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January 3, 2010October 12, 2020

Kirpa Shroin

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.

January 3, 2010October 12, 2020

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.

January 3, 2010October 12, 2020

Map of Kashmir in 1920s

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).

December 28, 2009October 12, 2020

…but they are crafty

– 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.”

December 27, 2009October 26, 2020

Kashmir in 1920s

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).

A Winter scene by Pandit Vishwanath.

Back waters of Dal

Floating Gardens of Dal.

Diving from the old school.

Dussehra sequence from Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar The Clown wasn’t mere magic realism.

Tiny dots are the pilgrims.

December 27, 2009October 12, 2020

Swarup Rani, Pandit Nehru’s Mother

With Dejhoor, Athoor and Atah dangling from her ear.

An Old photograph of Nehru’s Mother, Swarup Rani, housed at Teen Murti Bhavan.

December 20, 2009October 12, 2020

Kashmiri in 1922

Some more old photographs of Kashmir 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).

Pounding Rice: The mortars are block of wood hollowed out: the pestles are heavy pieces of timber which makes this daily round in women’s work very arduous.It is the women’s duty to convey water for domestic use. The constant practice of balancing the pots on their heads gives them an erect and graceful poise.

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November 25, 2009October 12, 2020

Pandit Marriage, 1922

The bridegroom, aged 14, stands in the centre, priests are sitting in front. Pictures of various gods and goddesses lie on the ground.

Photograph by Pandit Vishwanath.

There’s a good chance that the photo depicts the thread ceremony of Pandits or Yagnopavit. It’s the sahibaan, the tent, in the background that I found interesting.

Found it 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).

November 22, 2009October 12, 2020

Pandit Woman by Pandit Vishwanath, 1922

Kashmir women do not have a working dress. This one has been squatting on a filthy bank cleaning her greasy pots with mud whilst wearing all her gold and silver and precious stones. She has no trinket box at home nor any place to store anything, so besides wearing all her clothes and valuables she has both pockets full, and tucked into her sash a handkerchief, knife, comb and snuff-box, and in the fold of her sleeves snuff and sugar in screws of paper, a needle and cotton and various other things.

The writer must have caught hold of her and given her a good shake and out must have tumbled all her possessions. A needle, a knife, a snuff-box. From the description, I have heard stories about snuff boxes; practice of cleaning pots with mud continued well into the 90s. And then slowly mud was replaced by Nirma.

Photo by Pandit Vishwanath, a student of Biscoe and the first Kashmiri photographer.Found it in the book ‘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’ (1922) by Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe.

The thing that really interested me in the photograph is her footware. Must be the famous Pulhor [ recent photo] woven from leaves of Iris ( Krishm in Kashmiri ).

(I suspected it) Turns out she is wearing Krav or wooden sandals.
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Panditanis

With graceful steps, erect and slow
Adown the stone-built, broken stair
The panditanis daily go
And on their head help high they bear

Bright vessels, which they stoop fill
Beneath the bridge’s wooden pier:
In pools of clouded amber still
Which gurgle deep and glowing here.

Their movements of unconscious grace
Glint in the Jhelum’s flowing stream
Where rich hues shimmering interlace
And in the glancing ripples gleam,

Then with their slender rounded arms
They poise the shining lotas high,
Ot bashful, with half feigned alarms
Draw close their veils with gesture shy.

Bedecked by jewels quaint of form
In pherans robed, whose soft folds show
Tints dyed by rays of sunset warm
Flame, crimson, orange, rose aglow!

With you gay tulips they compare
Which on these grass-grown house-tops blow:
What types for artist’s brush more fair
Does all Srinagar’s city know?

~ Muriel A.E. Brown
Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir (1921)
Muriel Agnes Eleanora Talbot Brown was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Adelbert Cecil Talbot, Resident, Kashmir 1896- 1900. And first wife of Percy Brown, art historian famous for his work on History of Indian Architecture ( Buddhist and Hindu, 1942 ).

Another one of her poems.

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November 15, 2009October 12, 2020

Photographs of Kashmir, 1921

Here are some old photographs of Kashmir from the book ‘Topee and turban, or, Here and there in India’ (1921) by Newell, H. A. (Herbert Andrews, b. 1869). Photographs are by a Sialkot based photographer named R.E. Shorter.