a dalit poet-saint. 215
(Mathura: Fyam KafiPress, 1970); the Mirabaisection occurs on pp. 67–81. An entirely
revised and even more recent version is to be found in Girjafamkar Mifra, Raidas Ra-
mayana (Mathura: BhagavatiPrakafan, 1981), 92–98.
- Bakhsidas, Ravidas Ramayana, 81–82; Mifra, Raidas Ramayana, 98–102.
- Nabhadas, FriBhaktamal, with the Bhaktirasabodhinicommentary of Priyadas
(Lucknow: Tejkumar Press, 1969), 282, 471–72, 480–81. There is a second major source
of early hagiographical writing about Ravidas, Kabir, and a number of other nirguna
saints: the paricayis (accounts) of Anantdas, which purport to have been written near the
end of the sixteenth century and therefore to have been approximately contemporary
with the core text of the Bhaktamal—Nabhadas’s own verse. Anantdas’s paricayis are
considerably less well-known than the Bhaktamal and have not been published until very
recently, so I will focus on the Bhaktamal here. Valuable work on Anantdas has been
done by TrilokiNarayanDiksit, ParicayiSahitya(Lucknow: Lucknow University,
1957), LalitaPrasad Dube, HindiBhakta-VartaSahitya (Dehra Dun: Sahitya Sadan,
1968), and David N. Lorenzen in collaboration with Jagdish Kumar and Uma Thukral,
Kabir Legends and Ananda-Das’s Kabir Parachai (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1991). Readers of English have access to Anantdas’s paracaion Ravidas through
the translation provided by Winand M. Callewaert in The Hagiographies of Anantadas:
The Bhakti Poets of North India (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000), 303–35. - Priyadas’s account is found in Nabhadas, Bhaktamal, 477–78. In recent times,
perhaps because of renewed awareness of the Bhaktamal, there have been different at-
tempts to clarify the relation between the two queens of Cittor. One oral tradition, alive
at the temple of Mirabaiin Brindavan, specifies that Jhaliwas Mira’s mother-in-law and
states, following Priyadas, that it was she, not Mira, who took initiation from Ravidas.
The conclusion drawn in Brindavan is that Miraherself was not Ravidas’s pupil and that
the popular legend to that effect is a case of mistaken identity (Pradyumna Pratap Simh,
interview, Brindavan, August 30, 1985). On the other side are those who are committed
to retaining the tradition that Miraaccepted Ravidas as her guru. The author of the
Ravidas Ramayana, for example, retains both stories but recounts that of Mirafirst and
at greater length, relegating Jhali’s encounter with the master to the end of the book and
giving the queen’s name not as Jhalibut as Yogavati(Bakhsidas, Ravidas Ramayana, 111,
117–19; cf. Mifra, Raidas Ramayana, 114–16). - An influential example is V. Raghavan,The Great Integrators: The Saint-Singers
of India(New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1966), 52–54. This
book is based on a series of lectures broadcast over All India Radio, December 11–14, 1964. - Priyadas in Nabhadas, Bhaktamal, 477–78. His account is extremely condensed
at points; it is reported here as interpreted by SitaramfaranBhagavanprasad Rupkala. - Priyadas in Nabhadas, Bhaktamal, 478. It is possible that the model for this story
was provided by an incident included in relatively recent tellings of the Ramayana, in
which Hanuman’s unparalleled devotion to Ram, Sita, and Laksmanis proved by his