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.