in bits and pieces
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| Palladium. October 1947. |
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| Remains of Palladium Cinema Hall, Lal Chowk, Srinagar. June, 2008. Burnt down in 1992. |
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| Something like idea of Home. Jammu. July. 2013. |
“One hot summer day when I was six years old, my mother opened the refrigerator, and pointed to the ice compartment and below it to the pears and the plums. She exclaimed:”This is Kashmir!” In our home at Jaipur, the capital city of the arid state of Rajasthan, every scorching summer our thoughts, like those of innumerable indians, would turn to the cool heights of the Himalayas. From antiquity to the age of the computers, countless Indians have been beguiled by Kashmir, a land of learning as well as of lakes and lofty mountains.”
~ Raghubir Singh’s opening lines from introduction to his beautiful photo-book ‘Kashmir: Garden of the Himalayas’ (1983).
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| ‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ by Thomas Daniell (1800) |
“One can only wonder at the fortitude of the early travellers men such as Huien Tsang, or the painters Thomas and William Daniel. Their determination must have been supreme in order to press them ever forward and eventually reach the Vale, settled as it is high among seemingly impenetrable mountains at the end of a route that was, and still is, full of hazards.”
~ Visiting Kashmir by Allan Stacey (1988).
All that is fine but…
Sometimes a familiar image and a familiar name can cause all find of confusion. A lot of people consider Thomas and William Daniel to be among the first Europeans to reach and paint Kashmir. Painting titled ‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ by Thomas Daniell only confirms it. There are a bunch of books that claim this. All this because the place they visited is Srinagar. But the fact remains, the two never visited Kashmir. Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and his nephew William Daniell (1769-1837) were in India during 1785 and 1794. In 1789 they visited of the city of Srinagar on the banks Alaknanda river in Garwhal which is named so because . That’s were ‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ comes from.
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Now, coming back to ‘Srinagar’ or rather the two ‘Srinagars’, and continuing with the word games and antonymic folklores… it is believed that the town of Garwhal gets its name after the goddess of Fortune, Sri or Laxmin. Some say the same of the city of Srinagar in Garwhal gets its name from ‘Sri Yantra’, a giant rock which could kill you if you even looked at it. The rock had origins in a tale in which a Goddess kills a demon named Kalasura thanks to the device/rock . The local storytellers say that this rock was turned upside down by Adi Shankaracharya, in the 8th century AD and chucked into Alaknanda. He thus put an end to all the tantric exercises associated with the rock and laid down the plan for the city of Srinagar. Interestingly, there are places in Garwhal were Sri Yantra is worshipped. One of the belief associated with Sri Yantra in Garwhal is that installing a roof over Sri Yantra would bring disaster. [This last bit from ‘Marriage And Customs Of Tribes Of India’ by J. P. Singh Rana (1998)]
The Srinagar in Kashmir still has the Sri Yantra rock at Hari Parbat. The origin of the rock/hill in local folklore has killing of a demon named Jalobhava by a Goddess using a rock, hence laying the foundation of Srinagar. The temple that was reclaimed in Srinagar by Adi Shankaracharya is across this Hill and on top of another Hill that is now renamed after Shankaracharya. The Sri Yantra is roofed at Hari Parbat. Done only in recent times. The only person to protest construction around the rock was an artist named G.R. Santosh.
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Mr. Vigne is responsible for the strange derivation of the name of the Kasmir capital, Srinagar (Srinagara, or as he spells it, ‘Siri-nagur,’ from ” Surya Nagur, the city of the sun” (p. ii. 137). Judging from the persistence with which the error has been copied by a succession of modern writers on Kasmir, this etymology bids fair to establish itself as a piece of orthodox creed with European visitors to the Valley.
~ Ancient Geography Of Kashmir by M A Stein (1895).
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| ‘Journey’s End’, 1913 Abanindranath Tagore |
“Paradise is there where no harm is received, where no one has (any) concern with any other.”
~ Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah I, second son of Aurangazeb, in Lahore days before his death on dilemma of choosing Kangra or Kashmir for summer. He died in Lahore. Days before his death, he turned a bit insane. He almost entitled Lahore Dar-ul-Jihad. He asked Ali be declared chosen heir in daily khutba. People suspected he had turned Shia. There was political chaos. People said, ‘This cannot take effect in Hindustan; it is not Iran’. Two khatibs, reciters of new khutba were murdered. One in Gujarat. One in Kashmir. He threatened Mullas that he would make them eat in same platter as dogs. Mullas responded, ‘That matters not — for we feared that you would make us eat out of one platter with yourself.’ A commander revolted and threatened coup. Emperor had to eat his pride. They say he turned insane. He couldn’t sleep at night. The howling dogs wouldn’t let him sleep. It is said he had hundreds of dogs slayed. And then he died. Some say he died of apoplexy after a bout of cold, some say he was poisoned, some say he was stabbed by a General whom he caught in his harem…’They say that an inverted sore (dumbal-i-makush) formed on his stomach, and some have said other things which are not fit for me to repeat nor in accordance with his honour. God alone knows the truth!’
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* Based on ‘Later Mughals’ (1922) by William Irvine.
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Previously: Gardens, Paradise, Kashmir
It seems to have been a trend in Kashmir. Trilokinath Raina in his book “Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor” mentions that some songs of the poet were set to popular Hindi film songs of the time.
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Aside:
I waited a week for the book to arrive. All for a paper that I expected would throw up something interesting. But Koul Saheb’s paper turned out to be a bit disappointing. Much of what he writes her already was presented by him in his book on Kashmir Pandits. Besides reference to Kerala astrology in Kashmir and (in comments) Mankha’s work traveling to Kerala, there isn’t much. The story of white men on Malabar coast could well have been of Parsees or the Jews, but Koul Sabheb mentions in any case and tries to imagine them as Pandits. He seems to have been quite fascinated by the story, mentioning it in his Pandit book too. In an attempt to reach borders of Kerala, his only manages to reach Durbhanga (Bihar, where from returned the Kouls), Ellichpur (Maharashtra, where from returned the Dhars) and then Madras (where from came Ramanuja). It’s a sad attempt. I wish there was more.
Why more was I expecting? Consider this: there is Thiruv’anantha’puram in Kerala and there is Anantnag in Kashmir. Two cities dedicatedly named after a snake. King Solomon’s ships sailed to Kerala coast. Solomon’s throne is supposed to be in Kashmir. Ancient Jews lived in Kerala. And according to some at one time only Jews were allowed to enter Kashmir. (and not to forget, Kashmiri obsession with Jews. Interestingly, first person to broach up persecution of Jews in Germany during world war into a discussion about persecution of Pandits in medieval Kashmir was one Mr. GMD Sufi in his book Kashir (1948) while trying to form a defense for Sikandar Butshikan’s actions in response to popular discourse on the subject, an example of which would be writings by Anand Koul. Weird circular world, like a snake eating it’s own tail). Malayalam, the language that survives today was considerably shaped by westerners (particularly Rev.Benjamin Bailey and Hermann Gundert) who pulled it closer to Sanskrit (even at cost of other variants). The language is alive and kicking. In case of Kashmiri, which is much older than Malayalam, here is the difference, one time opium agent Grierson’s work still divides the people on origins of the language as it pulls it away from Sanskrit. The is no single definitive script. Result: My Christian friend from Kerala, who is great at using programming languages, uses Malayalam in regular life, can sing some Sanskrit prayers as they are quite popular in the land, know sHindi as it was part of school curriculum but is not so great with English. In my case, I am not so great at programming, can barely speak Kashmiri, definitely can’t read or write it in anything besides Roman script, don’t know Sanskrit, can’t truly appreciate Hindi and can just about manage English, using it as a tool to earn my bread and butter.
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“Barbara Mullen floating in the water in a cotton mousseline dress by Atrima in Dal Lake, Kashmir, India. Norman Parkinson, British Vogue, 1956.”
Image via: sighs and whispers
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The story goes that in 1957 in Kashmir, one Sultan Wangnoo, gave Norman Parkinson a traditional handmade embroidered Kashmiri wedding cap. Norman Parkinson got so superstitious about it that he took to wearing it all the time while shooting as he believed if he wasn’t wearing one the photographs wouldn’t come out at all.
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| Norman Parkinson at work in his Kashmiri Cap |
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| Images for this issue via: modern vintage clothing |
Said ‘L’ Humanite:
“A real discovey and revelation! ‘Pamposh’ is one of the most poetic works, completely impregnated with the most delicate sensitivity! The image are of rare beauty! This film reaches in its simplicity a rare nobility and grandeur…It is a typical national work, which is not only a picturesque evocation of manners and traditions which are not common to us of a distant and mysterious folk, but also prescribes us the human content of a rare healthiness, a rare grandeur and emotion…”
Pages from ‘The world of Ezra Mir’ (2005) by N. J. Kamath.
Not so uncanny that the film Indian film in color should have been shot in Kashmir. And the film’s Kashmir connection would be the music by Mohanlal Aima.
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| El chal de cachemira : juguete cómico en un acto (1852) [The cashmere shawl: comic sketch in one act (1852)] Alexandre Dumas (in French) adapted to Spanish by José Díaz Tezanos. |
Generally, number of times a woman is draped in a Kashmiri Shawl in a work of Dumas > number of times a woman is draped in Kashmiri Shawl in a work of Kashmiri writer.
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Painting: ‘Nightfall on Wular Lake’ by Col. H.H. Hart, R.E. From the book ‘Our summer in the vale of Kashmir’ (1915) by Frederick Ward Denys.
Quote: Silvia Baker, ‘Alone and Loitering: Pages from a Artist’s Travel Diary (1938-1944)’ . She was describing her visit to Wular Lake in around year 1944. [via: exiledstardust]
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