Chapter 1 identifies and analyzes the discourses that went into the “Indian Mona Lisa” trope. It qualifies the painting’s formal label, Portrait of Radha–Kishangarh (referring to the goddess, Krishna’s favorite), and informal one “Bani Thani” (referring to the purported model of the portrait, a concubine of the crown prince). It does so first by situating the painting among contemporaneous Mughal and Rajput Women Portraits. Further, it traces art-critical discourses surrounding the discovery of the Kishangarh School of Art during colonial times and the nationalist appropriation of the painting as an emblem for Rajput spiritual art, apotheosized in the issuing of a stamp. It describes the search for a model behind the painting, the protestations of this theory, and the painting’s current role in a popular cyber-orientalist love story.

Chapter 4 foregrounds Rasikbihari’s songs, documenting her contributions to Kishangarhi literary production. They are preserved overwhelmingly in conjunction with Nagaridas’, which allows for studying up close the synergy of the early-modern literary couple. First are featured her debut songs for a poetic symposium that the prince organized during the monsoon of 1742. Intertextual analysis of the poetic interchanges that took place there reveals that she was taken seriously as a poetess in her own right, also by other courtier-poets present. Next are featured the exchanges in recitals through the seasons, as can be traced from his liturgical anthology for temple festivals and thematically arranged celebrations of intimate moments, which pertain more to the genre of courtesan songs. The scope of poetic interchange extended also more broadly, as both referenced earlier devotional songs, including those by the sixteenth-century devotee-princess, Mirabai. The couple also responded to the new Urdu (Rekhta), rage in Delhi, experimented with Punjabi, and the musical genres of Khayāl and Kabitt. In poetic analysis surfaces the complex issue of their gendered personhood in performance, as he composed frequently from the perspective of a female admirer of Krishna, just like she did. She may well have been his muse in some of these trends.

Chapter 2 evokes the eighteenth-century hierarchical world of the Rajput zanana, highlighting the avenues to power available for the various women living behind purdah, especially via their access to poetry and religious education. Documenting how Bani Thani arrived as a young slave girl, it describes how she trained as a singer and entered in the service of Raj Singh of Kishangarh’s queen known by her pen name Brajdasi. There Bani Thani enjoyed exposure to poetry, including that of the queen’s stepson and crown prince Nagaridas and his friend the innovative love poet Anandghan. She also heard sermons by religious powerbrokers who were involved in the reforms of the powerful neighbor king Jai Singh II of Jaipur, in particular the Nimbarkan abbot of nearby Salemabad, Vrindavandev Acarya. Through pilgrimage trips to the holy land of Braj and sojourns in the fancy parts of Delhi she had access to the latest developments in music. This chapter documents this by featuring her own poetry under the penname Rasikbihari, as well as that of those to whom she responded.

Chapter 5 traces the legacy of Bani Thani’s contribution to Kishangarhi artistic and literary production. First, it explores whether her poetry inspired Kishangarhi paintings, presenting correlations between the two. Next is presented her “spiritual testament” on the basis of newly discovered manuscript material. Its autobiographical posing in Sita style hints at her agreement with the prince’s inclusion of Rama-devotional attitudes after he lost his throne. This is picked up by the inscription on her memorial. The location of her cenotaph close to his in Vrindaban perpetuates the story of their love beyond death. The literary exchange of the pair lived on in manuscript as well as in liturgical singing, as evidenced to this day by combined performance of their songs, though over time, the memory that she was the composer has become blurred. Chronicles document the court’s choice to remember the devout stepmother queen, and the exiled prince, rather than the concubine. Some of her songs made it in a court-sanctioned lithograph edition of the prince’s devotional output, but only as a coda. By the end of the nineteenth century Kishangarh’s inspirational muse herself had practically fallen silent. The amnesia of her authorship endured, even as her features were immortalized.

Chapter 3 reveals clues as to how Bani Thani became the prince’s concubine, through careful intertextual analysis of paintings and poetry, both his and hers. First, it studies the interocular connections of Kishangarh paintings said to portray the prince and his concubine rather than Krishna and Radha. The dialogic interchange thus discovered points to a transgressive romance that could not be openly expressed. Next, through analysis of Nāgarīdās’ poetic works, more intimations emerge of how he subtly conveyed to the young performer his incipient infatuation, which is also reflected in the visual record. Further confirmation of their clandestine relation is found in veiled responses in her poetry, based on her newly discovered poetry notebook. This seems to confirm the theory of earlier scholars that the prince and the slave girl encountered adversity by virtue of her position in his father’s zanana, but a happy resolution materialized from under the wraps of veiled allusions: Eventually, she did attain the official status of concubine.