મીરાંબાઈ

Meerabai was a Rajput princess of Merta who became the most beloved woman poet of the bhakti movement. Married into the royal house of Mewar and widowed young, she declared Krishna — her ગિરધર ગોપાલ — her true and only husband, and answered her in-laws’ persecution, including the poison cup of legend, with songs instead of submission. She abandoned the court to wander as a mendicant singer, through Vrindavan and finally to Dwarka on the Gujarat coast, where she spent her last years and where tradition says she merged into the idol of Dwarkadhish. She composed in the mingled Rajasthani and Braj of her wandering, but her padas crossed effortlessly into Gujarati oral tradition, where generations of bhajan singers have made her an adopted voice of Gujarat’s devotional canon alongside Narsinh Mehta.