Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.s3.64

v1.c20.s3.64

Mīra Bāi.—Kumbha married a daughter of the Rathor of Merta, the first of the clans of Marwar. Mira Bai³ was the most celebrated princess of her time for beauty and romantic piety. Her compositions were numerous, though better known to the worshippers of the Hindu Apollo than to the ribald bards. Some of her odes and hymns to the deity are preserved and admired. Whether she imbibed her poetic piety from her husband, or whether from her he caught the sympathy which produced the ‘ sequel to the songs of Govinda,’ we cannot determine. Her history is a romance, and her excess of devotion at every shrine of the favourite deity with the fair of Hind, from the Yamuna to ‘ the world’s end,’¹ gave rise to many [290] tales of scandal. Kumbha mixed gallantry with his warlike pursuits. He carried off the daughter of the chief of Jhalawar, who had been betrothed to the prince of Mandor : this renewed the old feud, and the Rathor made many attempts to redeem his affianced bride. His humiliation was insupportable, when through the purified atmosphere of the periodical rains “ the towers of Kumbhalmer became visible from the castle of Mandor, and the light radiated from the chamber of the fair through the gloom of a night in Bhadon,² to the hall where he brooded o’er his sorrows.” It was surmised that this night-lamp was an understood signal of the Jhalani, who pined at the decree which ambition had dictated to her father, in consigning her to the more powerful rival of her affianced lord. The Rathor exhausted every resource to gain access to the fair, and had once nearly succeeded in a surprise by escalade, having cut his way in the night through the forest in the western and least guarded acclivity : but, as the bard equivocally remarks, “ though he cut his way through the *jhal* (brushwood), he could not reach the *Jhalani*.”