Mirabai was born into a Rathore Rajput royal family in Kudki (modern-day Beawar district of Rajasthan), and spent her childhood in Merta. She was the daughter of Ratan Singh and grand daughter of Rao Dudaji of Merta.
Meera unwillingly married Bhoj Raj, the crown prince of Mewar, in 1516. Her husband was wounded in one of the ongoing wars with the Delhi Sultanate in 1518, and he died from battle wounds in 1521. Both her father and father-in-law (Rana Sanga) died a few days after their defeat in the Battle of Khanwa against Babur, the first Mughal Emperor.
After the death of Rana Sanga, Vikram Singh became the ruler of Mewar. According to a popular legend, her in-laws tried to assassinate her multiple times. These attempts included sending Meera a glass of poison and telling her it was nectar, and sending her a basket with a snake instead of flowers. According to hagiographic legends, she was not harmed in either case, with the snake miraculously becoming, depending on the version, a Krishna idol or a garland of flowers. In another version of these legends, she is asked by Vikram Singh to drown herself. When she attempts to do so, she merely floats on the water. Yet another legend states that the third Mughal emperor, Akbar, came with Tansen to visit Meera and presented her with a pearl necklace. Scholars doubt this happened, as Tansen joined Akbar’s court in 1562, 15 years after Meera’s death. Similarly, some stories state that Ravidas was her guru (teacher), but there is no corroborating historical evidence for this.
As of 2014, the three oldest records that mention Meera are all from the 17th century and written within 150 years of Meera’s death. Neither mentions anything about her childhood, the circumstances of her marriage to Bhojraj or that the people who persecuted her were her in-laws or from some Rajput royal family. Nancy Martin-Kershaw states that to the extent that Meera was challenged and persecuted, religious or social conventions were unlikely to have been the cause, rather the likely cause was political chaos and military conflicts between the Rajput kingdom and the Mughal Empire. Other stories state that Mira Bai left the kingdom of Mewar and went on pilgrimages. In her last years, Meera lived in Dwarka or Vrindavan, where legends state she miraculously disappeared by merging into an idol of Krishna in 1547. While miracles are contested by scholars for the lack of historical evidence, it is widely acknowledged that Meera dedicated her life to Krishna, composing songs of devotion, and was one of the most important poet-saints of the Bhakti movement period.
