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sung itself out, and the love, that the Rana had claimed in vain, was poured upon the divine and invisible ideat of her soul, and her little songs live to this day and have ‘survived four hundred years. Pious women in Gujarat sing them in the presence of the same ideal and feel that they are nearer to heaven than to earth when Miré’s music is on their tongues. Young women sing them at home and in public choruses, for Mira’s ideal is held to be an ideal for all women, und the heart of Mird was as pure and innocent and sweet and God-loving as the heart of woman should be.
It seems the missionaries of the new religion of Bhakti were roaming about the whole of Gujarat at this’ time and charming the people with a religion which, while it allowed people like Mir& to pass an ascetic life, peopled their brains with the fairy-land visions of Krishna. -‘As- ceticism was thus rendered both sweet and virtuous, and the blanks of retirement were filled up with the cheerful dreams of a poetical religion. We find this am- ply illustrated in the life and poems of Mird’s great con- temporary Narasinha Meht& of Junagadh. Smarting under a bitter taunt from his brother’s wife, he had retir- ed toa forest whence he returned somehow introduced into the mysteries of the Ras Lili and he thenceforth considered it the mission of his life to sing of Ras Lild& tothe world. The old religion at his native place was that of Siva—a religion. which, though it taught Bhakti,
