in bits and pieces
A couple of weeks ago I moved to a new room. And it just so happens that the landlords, an old couple, are Kashmiri Pandits. Last night they were kind enough to invite me over to their place for the ‘after-pooza‘ feast. So even though I wasn’t home this Shivratri, I got to have some great home made Kashmiri food.
Dina Nath Nadim
– Trilokinath Raina (1998)
cover painting of the poet by G.R. Santosh
Rs 25
Gulam Ahmad Mahjoor
– Trilokinath Raina (2008)
Rs. 40
Poems of Mahjoor
– by T.N. Kaul. First published in 1988.
cover design by G.R. Santosh incorporating a Mahjoor couplet.
Rs.50
Mahjoor and after – An Anthology of Modern Kashmiri Poetry
Edited by Trilokinath Raina (2008)
Rs. 125
Bilhana
– P.N Kawthekar (1995)
Rs 15.
Not the best of the book. But still…
Kalhan’s Rajatarangini
– The saga of the kings of Kasmir
Ranjit Pandit’s translation with a foreword to the book by Pandit Nehru. First published by 1935.
Rs.200
And the prize possession:
Kashmiri Lyrics
translated by J.L. Kaul. First published in 1945.
revised and edited by Neerja Mattoo (2008)
Rs. 75
[The image name reads ‘Babuji Wedding 1914’]
Update. The photograph is in fact from a private collection. Man Mohan Munshi ji say’s:
It is the marriage photograph of my late father B.N.Munshi 1904-1977 who retired in early nineteen sixty as the first secretary of J&K Public Service Commission and was employed as Registrar, Regional Engineering College , Srinagar from 1962-1966 . We are original residents of Munshi Mohala Bulbul Lankar. Srinagar. The bearded gentleman standing in the Shikara is my late grand father Munshi Amar Chand and next to him is his son- in- law Late Makund Ram Bhan of Agha Hamam.The band with the procession is the state Band provided by Maharaja Pratab Singh. The bride(Gauri) my late mother is in the Zanpana seen in the center of the photograph with ana; white bearded gentlemen is her Dodbab. The Photograph was taken at the yarbal of Bul Bul Lankar in front of the Ziarat of the sufi saint Bul Bul Shah while the procession was returning by boats from Brari Yarbal near Fateh Kadal.
Found it in ‘Travels in the Mogul Empire’ by Francois Bernier, edited by Archibald Constable (1891). Francois Bernier (1625 – 1688), French physician and traveler, visited Kashmir in 1664–65 as part of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s entourage. He is regarded as the first westerner to have described Kashmir at length.
A map, based on Bernier’s description of Kashmir, was first included in the Dutch version of his travel account published in Amsterdam in 1672. Irving Brock in his 1826 edition of the book (re-edited by Archibald Constable in 1891) noticed that the map was ‘curiously incorrect’ and added ‘a new and accurate delineation’ . The map here is the new one.
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Description: This original old antique print / plate originates from the fifth volume of: ‘Atlas Historique…’ (Historic Atlas…), Published by Zacharie Chatelain, Amsterdam, 1732. The atlas was published in seven volumes between 1705 and 1720, with a second edition appearing in 1732. The maps were accompanied by information pertaining to cosmography, geography, history, chronology, genealogy, topography, heraldry, and costumes of the world. The maps in the Atlas Historique were mainly based on those of the French cartographer, Guillaume De L’Isle, but were presented by the Chatelains in an encyclopaedic form.
Artists and Engravers: Made by ‘Henri Abraham Chatelain’ after an anonymous artist. Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684-1743), his father Zacharie Chatelain (d.1723) and Zacharie Junior (1690-1754), worked as a partnership publishing the Atlas Historique, Ou Nouvelle Introduction A L’Histoire under several different Chatelain imprints, depending on the Chatelain family partnerships at the time of publication. |
In A.D. 1825 Kirpa Ram was governor. He was a mild, self-indulgent man, fond of boating and boatwomen, and nicknamed Kirpa Shroin, ‘ Shroin,’ being the Kashmiri word for the sound of the boat-paddle. In 1827 there was a severe earthquake, and the city was almost destroyed, this was followed by cholera. In this year three Brahman women were burnt as Satis. After an easy rule of five years Kirpa Ram, in the midst of a pleasure party on the Dal Lake, was recalled to Lahore, and there being disgraced, retired to Hardwar, where he lived an ascetic life. It is said in jest by the Kashmiris that Kirpa Ram introduced crows into Kashmir, considering that they were necessary to the due performance of funeral rites, as it is the custom in the Panjab to feed crows on such occasions, and this valuable contribution to the fauna of Kashmir forms perhaps the most important act of Kirpa Shroin’s idle rule.
– The Valley of Kashmir by Sir Walter Roper Lawrence (1895).
Image: A crow outside my mother’s old long sold out house at Kralkhod.
Old photographs of Ladakh from ‘Kashmir in Sunlight & Shade: a Description of the Beauties of the Country, the Life, Habits and Humour of its Inhabitants, and an Account of the Gradual but Steady Rebuilding of a Once Down-trodden People’ by Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe (1922).
Mulbe is famous for great Maitreya rock sculpture.
Read about the account of Hye Ch’o, a Korean pilgrim who travelled through the Himalayas between 724 and 727.
found in ‘Kashmir in Sunlight & Shade: a Description of the Beauties of the Country, the Life, Habits and Humour of its Inhabitants, and an Account of the Gradual but Steady Rebuilding of a Once Down-trodden People’ by Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe (1922).
– A Snake Charmer in the New Bazaar, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1892
from Illustrated London News. [found it here at Columbia.edu]
[Update: It was the work of J. E. Goodall]
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‘[They] are good-looking…but they are crafty’.
wrote Buddhist pilgrim from China, Huen Tsang who arrived in Kashmir in A.D. 631 as a state guest and stayed for two years. The exact words,”light and frivolous, and of a weak, pusillanimous disposition. The people are handsome in appearance, but they are given to cunning. ‘They love learning and are well-instructed.”
Some more vintage photographs from ‘Kashmir in Sunlight & Shade: a Description of the Beauties of the Country, the Life, Habits and Humour of its Inhabitants, and an Account of the Gradual but Steady Rebuilding of a Once Down-trodden People’ by Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe (1922).
Dussehra sequence from Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar The Clown wasn’t mere magic realism.
