of life is a prelude to complete withdrawal from wife and society in the final stage. When the forest dweller feels ready, he becomes a full-fledged renouncer (sannyasi ). He lives alone in the forest that he might devote himself to undistracted absorption in spiritual matters.

As the traditional stages of life make clear, the forest is understood as the traditional place of meditation and its concomitant, asceticism. There live men in the last stages of life. Moreover, within it men of any age can escape all the stages of life. In other words, men can become renouncers without first going through the three dharm stages. All they need do is leave society and head for the road and the forest.

When Mira, a widow without children and so a woman devoid of primary family responsibilities, goes into the forest, she declares herself a renouncer, a sannyasi or sadhu , for the forest is the abode of the sadhus . When she leaves parda , according to one woman, she renounces absolutely everything and lives without attachment. She then pursues an ascetic discipline of bhakti . This perspective is summed up in the following lines from one of Mira's poems addressed to Krishna, himself an ascetic:

I'll take up your yogic garb—
     your prayer beads,
               earrings,
                       begging-bowl skull,
                                  tattered yogic cloth—
                                          I'll take them all
     And search through the world as a yogi does
                 with you—yogi and yogini, side by side.^[18]

[17] They represent the ideal life pattern in the classic legal texts, the dharmashastras ; most men pass up the final two stages of increasing asceticism.

[18] Chaturvedi, in Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs , 139.

In sum, Mira's sojourn in the forest symbolically states her development into a wholly committed bhakt . Both the forest and the road on which she travels represent the renunciation of domesticity essential to complete religious transformation. Taking up an ascetic life demonstrates Mira's commitment to God and her freedom from social norms, which only interfere with her commitment to God.

Women are not only concerned by the fact that Mira was a renouncer of the responsibilities and values they uphold. They are also troubled that she kept the company of (male) renouncers. It was bad enough that she entertained sadhus at the palace, as some believe she did. But when she traveled with them unchaperoned, she truly behaved outrageously. One woman remarked, "Once the Maharana died, she sang, ate, and lived with the sadhus !" Another said that "as her husband died when she was young, she did mala [rosary], sang bhajans [hymns], and performed puja while she kept the company of sadhus !" A third observed that "people spoke badly of her going around with sadhus . There were rumors." And a fourth explained that "the Rajputs didn't like it when she went around with the sadhus . Royalty doesn't put up with that sort of thing. The family thought it was disgraceful."

That the rumors about "that sort of thing" are sexual is made explicit in the well-known story of how one of Mira's sadhu companions tried to persuade her to have sex with him. He said that, as a holy man and representative of God, he had the right to demand her sexual favors. She consented with the caveat that their union be consummated in front of Krishna's image so God could witness her "offering" to him. Wary of God's wrath, the sadhu lost his nerve and ran away. This lustful sadhu story illustrates the understanding widely held in India that ascetics, who have repressed their sexual instincts for long periods, can be particularly lascivious if tempted by unsupervised women, especially women alone in the woods.^[19]

The life of a renouncer is thought not really appropriate for women. Renouncing women are generally thought susceptible to seduction in the woods, which makes their stay there problematic; they are also thought to enact a role fundamentally male. Just as the system of varnashramadharma applies to men—men become students, men perform caste functions as householders, and so forth—so does its renunciation.

[19] See O'Flaherty, Siva , esp. on Rishyashringa and the pine forest sages. The traditional complementarity of ascetic-courtesan gives strength to the streetwalking associations of Mira's renunciation.

It belongs to them.^[20] In taking on the ascetic option as a woman, then, Mira acts like a man. In this second way she compares to Padmini.

Recall that to liberate her husband, Padmini assumes his role as commander of the army. She substitutes for her husband, but only until he is able to reclaim the role she has assumed. Thus Padmini's performance of her husband's caste duty is a limited one. She acts as a man while intending to regain her place among the ladies of Chitor just as soon as she is able.

Mira, however, assumes a male role that is permanent. She has no intention of returning to society once her mission is achieved. Having reached her goal, she will be in the liberating embrace of Krishna, from which posture a return to normal life is unthinkable. Renouncers renounce on a permanent basis. Thus speaking specifically of Mira, many Rajput women have commented that it is quite impossible for a bhakt who has realized moksh to live at home and play the part of the pativrata . A woman can be a saint or a pativrata but not both: "These are two separate paths."

As these women indicate, Mira is a renouncer-devotee who gives up being a pativrata , even though a pativrata 's role is not what a renouncer-bhakt is supposed to surrender. As we have seen, what is to be given up is varnashramadharma , which applies not to women but to men. This underlying assumption explains the discomfort of Rajput society, like Indian society in general, with female ascetics. Narrowly speaking, a female ascetic does not make sense: a woman cannot renounce what she could never be, which is to say, a performer of male duty. In any case, giving up not male but female duty, the unrestricted female ascetic is understood as particularly dangerous to society, for women bear children. They are the basis of caste purity and social organization.^[21]

Whereas Padmini gives up female duty to support male duty and traditional society, Mira gives up female duty without regard for family or society and goes where family and society feel she does not belong. The king confirms the traditional attitude when he tries to retrieve her: a woman is not meant to be "out there" without a socially beneficial purpose. Padmini's venture is contained by the corrective nature of her intentions. She supports society by staying inside when she can and going outside only when she must. The same is true of the other military her-

[20] See Bennett, Dangerous Wives , 220; and O'Flaherty, Siva , 80–81, 98–101.

[21] See the Bhagavad Gita 1:40–44 (e.g., as translated in van Buitenen, Bhagavadgita , 73).

oines. Mira, however, has intentions that transcend social purpose. Alive, she threatens the social order. Her way of life is inauspicious. Society sees it as the cause of its bad fortune.

The final similarity that Padmini and Mira exhibit is unequivocal devotion. Padmini sacrifices her safety to save her husband and her life to honor him. Mira sacrifices also, but she sacrifices more than her comfort and honor; she sacrifices her duty. Thus from the perspective of society, she is an ascetic. Yet according to the logic of her renunciation, she is the devoted bride of her beloved Krishna. The sacrifice of society makes self-sacrifice as a bride of God possible.

Because of this relationship, it is natural that Rajput women combine ascetic and bridal imagery in describing Mira. Mira is a yogi-sadhu and a beautiful young wife. This same duality is succinctly expressed in the following Mira poem:

If the Beloved tells me,
I will put on a red sari.
If he tells me,
I will don the ochre robe.
I will decorate my hair-parting with pearls
Or leave my scattered locks unkempt,
Either according to his wish.^[22]

Here Mira shifts back and forth between the ascetic and bridal perspectives. On the one hand, she speaks of wearing a red sari and placing pearls in her hair; both symbolize marriage with Krishna. On the other, she says she will wear an orange robe and let her hair grow wild; both indicate ascetic meditation on Krishna and disregard for the world. The intimate connection between Mira's asceticism and bridal mysticism carries a double sense of illicitness. Mira's unsupervised ramblings with sadhus rankle social convention; her mystical association with Krishna reeks of adultery. Rajput women often compare Mira to Radha, Krishna's adulterous lover.^[23] Any quick perusal of a collection of Mira's poems reveals that, like Radha, Mira yearns for trysts with Krishna.^[24]

[22] Alston, Devotional Poems , 96. I use the images in this poem and the preceding one simply to illustrate ideas widely accepted in Rajasthan—that Mira was both a renouncer of the world and a bride of Krishna. I make my case on the basis of the narrative, not poems, fifty of which I translated but none of which I collected in situ.

[23] A number of women pointed out the resemblance between Mira and the gopis (devotees). Radha and Mira flank Krishna's image at Chitor.

[24] See, for example, Alston, Devotional Poems , 35.

In short, from the worldly perspective she is both an ascetic and an adulterous lover of God. In each role Mira participates in a relationship with God that violates the social conception of the relative status of the sexes. As an ascetic Mira is not equal to God, yet she is equal to other male ascetics seeking enlightenment. In fact, she is a distinguished member of the transient company of sadhus .

Oddly enough, because Mira is a renouncer and plays a male role, she can be a fully devoted consort of God. Male bhakts think of themselves as female in relation to Krishna. Mira, being female, takes on a male role that in turn reidentifies her with the female capacity of sexual union with a male lover. Thus, though it is more difficult for a woman to be a renouncer, it is easier for a woman who is a renouncer to be a lover of God.^[25]

As God's lover, Mira enjoys a certain equality with God. Frédérique Marglin shows that the relationship between Krishna and his devotees, the gopis , demolishes traditional canons of gender hierarchy. Because the attraction of God and devotees is mutual (God seduces and is seduced by the gopis ), within the context of their relationship their status is equal. Krishna and the gopis are partners in illicit, socially unapproved lovemaking. Krishna's unions with them are parakiya (with the wife of another).^[26]

That Mira is the wife of another is made even clearer in the Mira narratives than it often is in the gopi tradition. Unlike the gopis , Mira is understood as a historical person who was married to an exceptionally prominent person, the heir to the throne of Mewar. Mira's marriage to this prince makes her transgression of pativrata tradition that much more vivid.

And yet the final perspective, which sees Mira liberated from the round of rebirths, reidentifies Mira as a wife; Mira's death by absorption shows her to be a true wife of God. Thus ultimately God's relationship with Mira is svakiya (with one's wife) and therefore unequal.^[27] Mira is taken into what is greater than she is, Krishna as lord and master, which makes such things as her scandalous wearing of suhag clothes after her (human) husband's death understandable.

[25] See A. K. Ramanujan, "On Women Saints," in The Divine Consort , ed. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 324.

[26] Frédérique Apffel Marglin, "Types of Sexual Union and Their Implicit Meanings," in The Divine Consort , ed. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 303–7.

[27] Ibid., 303.

This ultimate inequality is implicitly expressed by the very claim some women make that "when you come to think of it," or "in the end," Mira is God's pativrata .^[28] Contrasting this usage of the term with its usual usage demonstrates the fact that Mira's relationship with God is not parallel to the relationship with a husband but rather a thorough transformation of it.^[29] When women use the term pativrata to refer to themselves or to other women they know, they take it to mean a woman who is devoted to her husband, her pati . As we have seen, however, pati means not only "husband" but "God." A pativrata treats a husband as God, for her husband is a deity to her and the path to her salvation.^[30]

In saying that Mira is a pativrata of Krishna, women effectively turn this analogy around. Mira treats God as if he were her husband. She is able to do this because of her celibacy.^[31] This usage of the term pativrata is not, as I have said, a common one in Rajasthani Rajput culture, which is why women tend to reject the unqualified idea of Mira as a pativrata . Yet it is evidently common elsewhere in South Asia. Obeyesekere discusses such a usage in his study of female ascetics in Sri Lnaka.^[32] There female ascetic bhakts are spoken of as pativratas of God. The devotion these women give their heavenly husband mandates celibacy with regard to their human husbands.

Mira, a unique figure in Rajasthan, conforms to this conception. Her asceticism is adulterous, but it is also transitive: it leads to a state that subsumes it. As a pativrata , Mira demonstrates unmitigated devotion that is both a denial of society and a transcendence of society. Hers is the nature of limitless bhakti .

If, as Rajput women say, Mira is the quintessential unbound bhakt , then we can appreciate how subversive unlimited bhakti really is. To commit oneself to God requires leaving home for the road and the forest. Nevertheless, bhakti is not something performed by saints alone. All

[28] When talking of Mira many women identified her as a bhakt and contrasted her with women they ordinarily label as pativratas (Padmini, Hari Rani, etc.). Among the many women who admire Mira, only three said Mira was a pativrata of God at the beginning of their testimony. The rest, if they used the term pativrata at all, applied it after speaking of her transgression of pativrata norms and status.

[29] For a parallel to this god's relationship with a female bhakt as parakiya and svakiya , see discussion on the South Indian saint Mahadeviyakka, who was a devotee of Shiv (A. K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva [Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973], 111–12).

[30] As one informant repeated this omnipresent idea, "A Rajput woman's husband is her god"; cf. Fruzetti, The Gift , 13.

[31] A common observation was that Mira did not "become attached to" or "fall in love with" anyone else. One woman said, "Mira never looked at another, so strong was her faith."

[32] Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair , 64–65.

women agree that one should be devoted to God but feel that this devotion must serve rather than interfere with devotion to a husband.^[33] Practiced in the home and for benefit of the household, devotion to God enables women to become better pativratas . We have seen that by worshiping kuldevis and satimatas , women gain superhuman protection for the household and the strength to be protectors of the household. The same holds true for devotion to Krishna, Shiv, other deities claimed by the household and worshiped by women. Encompassed by domestic concerns, bhakti reinforces the pativrata ideal.

The in-the-home, for-the-sake-of-the-home caveat is further illustrated by the fact that Rajput noblewomen do not go to public temples to sing bhajan s. As mentioned previously, even those women who interpret parda very loosely stay out of public temples, for such places attract crowds that include many men with unknown background and character. One thakurani commented to me that she was terribly impressed by Mira's unchaperoned wanderings way back when because even now, with customs loosening a bit, she had never dared visit any of the village temples in her thikana . She added that to go to a temple in town would take more courage than she had, for no one would approve of that, including her husband. Thus a Rajput woman is expected to perform all regular worship where she lives her life and serves her husband.

If her husband predeceases her, however, then she gains license and encouragement to practice more strenuous bhakti . Being a widow, she may well suffer from feelings of shame and failure. To show that without her husband she has no need or use for the world, she should devote herself to God. As a lover of God, she practices the celibacy that is expected of widows and she gains spiritual merit that will mitigate the demerit she has earned by outliving her husband. For a Rajput widow, an austere life of religious devotion assures society of her faithfulness to her husband and gives her purpose and hope for self-improvement.

The fervent practice of bhakti as a way to honor a dead husband is something that the living satimata performs particularly well. Having dedicated the remainder of her life to the service of God, she establishes an ashram (apart from society yet for members of society during their pilgrimages) and approximates the ideal of the ascetic bhakti yogi. She makes an excellent devotee because of the practice she had and the

[33] Typical comments are those of one woman, who noted that doing bhakti is a good thing but that she would never leave her duties as a pativrata to worship God—she would do her puja at home—and of another, who said that even to worship God, one should take permission from one's husband—only then is it a good thing.

power she gained as a pativrata . Nevertheless even the living satimata , who moves around more freely than most Rajput women, preserves a socially approved balance between worshiping God and honoring the human husband. Moreover her designation and distinction as both sati and bhakt are based on the fact that she is a teacher of pativrata morality, supported by devotion to God. As a teacher, she is revered by pativrata devotees who seek above all else to be pativratas .

Even the qualified fusion that satimata-bhakt symbolizes is not possible for women whose husbands are alive. They can combine these roles to a lesser degree. As we have seen, a married woman cannot be both a wholly engaged wife and a wholly absorbed bhakt . Whereas the pativrata upholds society, the bhakt -yogi renounces society. And, whereas the pativrata lives at home, the bhakt -yogi leaves the home. No ordinary woman can live in the home and the forest at the same time. These places require different states of mind. If the forest creeps into the home, the home disappears; if a house is built in the forest, the forest disappears.

A Rajput woman, Mira possesses the innate good character required to reject the social ideal that the Rajput woman is considered optimally constituted to realize. Rajput women admire Mira not because she rejects the pativrata role toward which they strive but because through bhakti she realizes the same role on a transcendent plane. Mira's success, attested by her mode of death, illustrates a determination and a commitment that Rajput women understand as their heritage and their duty. In short, Rajput women identify the spirit animating Mira's rebellion as the same spirit that motivates and enables them to realize the pativrata ideal.