Sant Mirabai was a Rajput princess and Krishna bhakti poet-saint whose devotion survived every attempt to extinguish it. When her royal in-laws handed her a cup of poison and called it a sacred offering, would she drink it and die, or would the Lord of Braj turn the draught to nectar?
The royal house of Mewar received a well-born bride but did not realize they had welcomed a fire. After the death of her husband Bhoj Raj, the household closed around her, and her sister-in-law Uda Bai and brother-in-law Vikramaditya tried to break her spirit. They sent her a deadly cobra hidden in a basket and a cup of poison disguised as a sacred offering, yet she opened the basket to find a garland and drank the poison with praises to Giridhar Gopal. Defying a command to drown herself in the river, she picked up her veena and walked out of the palace of Chittorgarh forever. This volume follows her onto the open roads of pilgrimage, tracing her steps to Vrindavan, Mathura, and Dwarka as she composes the radiant padas and bhajans that still echo across India.
- The poison cup: the miraculous survival of a deadly draught given by her own in-laws.
- Veiled royal visitors: the luminous morning when the emperor Akbar and his court musician Tansen arrived disguised as pilgrims to hear her sing.
- Sacred pilgrimage roads: her fearless departure from Mewar to wander among the saints and bhaktas of Vrindavan.
- Songs of longing: the great devotional lyrics of her mature years composed in Braj bhasa and Rajasthani.
Book Two of The Bride of the Dark One: The Life of Sant Mirabai. The narrative begins in Born Already His, detailing her youth in Merta and early dedication to the Lord; it concludes in She Entered the Light, examining her physical merging with the divine and her unbroken presence in Vaishnava worship.
Readers seeking context for the hostility of the Mewar royal household, a closer look at the composition of her devotional bhajans, and the details of her pilgrimage to Vrindavan and Dwarka.
