The Shepherd's Daughter Who Became a Second Queen

He came to her as a shepherd, and he did not tell her who he was.

She was out with her family's flock when he appeared. A hunter, or a wandering herdsman, it depends who is telling it. He courted her like that. As an equal. Somebody with animals to mind, the same as her.

Only afterwards did she learn that she had married Khandoba.

Her name is Banai, and she is a daughter of the Dhangar shepherd community.

Why it matters who she was

Khandoba's first wife, Mhalsa, came from a respectable merchant family. That marriage fitted every expectation about how a major regional god's household ought to look.

The second one did not fit at all. That is exactly the point of it.

It gave the Dhangars something no amount of devotion could ever have got them.