Analysis of Mirabai

Zehui Chen

Doctor Weiland

EN 207

November 5th, 2014

MIRABAI

As one of the famous female poets in the world, Mirabai creates many wonderful poems for us. Almost all of her poems are written about her feeling to Krishna. Krishna, an avatar, a young erotic god, is adored by lots of people in India as their belief. Obviously, Mirabai is one member of those devotees. However, in Mirabai’s mind, Krishna is not just a god. To her, sometimes, Krishna is more likes a lover, or a man who she believes she should be married to. Actually, because there are also some sentences that eulogize the strength of Krishna, he should be considered as a mixture of both god and lover in Mirabai’s heart.

Before Mirabai looks at Krishna as a lover, he is a god. The words that describe the strength of Krishna appear more than one time in the poems. After reading all the poems in the book, we can find that Mirabai likes to use the mountains to give people an image that show Krishna is strong. In the poem The Cowherd Who Carries Mountains, the sentence “The cowherd who carries mountains is one for me--I want no one else”（Mirabai, 113), appears as the first part. Here, the cowherd is a stand of Krishna. A cowherd can be considered as a kind, hard-working man. And the expression of “carries mountain” is from an episode. In that episode, Krishna saved the people of Braj from deluge by uprooting and lifting an entire mountain. So, this sentence can be understood as that Mirabai is praising Krishna with his good quality and strength as a god. Then, in the poem I’m Steeped, “I’m steeped, steeped in the dark one’s color”(Mirabai, 114), can also be considered as a description of Krishna’s identity of god, because in Hindu mythology, Krishna in his anthropomorphic form is dark-completed. The skin color of Krishna as a god is different from common humans. Furthermore, in the same poem, I’m Steeped, Mirabai shows her worship and loyalty to the god Krishna directly. For example, the sentence,...