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 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.