The garden dividing A and B blocks was decked up like a gaudy bride. Twinkling fairy lights, tied and twisted over potted plants and tallish trees, blinked into the cool December haze. Chairs had been laid out in a crescent shape under the jamun tree. A sprinkling of idle chatter and laughter enveloped the late evening air.
To prevent the mud from dirtying bare feet, and the ladies’ high-heeled stilettos sinking in, a thick cotton rug had been laid on the ground. Smell of rose incense and aromatic foods permeated the thick winter chill.
‘You call this chilly? Baap re. What would you do in Kashmir then?’
‘Why don’t you just put a rubber stamp on your forehead? Kedar suggested. ‘Razdans, the bores from Kashmir, that way you won’y have to announce it over and over again. In Kashmir this, in Jammu that. Arabian Sea is like toilet water when you compare it to Dal lake, the air in Mumbai is like breathing poisonous gas…’
Kedar was sick of Mrs Razdan’s rants. He had spend the last fifteen minutes in that corner behind the table. and in spite of his resolution not to be rude to elders, he found he couldn’t help himself. He walked off with a flourish, hitching up his trousers and jabbing his fingers int he air, rapsta style. The New Year was a few weeks away, by then he would have got his act together, he promised himself. Besides wasn’t it rude to be as boring as the Razdans? Actually, he decided, as he sauntered off, their boringness had been far worse than his rudeness, so all in all, it was okay.
~ Swapnalok Society: The Good News Reporter (2009) by Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, fiction for young teens about the way television news works. The story is based around happening in a Mumbai urban society where a Kashmiri Pandit family also lives.
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The new crop of Kashmir Pandit immigrants have been in living in these urban settings, away from Kashmir, for more than twenty years now. It’s only natural that we ought now be part of stories coming from these urban centers. Stories which do not revolve around Kashmir and in which a Bhattni just pops up as one of the characters. (It is kind of funny that the clearest example of it should have some from the mind of someone who gave us pop-hit ‘Dole Dole; in year 1995 [youtube]).
Mixed Housing societies have always been good theme for ‘Indian Stories’. We find them in writings of Salman Rushdie and in cinema of Sai Paranjape. The stories often suffer from usual racial stereotype syndrome: Gujrati goes ‘Kemcho’, Tamil goes ‘Aiyyo’, old Parsi goes ‘Dikra’, Marathi doesn’t go ‘Bokmay’, Punjabi doesn’t go ‘Pencho’, Sardarji goes ‘Peg lagao’ and now Kashmiri goes…’Kashmir ye…Kashmir wo’…which of course is boring.
Yes, we are big bores. Kashmir consumes us. Our world revolves around Dal Lake, Jammu is our moon and Srinagar Venus+Mars. Odd that we can write tomes about a world we no longer inhibit but barely acknowledge the ground beneath our feet.
The new immigrant Pandits literature still revolves around Kashmir and not about characters living ‘Jamna Paar’. Jaman Paar does not exist. Perhaps it would take us another decade to start writing about the ‘Indian’ characters as we see them. Then maybe we would have some more boring stories to tells.
Postcard and Stamp
for the 1980 “Brides from India series: Bride from Jammu and Kashmir”
Based on work by “Doll Designing Centre and Workshop, Nehru House, New Delhi”
The impact that World War 2 had on the Silk Route traders who used to visit Kashmir. An extract from ‘The Kashmir Residency: Memories of 1939 and 1940’ by Evelyn Desiree Battye, who served as Personal Assistant to the Resident of Kashmir during those years.
Invariably there was something of interest going on in the deep back verandah or in the square entrance hall where farash footmen hung about with the colorful chaprassis waiting for the next message to be taken or received, bot most interesting of all to me were the bagmen, as the itinerant merchants were called. Most visited regularly once or twice a year and were welcomed as old friends. They came great distances on foot in yak and mule caravans carrying their goods. They were ffed and put up in the servants quarters.
‘China-man agaya, Memsahib,’ de Mello would announce with beaming face. Once it was during a dinner party.
‘Oh, do let’s see what he brings!’ ladies exclaimed; and after the mea; the hall floor would be littered with his goods to examine and admire.
The Chinaman brought underwear for us, and for the men silk pyjamas with dragons embroidered on the pockets. There were fine cross-stitched tray and tea cloths with small napkins to match, lacquer tea sets with red and gold painting on the insides, and little cups and saucers with matching spoons just the right size for after-dinner coffee. With these went black lacquer trays, fruit plates and finger bowls. There were prettily painted china soup bowls with their matching lids, saucers, and serving spoons from which to choose a set of eight. Also displayed were exquisite ornaments both in white and green jade which Ronnie and I held admiringly but could never afford even though they were at bargain prices. The Chinaman encouraged us to finger his goods as much as we liked and to drape his satins and gossamer materials over chairs and balustrades to see the effect. Once we had made our purchases he had everything neatly folded and packed up into his bags in a jiffy.
These roving Chinamen would stay in India a year, sometimes two, while travelling round a favorite beat of ‘regulars’ with the chittis of recommendation we always gave him, until he had sold all his wares. Then he would travel back the long way ‘over the top of the world’ following the silk route to China to replenish his stocks for the next trip. It was quite a thing to welcome back a familiar Chinaman after his long absences. But would there be a next time?
‘What happen to poor China-man now, Master, Missee?’ I remember our favorite bagman expressing, his wrinkled face a study of woe. ‘Big war stop China-man to come back. Fan Lo face ruin!’
‘You must come back, Fan Lo; what would we do for presents without you? Take this chitti and go to Hong Kong, that’s british, and then you can return.’
He got to Hong Kong (so the servants informed ) and was allowed into the Colony with all his recommendations from the Memsahibs of India, and there he was caught by the war. he never came back.
Always of great interest to the men particularly was the carpet man who came to display his shimmering rugs and camel-bags which he spread out in the hall. He too carried his heavy loads by mule-pack and yak over the mountain passes and through the dusty deserts, though in a more westerly direction than the Chinaman’s route. He brought intricately pattered brightly colored saddlebags with their long tasselled fringes from Shiraz in Southern Persia, and superbly ornate silk prayer-mats from Kashan in Iran; the loosely knitted fringed rugs from Kazakh of longer pile; rugs from the Caucasus; Bokhara carpets of magenta or puce, and the many less expensive and coarser woven ones of blues, green and browns from Kula, Afghanistan and Baluchistan. These carpets once again reflected the Persian love of flowers, of massed roses and carnations, of hunting scenes and exotic lotuses which showed the Chinese influence.
Weird world. Back then someone in Austria had even made a postal stamp out of the photograph of a Pandit woman profiled by Fred Bremner. In 1921, the image was mislabelled as that of a ‘Boatwoman’ by National Geographic.
“Whatever exists in whatever Mandala of the earth, exists in its quintessence in Kashmira, Whatever exists in Kashmira Mandala, exists within the waters of the Vitasta.” —Nilmatapurana, Story of Nila Naga, 6th-9th century AD
The story of Kashmir usually begins with its birth in water: Gods and Supermen emptying a primordial lake to let humans inhabit it and granting them rights to the land and its riches. The story was retold in various ways in Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic eras of Kashmir’s history. Though the story gradually changed with each retelling, the belief that life came out of water remained. Dwellers of the valley saw Kashmir’s water bodies, the rivers and the springs as the source of life. The change of seasons and the dramatic impact it had on environment were all too obvious to the valley’s dwellers. They marveled that their valley brimmed with beautiful life in the harsh Himalayan environment. Out of this awe of nature and its transformational powers came their first metaphors.
When matters of morality and ethics were given a thought, when earliest oral stories were put into text, much like the people in other parts of the world, like people living in other mandalas, the people of valley put their words into the mouth of animals and let them talk like wise sages. People, their lives still tied to a wild world over which they didn’t have full control, understood and appreciated these primitive literary devices. Until a few decades ago, an average Indian child’s introduction to wildlife were the stories from Panchatantra. It was a work that made the young mind conscious of the not so otherness of other beings on this planet. One of the primary sources of Panchatantra, as it is available to us now, is Tantrakhyayika, a work of 11th century prolific Kashmirian poet Kshemendra.
The stories and the storywriters from Kashmir became travellers. From pit-dwellers man had evolved into a modern man, an explorer of text and world. Stories now were intertwined in languages from various distant land and yet the metaphors derived from nature remained. 11th-century Kashmiri poet Bilhana was born in a rural Kashmiri village Khonamuh about 15 kilometres south of Srinagar. The English translation of his love verses, Caurapâñcâśikâ, are quoted extensively in John Steinbeck’s Great-depression era American novel Cannery Row (1945), In his work Vikramankadevacharita, an eulogy dedicated to Western Chalukyan king Vikramaditya VI, the poet gives us a description of Khonamuh, a birth place of ancient legends, some say even of Brihatkatha the lost work that forms the source of Somadeva’s 11th century work Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of streams of story), the pieces from which can even be found in Arabian nights and in writing of Salman Rushdie. About his birth place place Bilhana writes (trs. Georg Bühler):
“What shall I sing of that spot, the ancient home of wonderful legends, the sportive embellishment of the bosom of Himalaya? One part bears the saffron in its native loveliness, the other the grape, pale like a cut of juicy sugarcane from Sarayu’s bank. […] When (Bilhana) took from Kashmir the pure lore of all Sastras, he, forsooth, made the qualities of the snowy mountains his own. Else, how could he, when angered, have reduced, in every land, the faces of disputants to the likeness of lotuses blighted by hoar-frost?”
In these lines not only do we find one of the earliest description of a Kashmiri village but also the way the metaphors born in Kashmiri’s unique eco-system continued to be employed by a writer born in Kashmir and living as a immigrant in mainland where he was picking up new metaphors of a distant land where Sarayu was the source of life and metaphors. The influence of water, of rivers and springs on human life was too immense for the writers to ignore.
When the dwellers of the valley chose to tell their history, poetry was the medium and river the metaphor. So, the 12th century poet Kalhana titled his work Rajatarangini or ‘The River of Kings’. We read about formation of new cities after humankind’s triumph over unruly rivers, giving order to chaos. It tells us “that during the reign of Avantivarman (855 AD-883 AD), one Surya engineered alterations in course of rivers to control frequent floods” and “made the streams of Indus and Jhelum flow according to his will, like a snake-charmer his snakes.” River was a divine serpent that man had finally managed to master. Or, so he thought.
Literature produced in Kashmir, till then, was mostly in Sanskrit. But there is evidence to suggest that people in the Valley were multilingual. It was an ideal environment for a new language to emerge. In Rajatarangini, we hear the first echo of this new language. The line ‘Rang’assa Helu dinna’ (village Helu be given to Ranga) by a Domba singer named Ranga, around 10th century, is the first written record of spoken Kashmiri language.
The story of the birth of modern Kashmiri literature begins much later with the arrival of mystic poet Lal Ded (Granny Lalla) in early14th century just as Islam made its first appearance in Kashmir. However, Lal Ded’s life story was first written as late as 16th century and that too in Persian chronicles. In the intermediate two centuries, Kashmiri language was born out of oral traditions of ‘sayings’. Lal Ded narrated in a format that came to be known as vakhs, literally “spoken words”. In her words too, the story of Kashmir goes back to water (and would probably end in water?).
trayi nengi sarah sar’e saras
aki nengi sars arshes jay
haramokha Kausara akh sum saras
sati nengi saras shunakar
(Three times do I remember a lake overflowing. Once do I remember seeing in the firmament the only existing place. Once do I remember seeing a bridge from Haramukh to Kausar. Seven times do I remember seeing the whole world a void.)
This collection of her vakhs was translated to English by Nilla Cram Cook, an American linguist and a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and published in The way of the Swan.
In her vakhs, Lal Ded was reimagining the Valley. She was weaving metaphysical ideas with objects in physical world, a literary exercise that had fascinated the Kashmiri Trika poet-philosophers of yore. Lal Ded’s words were often cryptic and yet the common folk followed them. Take for example the lines:
It is a lake so tiny that in it a mustard seed finds no room.
Yet from that lake everyone drinks water.
And into it do gazelles, jackals, rhinoceroses, and sea-elephants
Keep falling, falling, almost before they have time to become born
Lal Ded seems to be describing a karmic play in which all beings on earth come from the same source, a source that is inconsequential and infinite at the same time. She holds the attention of Kashmiris by mentioning familiar objects like gazelles and jackals and sets their imagination afire by mentioning the unfamiliar: rhinoceroses and sea-elephants. But why does she mention rhinoceros, an animal most of her listeners must have never seen? What are sea-elephants and what do people nestled in the Himalayas know of them? The lines, in fact, are a riddle from Lal Ded whose simple answer is: mother’s teats.
Kashmiri, for centuries, was an oral language and Lal Ded’s saying survived in popular parlance because her vakhs were passed on from generation to generation, as riddles for children. Though Lal Ded presented her personal experiences and thoughts in cryptic manner, her advice to people was always lucid:
Don but such apparel as will cause the cold to flee.
Eat but so much food as will cause hunger to cease.
O Mind! devote thyself to discernment of the Self and of the Supreme,
And recognise thy body is but food for forest crows.
This idea of a moderate life was extended and built upon by her spiritual and literary inheritor, Nund Rishi. Born in Kaimuh village of Kashmir in 1375(/7) AD to a weaver family, Nund Rishi’s sayings uttered in a format called Shruk, were to become the moist soil on which the Kashmiri language later bloomed. Love of nature, trees and animals was going to be one of the main teachings of this mystic poet and of the rishis that followed him. These teachings still form the core of environmental concerns of a common Kashmiri.
It is not uncommon to still hear some Kashmiri utter Nund Rishi’s words of advice: Ann Poshi Teli Yeli Van Poshan (Food shall last till forests last) This saying, in fact, is the first instance of a Kashmiri uttering environmental concerns. While most of Nund Rishi’s literary predecessors described Kashmir as a land of abundant natural beauty with ever-flowing rivers and great garden retreats, Nund Rishi’s environmentalism seems all too sudden and dramatic. To understand it, we have to understand the era in which his sayings gained eager ears.
Shivara’s Third Rajatarangini suggests that 13th-14th century was a period of not just political and religious unrest but also a period of intense growth in terms of urban population and economy. New cities and towns cropped up in Kashmir. Most of these were at the spots where modern towns and cities of Kashmir are still expanding. This urbanisation probably started during Lal Ded’s time. In one of her vakhs she tells us:
“My wooden bow shoots
only arrows of grass
This metropolis finds
only an inept carpenter”
Lal Ded compares the helpless imperfectness of human body to an ugly metropolis (Razdan’e) designed by a greedy human mind.
By the time of Nund Rishi, this urbanisation had intensified. Houses, bridges, shrines, all were made of wood. Even Kashmir’s crafts depended on wood and animals. All this could only mean an additional strain on Kashmir’s ecology. It was during this era that Nund Rishi, also known as of Sheikh Noor-ud-din, preached the need for preserving nature to rural agrarian people who could easily relate to the metaphors he employed.
During this turbulent era, Nund Rishi gave Kashmiris an ominous vision of future:
Dear Nasar,
listen to the words of Guru
The crown of hog shall bear
a crest of peacock
River Vyeth shall run dry
sewage drains overflow
Then you shall see
the chaotic Simians rule.
The free book released this month under SearchKashmir Free Book project is part of a legacy of Biscoe School where a special emphasis was laid on familiarizing the students with the local geography. The school was famous for its trekking tours. Over the years, after the British left, some of these students went on to become the advocates of the importance of such activities in overall growth of an individual. One of such persons was N. L. Bakaya.
“N.L. Bakaya born in 1892, received education at the C.M.S. Tyndale Biscoe High School and later at the S.P. College, Srinagar. In 1914, he joined the Biscoe School as a teacher and retired in 1954 as Headmaster. It was at this school that he developed a passion for trekking and climbing, besides water and other sports.
As Sports Secretary, he organised regattas, tournaments and other sports. Every summer he organised parties to climb prominent peaks and treks across the charming side valleys of Kashmir. He has also travelled widely all over India as well as Burma.
After retirement in 1954, Bakaya was asked by the State Government to organise sports for the State and was appointed Special Sports Organiser for five years. In this capacity, he organised youth camps and put physical education in the State Educational Institutions on a sound basis. He is one of the founder members of the Kashmir Olympic Association and the Kashmir Football Federation.”
What this book offers is clear precise details on how to proceed about trekking in Kashmir.
Yaseen gave a tour of his new office. It’s an old Pandit house. Yaseen’s family and the previous owner have been friends for decades. In fact, the old owner still has a space reserved for his summer visits.
The suburb around Nishat-Ishber cropped up around late 70s and early 80s. The families that had seen an economic growth had started to move from traditional old Kashmiri houses in the conjested interiors of old Srinagar . Joint households were splitting and each micro inhabiting a new space of their own. The houses that came up around this time were a hybrid of faux European and Kashmiri style. The wood was still part of the design, instead of sand, mud was still used to bind the bricks, the entrance was still on a raised platform, but the interiors were more lavish and even offered the luxury of an attached toilet/bathroom with running water (thanks to a revolutionary product called ‘Sintex’).
Yaseen asked the name of that metallic hood thing at the top. Apparently, it was typical of Kashmiri Pandit houses to have it. I couldn’t tell. I thought he was asking me about the bee hive.
Brick Work with Sand
Yaseen told me this funny story about a Pandit house in this area that sold of 6 Lakh Rupees, and then resold for 35 Lakh Rupees and finally sold again to a NRI Pandit for 75 Lakh Rupees.
teak wood
After renovation.
Two view from the window. Zabarwan.
Dal
Sintex Tank
Old Belongings.
Inside Zoon Dub. Moon Room. Best part of a Kashmiri house.
Among the traditional obligation that a Kashmiri Pandit was required to fulfil after building a house was ‘Krur Khanun‘, digging a well. Most of the old houses came had a Krur. Yaseen’s house came with a ‘naag‘ (spring). For Pandits a house was a living entity and so was as spring. There is still some life left in the spring even though it got badly choked on trash during years of neglect. The new owner plans to re-dig and revive it.
“As already mentioned the ancient name of the State was Durgara, as found on two Chamba copper plate deeds, and of this name the terms Durgar and Dogra, in common use at the present time, are derivations. Till the discovery of the copper plates several other derivations were assigned for the origin of the name. One of these was Dugarta or Dvigarta, that is, “the tract between two rivers,” viz., the Ravi and Chinab – in analogy with Trigarta or Kangra. By some the name was supposed to refer to the two sacred lakes of Saroin Sar and Man Sar, and the country around them. These derivations of the name must now be regarded purely fanciful. The name Durgara is probably a tribal designation, like Gurgara, the original of the modern “Gujar”. The names Durgar and Dogra are now applied to the whole area in the outer hills between the Ravi and Chinab, but this use of the terms is probably of recent origin, and date only from the time when the tract came under the supremacy of Jammu.
The chronology of Jammu is a blank down to the early part of the tenth century, when it is referred to under the name of Durgara. This reference establishes the fact that the State then existed and was ruled by its own chief, called the ” lord of Durgara.” At a considerably later date the references in the Rajatarangini to two Rajas of Babbapura, if accepted as applying to Jammu, enable us to fix approximately the subsequent reigns. We may assume that Vajradhara, who was in power in A.D. 1114-18, succeeded about A.D. 1110, and the earliest authentic date after this is that of Raja Parasram Dev (A.D. 1589). Between these dates twenty Rajas ruled the State, giving an average reign of about twenty-five years. There may have been omissions of names in copying the Vansavali which would reduce this average, indeed one such name is found in the Akbarnamah. Again, from A.D. 1589 to A.D. 1812 there were twelve reigns, giving an average of nearly twenty years. These averages are in keeping with those of many other hill States.
As in other parts of the hills, Jammu State was probably preceded by a long period of government by petty chiefs, called Ranas and Thakurs. The traditions relating to this Thakurain period, as it is called, are less definite to the west than to the east of the Ravi, but in the historical records of most of the States in the Jammu area there are fairly clear evidences of such a political condition. These traditions, however, are least definite in the oldest States, having probably passed into oblivion through lapse of time. The foundation of some of the States is distinctly associated with the conquest of one or more of these petty barons. There are no references to the Ranas in the Jammu Vansavali, and it is unusual to find such references in the case of very ancient States, but in the folklore of the people traditions of the ancient polity are common.We may therefore assume that for many centuries after Jammu State was founded the outlying portions, which at a later period became separate and independent States, were under the rule of Ranas and Thakurs, possibly with a loose allegiance to Durgara.
The Dogra royal line trace their descent from Kus, the second son of Rama, and came originally, it is said, from Ayodhya. Like Chamba and many other royal families of the hills, they belong to the Surajbansi race and the clan name is Jamwal. Probably there was an older designation which has been forgotten.
The Manhas Rajputs, a large agricultural tribe found along the foot of the outer hills between the Ravi and the Jehlam, claim to be descended from the same ancestor as the Jammu royal clan. The tradition among them is that from an early period some of the younger members of the royal clan took to agriculture, and as following the plough is opposed to Rajput sentiment, they thereby became degraded, and are looked down upon by those who adhere to ancient custom. Most of the Manhas, it is said, can trace their descent from chief of the various States under different offshoots of the ‘Jamwal royal clan. It is improbable that Jamwal was the original name of the tribe as suggested by Ibbetson. The name can date only from the time when Jammu became the capital and it is applied only to the royal clan and its offshoots.
The early history of the State is lost in the mists of the past and even common tradition is silent. The first Raja, named Agnibaran, is said to have been a brother or kinsman of the Raja of Ayudhya. He came up into the Punjab by way of Nagarkot (Kangra), and after crossing the Ravi settled at Parol near Kathua, opposite to Madhopur in the Gurdaspur District. According to the records this, if authentic, must have been at a very early period. His son, Vayusrava, added to his territory the country of the outer hills as far west as the Jammu Tawi. Four other Rajas followed in succession and the fifth was Agnigarbh, who had eighteen sons, of whom the two oldest were Bahu-lochan and Jambu-lochan. Bahu-lochan succeeded his father and founded the town and fort of Bahu, on the left bank of the Tawi, opposite Jammu, and made it his capital. In seeking to extend his territories towards the plains he fell in battle with Chandarhas, then Raja of the Punjab (Madhyadesa) whose capital was probably at Sialkot. The reference is interesting and probably historical. The war with Chandarhas doubtless was the outcome of an attempt on the part of the hill chief to enlarge the State boundaries towards the plains. Tradition affirms that in former times the territory extended much farther to the south than now, and the Raja of Sialkot would naturally oppose such encroachments on his borders.
Sialkot has been identified with the ancient Sakala, the Sagala of Buddhist literature, which is thus proved to be one of the oldest cities in the Punjab. In very ancient times it was the capital of the Madras who are known in the later Vedic period, and Sakaladvipa or ” the island of Sakala ” was the ancient name of the doab between the rivers Chandrabhaga (Chenab) and Iravati (Ravi). In somewhat later times (c. B.C. 200) Sakala was the capital of the later Graeco-Indian kings of the house of Euthymedus, who ruled the Eastern Punjab, and it was the residence of Alenander who has been identified with king Melinda, who is known from the Buddist treatise called “The Questions of Melinda.” His date was about B.C. 150. At a still later period Sakala was the capital of Salavahana, whose son, Rasalu, is the great hero of all Punjab tradition, and after the invasion of the Hunas (Huns) in the latter part of the fifth century A.D. it became the capital of Toramana and his son Mihirakula, who ruled over the Punjab and also probably over Kashmir. As Jammu is only thirty miles from Sialkot, and the boundary even at the present time is within seven miles of the latter place, it is evident that frequent disputes must have arisen in former times, similar to that referred to in the Vansavali.
Jambu-lochan followed and continued the war with Chandar-has in which the latter was slain. He is then said to have founded the town of Jammu. The story is thus related: Jambu-lochan on becoming Raja wished to found another town as ^ his capital and name it after himself. With this in view he went out hunting one day accompanied by his officials, and crossing the Tawi he saw in the jungle a deer and a tiger drinking at the same tank. Being surprised at the sight he returned to his tent and calling his Ministers enquired the meaning of such a strange occurrence. They replied that the explanation lay in the fact that the soil of the place excelled in virtue and for that reason no living creature bore enmity against another. The Raja therefore came to the conclusion that this was just the kind of site he was in search of and founded a new town, calling it Jambupura.’
The spot on which the tank was found is now called Purani Mandl,’- a locality in Jammu town, where the Rajas on their accession receive the rajtilak, or mark of investiture at the time of installation. The Purani Mandi marks the spot where the palace originally stood, and the Rajas resided for centuries. It is near the small temple of Raghunath (Rama) called ” Maharani ka Mandir,” founded by the Bandhrali Rani of Maharaja Ranbir Singh. A great number of people are daily fed there, and receive each one pice in cash in name of the rani. The present Purani Mandi buildings are said to have been erected by Raja Mal Dev, probably in the fourteenth century. The present palace is modern and was erected by Maharaja Gulab Singh.
Jammu has no ancient buildings or remains, nor anything to indicate that it is a place of great antiquity. The temples, which are generally a sure evidence of age, are all modern. The place has a large population, but its prosperity is of recent date. The earliest historical mention of Jammu is in connection with Timur’s invasion in A.D. 1398-9. In the Tarikh-i-Kashmlr-i-Azami (A.D. 1417) a Raja of Jammu is referred to and the town is spoken of as then about five hundred years old. We may therefore conclude that it was founded about A.D. 900. It is quite possible, however, that Jammu may date from an earlier period, as the legend says; though it may not have been a place of any importance and did not become the capital till a later time.”
Gulab Singh’s fort [by the side of Chinab?]. 1847. By James Duffield Harding during 1846 visit to the Kingdom by Charles Stewart Hardinge, the eldest son of the first Viscount Henry Hardinge, the Governor General of India.
[via: British Library]
Map of Jammu City. Company Period Punjab. 1880-90 A.D.
[from an exhibition at Kala Kendar Jammu]
Dogra Man 1944
“Nautch fencing dance before the Prince of Wales at Jummoo”,1876.
