Jashoda Rao Ratan Singh was born in 1498 into the royal family of the Rathore Rajput clan in the town of Kurki in the Kingdom of Marwar. She grew up in Merta City, close to her birthplace. Her grandfather, Rao Duda, was a devout follower of Lord Krishna. He told little Jashoda tales of Lord Krishna’s youth and His Divine love for Radha, and she was utterly fascinated. From a young age she was devoted to Krishna.
She mostly referred to Krishna as Shyam, “the Dark One”, and Giridhara, “Mountain-Lifter”. Her love for Him was pure and unconditional. She viewed the Dark One as her eternal husband, worshipping Him in the Madhurya Bhava mode of Bhakti. She was disinterested in corporeal matters, rejected many of the luxuries that were hers by royal birth in favor of austerity, and fearlessly defied social and family conventions.
Her family was alarmed by her refusal to adhere to traditional social norms, and particularly her unwillingness to marry a human man. They expected that she got older, her attachment to Krishna would lessen; but to the contrary it only grew. She began to compose Bhajans to express her ardent devotion to Krishna, and over her life she composed thousands of poetic verses.
In 1516, after a four-year engagement/betrothal, the eighteen-year-old Jashoda was married against her will (like many a noble-born woman throughout world history) to the twenty-one-year-old Crown Prince of the neighboring Kingdom of Mewar, Bhojraj Singh Sisodia. She was taken to the capital of Mewar and housed in the gigantic Chittorgarh fort, one of the mightiest military fortifications in India - quite necessary as Mewar was at war with the Delhi Sultanate.
Jashoda remained unattached to worldly matters and cared nothing for her new role and status as Crown Princess of Mewar. She defiantly refused to have sex with her husband, regarding Giridhara as her one and only true husband. Prince Bhojraj was at first so surprised and confused by his new wife’ strange attitudes that he was unsure how to react. He did not force her, but initially tried to pull her back into worldly affairs by offering her all the pleasures that money and power could procure, yet she was not tempted. Bhojraj found Jashoda’s detachment and her personality fascinating, and he stopped trying to draw her into things of no interest to her and instead sought to genuinely understand her. He also protected her from his family’s criticism and rebuke for defiantly rejecting her duties as princess (primarily to bear heirs), which led to frequent family arguments. At some point Jashoda began to refer to herself by the name Meera, meaning “Ocean” (in the Rajasthani language which she spoke), and she came to be known as Mirabai or “Ocean woman”. Meera and her earthly husband Bhojraj came to enjoy a relationship of friendship and mutual understanding. He overheard her singing her compositions to the Dark One and appreciated her poetic talents.
Despite her unwillingness to bear children, he never took a second wife.
When Meera sensed that Bhojraj might grant her requests, she asked him to have a temple to Krishna built within the fort. The fort already contained temples to Kalika Mata (the main temple, to the royal family’s Kuladevi), Kshemankari Devi, Kumbha Shyam (Varaha Avatar), Adbuthnath (a form of Shiva), another Shiva temple, and a couple of Jain temples, but she wanted a dedicated Krishna temple. Her husband had a Krishna temple built for her within the fort, and thereafter she spent most of her time in that temple, singing to the Dark One.
In 1518 Bhojraj was wounded in battle defending Mewar from attack by the Delhi Sultanate, and again in 1521. In 1526 an even deadlier enemy came: Babur, who was in the process of making himself the first Mughal Emperor. Bhojraj died in battle defending Mewar. After ten happy years with him, Meera was a widow at the age of twenty-eight. And her grief was unrelenting; just the next year in 1527, Babur struck again and killed both Meera’s father and her father-in-law.
Meera had now lost everything which had kept her interested, however tenuously, in worldly matters. Her husband had died childless, so his younger brother took the throne of Mewar. Meera’s life continued to face challenges and persecution caused by political chaos and military conflicts with the rapidly strengthening Mughal Empire. In 1531 or shortly thereafter she left the kingdom of Mewar, abandoning her life as a noblewoman and becoming a lone wandering pilgrim.
Meera met the great Saint Ravidas (a Dalit, it so happens), took him as her Guru and received a Mantra from him. She dedicated the rest of her life purely to the Dark One in Bhakti Yoga, composing thousands of Bhajans and poems of passionate devotion to Him (and sometimes Radha), all in the Rajasthani language, and singing them every day, wandering as a pilgrim among fellow devotees, many of whom learned her songs and spread them far and wide. Notably, almost all of her songs contain deep philosophical elements.
She saw the Dark One as Her lover and husband. She became one of the most important poet-Saints of her time, and indeed in all of Indian (or at least North Indian) history. Her compositions all ring with her very distinct voice, of fiery passion, defiance, longing and eager anticipation of her next union with the Dark One, periods of burning, agonizing separation, and the absolute ecstasy of that Union.
Around 1547 she was living in Vrindavan, Krishna’s homeland. Then she went on a final pilgrimage to Dwarka, where Krishna lived most of His earthly life. The Dwarkadhish temple was just around that time being rebuilt after its destruction by Sultan Mahmud Begada. It is possible (though this is speculative) that Meera may have gone there to attend the temple’s grand reopening. In any case, after spending some time living in Dwarka, it was in 1548, at the age of fifty, that Meera is said to have physically and spiritually merged into the Dwarkadhish idol of Krishna, disappearing from this world and attaining eternal union with the Dark One.