The Devotional Poems of Mirabai

by Mīrābāī, A.J. Alston

This book offers the reader a sober English translation of two hundred of Mirabai's Padas, based on the interpretive work of Indian scholars that has appeared during the last few decades. Three introductory essays deal with her life, her place in the Bhakti movement and the characteristics of her poetry.

(reprint)

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1980

About the author

Meera [(ca. 1498-1547)], also known as Mira Bai, was a 16th century Hindu mystic poetess and devotee of Krishna. She is celebrated as a poet and has been definitively claimed by the North Indian Hindu tradition of Bhakti saints.

Meera was born in a royal family of Rajasthan, and her education included music, religion, politics and government. She married Bhojraj the crown prince of Mewar in 1516, her husband was wounded in 1518 and died in 1521 after a Hindu-Muslim battle, her own father died in a war with Babur's army in 1527, and little else is known about her life with any certainty. She is mentioned in Bhaktamal, confirming that she was widely known and a cherished figure in the Indian bhakti movement culture by about 1600 CE. Most legends about Meera mention her fearless disregard for social and family conventions, her devotion to god Krishna, her treating Krishna as her lover and husband, and she being persecuted by her in-laws for her religious devotion. She has been the subject of numerous folk tales and hagiographic legends, which are inconsistent or widely different in details.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sinbad · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.J. Alston offers us an excellent insight into Mirabai's life and poems. The book contains in its introduction a detailed account of Mira's life and her role in the Bhakti movement.

The introductory section is extremely well summarized and complete. In particular, pages 9 to 32 present an overview of the spiritual trends in South Asia, summarized in such a beautiful and structured manner that it is a pleasure to read while absorbing easily the essence of the South Asian spiritual traditions.

The section containing the poems, Mira’s “padāvali” (i.e. a short song conveying instruction on the spiritual life, usually rhyming, adaptable for singing), is organised around themes that flow well in the course of the reading.

In total, the 202 poems contained in the book, based on Shri Chaturvedi’s 1973 edition, allow the reader to enter in the realm of devotion through the art of Mira's songs, which have survived in the mouths of itinerant singers, and which in time have been altered because of their popularity. These songs are mostly in Rajasthani or Braj Bhasha, in Gujarati, Punjabi and Eastern Hindi, reflecting the geographical itinerancy of Mira during her life.

Mira is considered as a sagun (i.e. devotion to a deity with manifest attributes) poet-saint, and still “conscious of her identity with and separation from God at the same time” (p. 31).
In relation to this, I would like to reference the Gujarati saint Narsi Mehta, who preceded Mira by about 80 years. In page 25 we find a couple of lines that reflect that the focus of the devotee on the deity implies the dissolution of a personal identity, that becomes fluid and adaptable: “If God is symbolized in human form as Krishna, then the devotee can approach God most intimately by imagining himself as a Gopi or as Radha. Naturally this can be done with greatest intensity by a woman-devotee like Mira, already equipped by nature with a woman’s heart.” (Chaturvedi, op, cit. p.74, f.)

The book also includes a range of notes to clarify some of the references that might not be straightforward for readers not acquainted with South Asian traditions and popular spirituality.

I express my gratitude to A.J. Alston for her magnificent work that has allowed me to meet Mira, whom I was hoping and expecting to meet one day. Thanks to you the time has now come.

I'd like to highlight a couple of poems as an appetizer, with the intention to invite you into the reading of the work of this poet-saint, Mirabai, a woman that lived confronting standards and uniformities, breaking through with the force of her personal devotion to Krsna, her 'courty Giridhara'.

162:
"O Krishna, who braided Thy jet-black locks?
Was it Yashodâ who prepared Thy toilet
With such a dexterous hand
And such bewitching art?
If You once come into my little house
I will shut its sandalwood doors
And pull the bolt.
Mirā's Lord is the courtly Giridhara.
She offers herself in sacrifice
To those beautiful locks. "

170:
"Murāri gave my sāri a twitch.
The pot of dye I was carrying
Fell from my head.
My nose-ring slipped off
And got caught in my sāri.
My hair broke loose
And became entangled in my ear-rings,
The tip of my sārī was torn.
The Charmer of Hearts was in wanton mood,
That delicate exponent of the art of love.
Mīrā's Lord is the courtly Giridhara,
She places her head at His lotus feet."

[Elzira Rai · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of poems/songs attributed to Mirabai should be seen as a collective endeavor, rather than the work of an "author", as there have been several interpolations and many of the poems are likely to have been built from scratch by anonymous bards. Rather than diminishing it, this actually makes the collection more interesting.
However, the songs featured in this collection lack the irony, wordplay and social commentary of some of the poems attributed to, say, Tukaram. Some of the poems feature interesting metaphors, but they are highly repetitive and don't offer much beyond the usual bhakti poetry clichés.
The translation is fluid enough, the introduction is mostly useless and the critical apparatus is highly questionable at some points (e.g. rendering 'Rama' as 'Krishna').

[Margaret Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some current of Mirabai remains in the poetry. The fact that she's present at all speaks to her power as a mystic and an artist, because A.J. Alston did not quite manage to mitigate the eternal tug-of-war of mystical translation: fidelity to the language and fidelity to the spirit.

First of all, the words "sober" should never be included in a description of a Mirabai translation. Second of all, he describes her writing as "un-erotic", which is objectively untrue. Third of all, the words thee, thou, and thy appear in basically every single line, which is like a buffer to make the whole thing unreadable. Even still, you can see hints of her peeking through the English:

"Mira is hugging closely those lotus feet!"

At first attributed repetition to the fact that Mira's poems are repetitive; and yet Bly manages to pull powerful and distinct images from the same text that is so sterile here. Told Rick it was just a "not-good" translation, and he reminded me that another word for that would be bad.

[Judy Croome · Rating 2 out of 5]

The formatting in the eBook version that I read was very poor. In the end I skipped the introduction because the poor formatting made it almost unreadable and I got irritated. That's a pity as I'm sure the introduction would have added depth to the beautiful poetry of Mirabai.

While the formatting in the poetry section of this book was better, there were still some distracting typographical errors.

But the mystical voice of Mirabai was strong enough to overcome this technical flaw.

Her yearning for her Divine beloved, her doubts, her torments and her joys, were all displayed in language that was of the ordinary, yet carried in its tones the extraordinary that she so diligently searched for her whole life.

This is the first exposure I've had to the mystical poetry of Mirabai & I'll be searching for another, better formatted eBook of her work. If this edition was re-formatted, it would be excellent, because the translation of her voice appears to be true, rather than (as in Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi) an imposition of the translator's modern style on an ancient voice.

[Aria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't actually read this book but I have been reading Mirabai Poems lately