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(B) Mira:
Mira, like Sri Chaitanya, is another verse play by Dilip Roy. It dramatizes the life of a Medieval Vaishnav woman saint of Mevar. There are two versions of the play. The first published in 1968, as Mira in Brindaban, consists of two acts. The next version appeared as Mira in 1979. It is a three-act play. The first act is new here. The following two acts are the same as those of the earlier version. No titles are given to the acts in any of these versions. A study of the later version. is attempted here.
A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES: Dilip Kumar Roy
In Act I, we see Mira, Sanatan, her guru, Pundarik, the temple priest, a few pilgrims and four other pundits at Mira's temple in Brindaban. The pundits ask Mira by what right could she claim to have been cradled in the love of Gopal or Sri Krishna who is almost unattainable, in spite of her illiteracy. Through their high erudition and yoga of knowledge, they have come to know that He can be attained after years of stern meditation and an intensive study of the Vedas and not through 'puerile, sentimental rhapsodies."31
Mira, after politely accepting their charge that she is an ignorant "unlettered woman"32, poses a number of pointed questions to them which leave them. nonplussed. She asks them how the memorised scriptures can heal the carvings of the flesh or curb the passions that lay human beings under the yoke of Fate or how the learning can help one glimpse Gopal who resides not in books but in. one's soul. She advises the pundits to rise above mere words because his Grace can be experienced beyond the world of words. The Vedas, she says, are written in order that people might follow the footsteps of great saints and not in order that people might learn them by heart. She boldly claims that she has really found him, "the world's evergreen beloved", who gave her refuge at his feet because she always approaches him with "Full faith in His all-comprehending love."33
A gradual change begins to occur in the attitudes of these stern pundits. The mystic voice of Mira brings about their complete conversion. The First pundit, the most powerful of the four, goes to the extent of confessing that he saw Radha's face behind Mira. He, then, accepts the insufficiency of pedantic knowledge and necessity of the intuitive and experiential knowledge of Mira.
The same controversy between love and knowledge appears in Act II. Pedant Ajit, a proud aristocrat, who always loves to flaunt his wealth and erudition, expresses his distaste and disapproval of Mira's singing of a song on the superiority of love of Krishna to the verbal meanings of Vedic verses. He thinks:
"Only knowledge, propped by the soul's deep strength, Can serve as the diamond stairway to His peak."34
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