Ranabai, remembered as a Hindu mystical poet, was born around 1504 in north India. She belongs to the broad devotional currents that used vernacular song rather than elite Sanskrit alone. Such poetry made intense religious experience available through remembered lyrics, singing communities and oral transmission.

Bhakti voices like Ranabai's reveal how women and non-courtly singers shaped literary history outside formal academies. Their songs influenced later Hindi, Rajasthani and devotional verse by treating spiritual longing as both intimate lyric and communal performance.