“There is magic in names. Who of us has not felt the lure hidden in such words as Samarkand, Peshawar, Khartoum, Peking – the far-flung places of the earth, which call us in our hours of dreams? So I felt about Kashmir, that beautiful vale which lies in the lower Himalaya, north of the Indian Punjab”
~ ‘House-Boat Days in the Vale of Kashmir’ by Florence H. Morden (photographs by Herford Tynes Cowling), for National Geographic Magazine, October 1929.
Afternoon Tea on the Upper Deck of the “Melisande’
Usually some English friends, on leave from lower India, would drop in to chat with the Americans. Old Golry flies because it happened to be Decoration Day [Memorial day/first Monday of May]. Though the Kashmiri is a skillful boat builder, he did not invent the house boat. It was introduced into the country some 40 years ago.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was Kashmir. This was beginning with God and the duty of every faithful monk would be to repeat every day with chanting humility the one never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted. But we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil.
Hari Parbat is in Faridabad. Koh-e-Maran is in Balochistan and in Kashmir. Takht-e-Suleman is in Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Balochistan and now officially in Kashmir. And Adi Shankaracharya broke and re-built a temple in Srinagar of Gharwal, where they tell stories of a demon who died of head injury after getting hit by a divine rock.
To call everything by its true name and the trouble to be reminded that everything is a double.
Shankracharya and Takhht-e-Suleimani have both been used for a long time. But both names are essentially just names which people have given to it relatively recently. Name Shankracharya became a currency during Sikh/Dogra time. A name which Pandits, having recently regained ground, happily adopted. Thanks to work of Sir Stein, all kind of ancient places were getting reclaimed during this era. Takhht-e-Suleimani became a currency during Mughal/Afghan time. During Dogra time a inscription declaring the temple as ‘Takhht-e-Suleimani’ was destroyed by the soldiers. The inscription had come up during Mughal times probably when Noorjahan got the ancient stone stair case leading to the temple destroyed and had the stone used for her Pathar Masjid (which in turn provided stones for building Sher-Grahi palace by Afghans). By the time British arrived, re-naming war was already on, for the hill, both name were in currency. Based on which religious group you asked, a convenient name was provided. That’s how the dual name system gained currency. What about the one true name? The temple it is believed was originally known as Jyeshteswara and was first built by Jaloka, son of Asoka around 220 B.C. One of the old name of the hill was Sandhimana-paravata named after Sandhimana, minister of Jayendra (ruling from A.D. 341 to 360). In between, it is believed, Gopaditya (A.D. 238 to 253) repaired the old temple on the hill…giving the name ‘Gopadri’ to hill. Then there is a theory ( by James Ferguson countering the previous theory of A. Cunningham) that the temple we see now was commenced by a nameless Hindu during Jahangir’s time but remained incomplete when Aurangzeb arrived on the scene. This unfinished state gave it the ancient and misleading look. This assumption came from some Persian inscription on its staircase. But then there were other writing on the staircase too which read, other claims likes “the idol was made by Haji Hushti, a Sahukar, in the year 54 of the Samvat era”, while at the foot of the same pillar there was another scribble stating that “he who raised this temple was Khwaja Rukn, son of Mir Jan in the year___.”
Then there is theory that the spot was actually Buddhists and is still revered by them and called as ‘Pas-Pahar’. So it goes on…
In 1931-1932 as Georges-Marie Haardt’s Trans-Asiatic Expedition made its way from Beirut to Beijing on, tagging along was as an ‘Artistic Advisor’ was a brilliant Russian artist named Alexandre Yevgenievich Jacovleff (1887-1938). Jacovleff kept a log of the journey, etching his experiences and impressions in a diary and later painting over them to create one of the most fascinating ethnographic collection based on the lives of people living in the remotest of Central Asian Regions.
William Sloane arrived in America as an emigrant from a Scottish town famous for weaving carpets and rugs. In 1843, William Sloane along with his younger brother John W. Sloane went on to form a company called W.& J. Sloane, importing rugs and carpets into America and changing the way the rich and famous decorated their homes in that country.
In 1876 at Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, William Sloane noticed that the most popular attractions was the Oriental rugs. He bought the entire collection for a millions dollars and then displayed them at his New York store where it is said they sold ‘like lollipop’. The average price was $10,000 with one Persian masterpiece even selling for $75,000. This was the first time in America that a retail house was selling Oriental Rugs. Looking at this success, soon others jumped into the market but Sloane was still at the top of the game.
In 1882, to maintain his lead, Sloane’s got in touch with a rug manufacturer in Amritsar offering to buy their entire output. The deal was done and Sloane’s was the become only American retail store with its own Oriental rug manufacturer.
The manufacturer was Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s Great-grandfather was a Kashmiri migrant shawl weaver, who probably arrived in Punjab at a time when Shawls were in much demand in Europe. But that business died with the end of Franco-Prussian war. Now, the American’s it seemed had arrived just in time. Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company had left the shawl business and moved to carpets in around 1880. While weaving was done in Amritsar, they got material from Kashmir where they maintained another workshop.
It was a mutually beneficial agreement for both the parties. Sloane’s could now give their designs and requirements for rugs tailored for American taste and yet retain Oriental touch as was manufactured in India.
But this design and requirement transferring was easier said than done. The method employed was ingenious but laborious. A design once approved was traced on a huge sheet of graph paper, each square representing a knot in wool. The minute specifications and texture design were appended to the sheet and sent off to Amritsar. In Amritsar, the master weaver, the only one who could read the instructions duly translated in Urdu and intone them to the other workers. It was a painful process, considering that an average rug was 12 x 15 foot and had 3,500,000 hand tied knots, a process that took three to four years.
This business partnership lasted right until 1948. Then India became Independent, Pakistan arrived and like many other threads, this thread too got severed. Violence engulfed the areas around the newly created borders. Shaikh Gulam Hussun found himself in middle of it all.
On April 8, 1947, Shaikh cabled Sloane’s:
“Thank god we and Swadeshi (a subsidiary wool spinning plant) escaped damage. If no further trouble hope dispatching from Amritsar fifty per cent more yardage than last year.”
The people caught in conflict were yet to grasp the scope of this violence. They were yet to understand how deep the cuts are going to be and how long will the bleeding go on.
Violence soon caught up with Shaikh’s optimism.
In October Shaikh reported pillaging of Amritsar, the burning and looting of his home and factory. The machinery that survived was requisitioned by the East Punjab Government.
Then in 1948, India and Pakistan had their first war over Kashmir. Shaikh’s luck was finally out, but still he clung to a hope.
“Owning to various difficulties,” wrote Shaikh with amazing stolidity in January, 1948, “we do not think we will be able to resume out business as quickly as anticipated for now we are cut off from Kashmere. The rumour was that our factory has been confiscated over there.”
That was the end of the story for Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Sloane, on the other hand now started sourcing their material directly from Kashmir.
In ‘The story of Sloane’s’ published by W.& J. Sloane Firm in 1950, we read:
“Thus was this friendly personal and commercial tie finally broken. Some day, it is hoped, Shaikh may re-establish his enterprises in Amritsar; but this is doubtful as all the Mohammedans, who were the weavers, have fled. the remaining Hindus do not weave. Sloane’s is now receiving its hand-woven rugs from Syrinagar, in Kashmere.”
Young hands at Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s factory, Amritsar. 1915.
Photograph: ‘The Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces, the Punabb, Kashmir, Sind, Rajputana and Central India: Their History, People, Commerce and Natural Resources’ (1920) by Somerset Playne
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The first meeting of Kashmiri language and English language happened through a translation of Bible, in Bengal. In 1821, missionary William Carey of Serampore, who spent a most of his life producing translations of Bible into various Indian languages, brought out the Kashmeere Holy Bible. Carey is known to have used native experts for most of his translations, but the names of his Kashmiri helpers isn’t known. What is known is that the script used for this book was Sharda.
A snippet of Kashmiri Bible in Sharda Script
[An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures, Volume 2.
By Thomas Hartwell Horn. 1836]
Update [Transcription of the lines by Mrinal Kaul: “yima lookh anigati andar bihith a’yes timav…………dochas (?) hiy kaayaayi andar behan vaalyen emad sapa (?).“
Which I believe would probably mean Matthew 4:16: The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.]
Kashmiri was a new language for English people. Mistakes were bound to happen. And the genuineness of the translation was yet to be tested. A mistake had in fact been made. They were soon to realize that perhaps Sharda was the wrong script for reaching out to Kashmiri people.
An entry dated July 2nd, 1938, in journals of Rev.John Newton of Lodiana (Foreign Missionary Chronicle, 1838), we find following curious entry:
“Two parties of Kashmrii brahmans who live in Amritsar, (120 miles from Lodiana) came this morning for books. I was gratified to find they were able to read and understand Dr. Carey’s Kashmiri Testament. Ever since we came to Lodiana, we have been looking for some one who could read this work, and give us some opinion of its merits; but such a one has not hitherto been found. The fact seems to be that four sixth of the Kashmiris , or more are Mohammedans; these are accustomed to no written character but the Persian or Arabic. Those who have adhered to the ancient faith of the nation, retain likewise the old written character, which is based on the Sanscrit. There are very few of them in Lodiana, and comparatively few, I suppose at any place. Since they are so small fraction of the nation, the Kashmiri Testament can be used by a much smaller number of people, than if it had been come out in a Persian dress. The merits of the translation I could not learn from the men who were here this morning, though for the most part they made out the true meaning of what they read.”
Kashmiri language was to befuddle the missionaries for quite sometime. The confusion it caused can be gauged from the fact that a grammar for Panjabi published around the time was confused by most for a Kashmiri grammar. They obviously needed vocabularies, glossaries and dictionaries of authentic Kashmiri.
Strangely enough, the first of these grammars and vocabularies were brought out not using the help of Kashmiri living in Kashmir, but the immigrant Kashmiris of Punjab.
*The first grammar and vocabulary was brought out by Mr. M.P. Edgeworth of the Bengal Civil Service, and it was based on the dialect of shawl-weavers of Ludhiana, through the assistance of one Meer Saf-u-deen, ‘a respectable Syud of that place’. The second help for understanding Kashmiri language was just a grammar by one Major R.Leech, C.B.. This one too was brought out with the help of Kashmiri weavers of Ludhiana.
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* Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1867).
Vocabularies, Glossaries and Dictionaries of Kashmiri Language
[Also to his credit goes: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration, &c …. (in the CashmÃrà language). Published by the Punjab Christian Knowledge Society. First edition. Amritsar; Printed at the Safir-i-Hind Press, . . . 1884.]
Kashmiri Persian Dictionary (Sonti Pandit, 1893)
Kashmiri-Sanskrit Dictionary by Ishwara Kaula. Incomplete.
A Dictionary of Kashmiri Language (1916-1932, 4 parts) by G.A. Grierson based on material by Ishwara Kaul. [Online Word Search Engine, Part 1]
At the beginning of 20th century, it seems, there were so many Kashmiris living in Punjab that if a random photographer went out to shoot a random Punjabi woman there was a good chance he would come back with a random shot of Kashmiri woman.
The following postcard dated 1907 (Bombay) and captioned ‘A model of Panjab Beauty’ is probably the strangest curio in my collection.
Krishna Boya Greb, Kashmiri Minstrel, 1911 (seems to be holding a ‘dutar’)
Although the singing traditions of Kashmir are usually associated with Kashmiri Muslims but around hundred years ago, a visitor to Kashmir could run into a thriving community of Pandit singers too.
Yet, the only documented record of them comes from a few pages in a work titled ‘Thirty Songs from the Panjab and Kashmir’ (1913) by Ratan Devi and Ananda Coomaraswamy.
In 1911, while collecting Kashmiri songs in valley, they found that:
“Kashmiri Pandits are rarely musicians: those who are, claim to sing in many rags and talk boastfully of Kashmir as the original source of the music of Hindustan reckoning Kashmir another country, and not a part of India.
We heard three Pandit singers of some reputation, all old men. As accompaniment to the voice they use a small and rather toneless sitar. One also played on a zither (independently, not as an accompaniment), striking the many strings (tuned with much difficulty), with small wooden hammers held in both hands, making a sweet tinkling music. We were told that this Pandit was accustomed to sing to sick people, and even effect cures, but to our thinking, he sang no better than the others, that is, not very well. The so-called various rags sung by the Pandits are all very much alike, and musically distinctly uninteresting. The only song which seemed to us all worth recording was the following “Invocation to Ganesh” sung by Krishna Boya Greb, Pandit, son of Vasu Dev Boya Greb, to a sitar accompaniment. This very slow, rather hymn-like tune, if imagined to be sung in a rather nasal and drawling voice, will give a good idea of the general type of Pandit songs, expect as regards the words, which are exceptional. The curious actable staccato does not appear in any other Kashmiri song here recorded.
Invocation to Ganesh
Tsara tsar chhuk parmisharo
Rachhtam pananen padan tal
Gaza-mokha balaptsandra lambo-dara
Venayeko boyinai jai
Hara-mokha darshun dittam ishara
Rachhtam pananen padan tal
Translation [one Pandit Samsara Chand helped with the text, but the translation are all mostly flawed]:
Thou art all that moves or moves not, Supreme Lord!
The sole of Thy foot be my shelter!
Gaja-mukha, Bala-chandra, Lambo-dara,
Vinayaka, I cry Thee ‘Victory’!
In all wise show me They face, O Lord!
The sole of Thy foot be my shelter!
Some other Pandit songs:
Love Song
As nai visiye myon hiu kas go
yas gau masvale gonde hawao
Zune dabi bhitui dari chhas thas gom
Zonamzi osh ma angan tsav
yar ne deshan volingi tsas gom
yas gau masvale gonde hawao
Do not mock, my friend (f.); had it befallen another like me,
That fair flower had been a plume in the wind!
As I sat on the moonlit balcony, he came to the door;
I learnt that my lover had come to my courtyard,
If I meet not my darling (m.) I shall suffer heart-pangs
That fair flower had been a plume in the wind!
[There are a bunch of other songs given in the book by the only one I could easily recognise was the ‘Spring Song’ for its refrain Yid aye…(Eid has come)]
Yid ay bag fel yosman
Karayo kosmanan krav
Yid ay bag fel yosman
Nirit goham vanan
Yut kya tse chhuyo chavo
Trovit tsulhama mosman
karyo kosmanan krav
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And yes, Pandits still lay claim on giving India Natya Shastra, or at least giving the most authoritative commentary on it through Abhinavagupta.
It is widely believed that the first person to bring works of Kashmiri poet Mahmud Gami (1750-1855) to western world was Karl Frederick Burkhard when in 1895 he partially published Gami’s retelling of ‘Yusuf Zulekhah’ in a German magazine.
Last night, I came across something that proves that Mahmud Gami’s words may have actually reached west a couple of decades earlier due to incidental travel journaling by a British painter, who also happens to be a blood relative of Virginia Woolf.
In 1877, after sketching the royalty of the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, while on his way back, at Thanna Mandi, a place near Rajouri, in the afternoon of 13th June, V. C. Prinsep (1838-1904) met a traveling Kashmiri bard, a singing fakir, who regaled him with Kashmiri songs for hours while they walked. Preinsep made some notes, and later got two of the songs translated.
In his book ‘Imperial India; an artist’s journals’ (1879), Preinsep writes:
He was a filthy object, the dirtiest of the dirty; but he had the soul of a poet, and as he played his poor four-stringed instrument, he threw his head on one side, and bent over his guitar, much as first-rate performers do at home. He was grateful too, for when I left at 5 a.m., I found him waiting, and he played to me along a couple of miles of road, with his dirty legs keeping time to the twang of his music, and his nose well in the air ; neither would he leave until I gave hookham or permission.
My good friend Major Henderson [C.S.I., who was political officer in Kashmir, and an excellent linguist.] has sent me translations of two of this poet’s songs. One appears to be well known as the love-song of Mohammed Gami, a Kashmir poet.
“Like a flower-bearing plant I have become withered,
Even I, for thy love, O Bee ;
I will wail like the nightingale,
‘Where shall I seek thee, O Lily ? ‘
Deal gently with me, come to my feast ;
I will encircle thee with my arms, O Bee !
What said I to thee that vexed thy heart with me ?
By God, I adjure thee, tell me what is in thy heart.
O dear friend, where didst thou flee from me ?
Forsaking me, Sundar, O Bee ! “
I should like to have imported my poet as he appeared to me in his rags and filth ; yet is his love-song much like such as are sung in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. The second song is another love-song, and the name of the poet is not known.
“Go, O bosom friend, bring me my lover, gently, gently.
In anger he left me, sore and vexed : what offence could I have caused him?
What is to me adornment of the person, antimony for the eyes, or any other
embellishment ?
For wealth and pearls what care I ? or the bells attached to my skirt ?
O friend, sit with me in the shade of a wide-spreading chenar !
Let not the calumny of an enemy affect thee. I am helpless.
For my beauteous and graceful lover a divan and couch I will prepare.
If he is not pleased with me, for whom shall I prepare them ?
See what happened to Shuk Sanaa for the sake of the Hindoo maiden !
He wore the sacred thread, he cherished swine with his own hands ! ”
As is turns out, the second song is from work called ‘Shekh Sana’, a version of which among others was put to Kashmiri verses by Mahmud Gami.
Photograph of the Meruvardhanaswami temple at Pandrethan near Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, taken in 1868 by John Burke. Pandrethan, now mostly in ruins, is one of Kashmir’s historic capitals, said by Kalhana in his poetical account of Kashmiri history called Rajatarangini to have been founded by king Pravarsena in the 6th century AD. Its name thus derives from Puranadishthana or ‘old town’. The small stone Shiva temple in the picture dates from the mid-10th century, reputedly erected by a minister named Meru. It was set in a spring-fed tank and its plinth is now submerged. This general view of the temple is reproduced in Henry Hardy Cole’s Archaeological Survey of India report, ‘Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir,’ (1869), in which he wrote, ‘The small village of Pandrethan is situated on the Jhelum, about a mile and a half to the south-east of Srinagar…The Temple is close to the village, and stands in the centre of a tank of water…At the time of my visit, the water was about two feet over the floor of the Temple, and I had to obtain a small boat to enable me and my surveyors to take measurements. The stone ceiling is elaborately carved in bas-relief figures, and it is one of the most perfect pieces of ancient carving that exists in Kashmir…The pyramidal roof is divided into two portions by an ornamental band. The corner pilasters are surmounted by carved capitals, and the pediments of the porches appear to have terminated with a melon-shaped ornament. The ceiling is formed of nine blocks of stone; four resting over the angles of the cornice, reduce the opening to a square, and an upper course of four stones still further reduces the opening, which is covered by a single block decorated with a large lotus.’
The above image and description is easily available at British Library. What I am actually sharing is something inside the temple. The design that could be seen on the ceiling.
The design on the ceiling was first copied by Alexander Cunningham in around 1848 after a tip-off by Lord John Elphinstone. When Cunningham visited the temple, there was evidence that one time the ornamentation, the designs and the figures of the temple must have been profusely plastered over to cover its naked idol beauty.
Inside, he found figures on the walls plastered as also the ornamentation on ceiling. He gives it as the reason why George Trebeck didn’t notice any figures or any designs on the ceiling when he became the first European to enter the temple in around 1822.
Alexander Cunningham had the plaster removed and the figures on the ceiling appeared.
Cunningham’s copy of the design Essay on the Avian Order of Architecture by Alexander Cunningham Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal (1848)
“The ceiling is formed of nine blocks, four of which rest over the angles of the cornice, and reduce the opening to a square, which is just one half of the size of the other. The same process is again repeated with an upper course of four stones, by which the opening is still further narrowed to a square of 4 feet ; and lastly, this opening is covered by a single stone decorated with a large expanded lotus, surrounded by a beaded circle. The smaller angles are occupied by naked human figures, something similar to those of the Payach ceiling, but without wings. These figures besides have only one leg and one arm outstretched, which affords more variety than the other treatment at Payach. Each of the larger angles is filled with two figures holding out a garland, which falls in a graceful loop between them. The whole rests upon a cornice supported by brackets, which were so much decayed that I found it impossible to trace their decorations or even their exact shape. The spaces between the brackets were also much injured ; but they appeared to have been filled with some kind of ornamental drapery hanging in curved folds.”
The winged figures noticed by him on the ceiling of Payach:
A much more detailed (lesser know) copy of Pandrethan ceiling prepared by one R.T. Burney was presented by W.G. Cowie in his 1865 paper ‘Notes on some of the Temples of Kashmir, especially those not described by General A. Cunninghan’ (Journal of The Asiatiic Society of Bengal Volume 35, Part 1. 1866)
W.G. Cowie states: “General Cunningham’s drawing of the ceiling of the temple is not quite complete. From the accompanying very accurate sketch made by Mr. R. T. Burney of the Civil Service, (Plate XVIII.), it will be seen that the angles of the square in which the beaded circle is, are occupied by naked human figures, as well as the angles of the other squares. These innermost figures have both arms outstretched, like those at Payach seeming to hold up the circle. They have drapery about their shoulders, resembling light scarfs. The brackets supporting the cornice were once ornamented, and show marks of great violence having been used to destroy the carving. Each appears to have represented a human head ; for on several of them there still remains on both sides what looks like plaited hair. The pediment pilasters project 5 inches beyond those supporting the trefoiled arches. The corner pilasters of the building are 1 foot 10 1/2 inches thick. I found what I took for mortar in all parts of the building.
