Act One Full moon night of Jhulan Purnima. In Miras temple at Brindavan she is singing before her Image of Gopal. On the right of the altar her Gurudev Sri Sanatan Goswami is seated beside the temple-priest, Pundarik. On the left, four sombre, whiskered pundits are watching intently. Behind her sit, with folded hands, a motley crowd of pilgrims, come from far and near, drawn by her name, music and holiness. MIRA (singing in a mystic ecstasy, standing before the Image): Friend, shall I tell you how I wooed And won my Lord Gopal? How the One for whom pine mighty saints Responded to my call? I knew but one code, trod one path:

Act Two — Conflict Next morning. A bathing ghat in the river Ganga of Navadwip. Two pundits, Keshav and Murari, are seen bathing close together, and a young woman, Romasundari, a few feet from them. Keshav who owns a 'tol' (Sanskrit school) is reputed for his scholarship. A man in the early sixties, with a flowing white beard and of an imposing appearance, he has a high opinion of himself. Murari, in the late forties, owns a similar 'tol' and is gifted with a sense of humour. Roma is a young widow of about twenty-five who, though poor and ekes out a bare living by spinning, comes of a good Brahmin family and was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and learning for which Navadw

PREFACE Often enough, when I sing in our temple, Indira Devi goes off into a mystic trance — samadhi — and sees Mira singing or dancing, in a Brindavan temple, in the midst of some devotees or learned sadhus who start with her a discussion or an altercation, as the case may be. After a time, when Indira Devi comes to, she relates in a half-trance—bhav-samadhi—these singular experiences: historical scenes recaptured or else Mira's stories and parables. As she goes on recounting them, she often breaks out laughing or clapping her hands ecstatically like a child and sometimes — when talking in a faltering accent about "her Gopal's" love — her voice grows husky with emo