Tag: books

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Entering Srinagar, 1935

“We had, as usual, only the very vaguest idea of what Srinagar was going to be like. We knew that it was often referred to, in the tourist world, as ‘the Venice of the East’, and we knew the name of the principal hotel. ‘Very decent sort of place,’ everyone had said; ‘they’ll make you comfortable there.’ We imagined a small dining-room where half a dozen officers on leave propped Punch against the cruet.
Presently we struck the main road, metalled and straight. Notices in English flicked past in the headlights. ‘Srinagar’ said the driver, waving his hand towards the suddenly constellated darkness ahead of us; and soon we honked into crowded streets. ‘Escape Me Never’ said a hoarding, speaking aptly enough for civilization; the names of Bergner and of Beery figured largely. Srinagar was much bigger than we had imagined it.
So was the hotel. Its imposing portals loomed up and abashed us. Painfully conscious of uncouthness, of dusty clothes and blackened faces, we entered almost surreptitiously; and saw at once that we had chosen a bad moment to do so. People were gathering in the lounge for dinner. Alas for out vision of the little dining-room. the Punches propped informally! Everyone was in evening dress. Anglo-India, starched and glossy, stared at us with horror and disgust. A stage clergyman with an Oxford voice started as though he had seen the devil. A hush, through which on all sides could be heard the fell epithet ‘jungly,’ descended on the assembled guests. We were back in Civilization.”

~ News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir (1936) by Peter Fleming. For those who don’t know Peter Fleming was the younger brother of famous Ian Fleming of James Bond fame.

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Pages and a translation from Persianised Kashmiri Ramayan, 1940s

Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares some pages from a rare Kashmiri Ramayan in his possession written with Persian influence (author unknown, publisher, Ali Mohamad Tajir Kutab, Habbakadal). He writes:


The Chapter deals with meeting of Ramchanderji and Lakshmanji with Hanuman and Sugrev and death of Vali and coronation of Sugrev at the hands of Ramchandar Ji. Here are some verses of the chapter in Roman Kashmiri with English translation.

Karet gai Chak daman khak bar sar

With torn aprons and dust covered heads

Vuchik koh’s akis peth ases wandar

They saw wandars sitting on a mountain

Temov yeli vuch tuluk ye nala fariad

After seeing they started discussing

Dopuk yem deov cha kina adam zad

Are they some demons or human beings ?

Kamanah hiath nakhas peth hait che laran?

They are rushing with bows on their shoulders

Yemen khah rowmut yem kiah che tsadaan?

What have they lost and what are they searching

Yemen khah rowmut yem kiah che tsadaan?

What have they lost and what are they searching

Che Sahaib Zada jora lokh masoom

They are two well bread youths in distress

Ba Chus zanan che yem baran bala vir

I know they are very valiant brave hearts

Zaminas seeth suvan Akash as tir

They can stich the earth with sky by an arrow,

Zaminas seeth suvan Akash as tir

They can stich the earth with sky by an arrow,

Even bronth yus dushman tas che galan

Any enemy coming in their way gets destroyed

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Previously:

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Harihar Kalyan – Shiv Lagun by Krishna Razdan,1938

Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares these pages from ‘Harihar Kalyan – Shiv Lagun’ by Krishna Razdan (c 1850-1925, village Vanpoh) published in 1995 Bikarmi (1938). At the end I am adding the interesting entry for this book given in Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature (1988).

Title cover of the book 
Ganesh Leela ‘Omkara roop chuk Sarva’
Shiv Leela‘Sat Chat annanda amrit chavtum’
Krishan Leela
‘Patmeeshwar Purno ‘
Vishnu Leela
‘Madha Kant marvaney  Vesh Darvaney’
Ashta Dasbazi Devi leela‘Sumran Chaney sari Paaph hari Hari Parbatch Hari Yay’

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Harihar Kalyan (Kashmiri) (grace of Shiva) is the only collection of the poems of the prominent Bhakti poet of Kashmir Krishna Razdan in Persio-Arabic script. The book was published posthumously in 1930. Since then it has been published several times. Its last edition appeared in 1955 from Srinagar. All the earlier editions were published from the same place.
The publication is in fact an abridged edition of Shiva parinayah an anthology of poems of Krishna Razdan, published by the Royal Asiatic Society of bengal in six volumes from 1914 to 1924 with Sanskrit Chaya by Mukundram Shastri. The book appeared in the life-time of the poet under the editorship of George Abraham Grierson in Devanagri script. [available here]Harihar kalyan is the main title of the book and its subtitle is Shiva lagun (The wedding of shiva) as there are several sweet songs pertaining to the marriage of Shiva with Parvati inculded in the book. Both the titles appear on the front page of the book in bold letters. This excellent book is prized by all those who have some taste for good and genuine poetry that is why this book can be seen almost in every Hindu household. But the genuine and creative poetry of Razdan has attracted the attention of the learned and cultured Muslims also. A keen observer will not fail to see the copies of Harihar kalyan in sophisticated Muslim households. Though this book is small in size and volume as compared to Shiva parinayah, the fame of Razdan as a poet of repute rests on this book alone.. Shiv patinayah is no doubt comprehensive, well arranged and neatly printed verse anthology of Krishna Razdan but it is till now known only to a few researchers and readers of Kashmiri because it is not available in the market and its Devanagri script has not been popular enough so far. The book contains some of the most popular compositions of the poet, which form an invaluable part of our verse literature. The compoosition inculded in Harihar kalyan are generally termed as ‘lila’ (the play or the sport). In fact all the religious songs in Kashmiri have been classed or termed as lila literature, but speaking in the language of literature, ‘lila’ in itself is not separate form of poetry. 

~ entry for the book in Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature (1988).

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“In spite of being a philosophical and religious poet,” says [ Abdul Ahad ] Azad, “he never chose esoteric themes and notions, but made his language of the earth, earthy. His bhajans and leelas could naturally not be in the highly Persianized Kashmiri.”

~ entry for the poet in A History of Kashmiri Literature by Trilokinath Raina.

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Gyan Prakash, Kashmiri Leelas, 1949

Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares some more from his treasures. These are pages from a collection of Kashmiri Leelas published under the title  ‘Gyan Prakash’. This was the third edition of the book published in 2006 Bikarmi (1949).

Title Cover

First Leela

A Hindi Leela

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The Kashmiri Ramayana, 1930



hechith buzith wuchith lagun pazaya on
phalis chuy hyol helis chuy sampanan gon


panun dam chuy ganimath boz yih rtch kath
chuh bruthyum broth rozan chuy patyum path



 “During my stay in Kashmir in the year 1893 I often heard of the existence of a Ramayana in the Kashmirir language, but failed to obtain a copy of it. I ascertained, however, that the name of the author, Divakara Prakasa Bhatta, was well known, and that there was a tradition that he was alive during the eight years of the reign of the Hindu king, Sukhajivana Simha, who, according to Hariscandra’s Kashmira Kusuma, came to the throne in 1786, and he lived in the Gojawar (Skt. Gulikavatika) Quarter of the City of Srinagar. So far as I could make out, in 1893 the poem could be found only in fragments, no entire copy of the epic being then known to exist. I accordingly employed Pandit (afterwards Mahamahopadhyaya) Mukunda Rama Sastru, who was assisting me in the preparation  of my Kashmiri Dictionary, to endeavor to collect the fragments and from them to piece together as complete a copy of the whole as was possible. He was fortunate enough to procure several long sections and from them the text of the poem as given in the following pages has been compiled. This is the text to which references are made in the Kashmiri Dictionary, and it is offered merely as a valuable specimen of the language, and in no way as a critical edition.”

Here is: ‘The Kashmiri Ramayana: Comprising the Sriramavataracarita and the Lavakusayuddhacarita of Divakara Prakasa Bhatta’ compiled by George Abraham Grierson in 1930.

I came across it at Digital Library of India and converted it to pdf format for easy reading. Here is the download link.

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Sketches from Kashmiri Ramayan in Persian Script, 1940s, with some notes on the Kashmiri version of the epic . From when I had only heard about this book.

My Nani’s song that led me to look for the Kashmiri Ramayanas. Sadly, the lines she sings do not appear in this book. But at least I now know where those lines probably fit in the epic.

Last year I heard my nani sing following lines to herself.

Khir Khand Khyen’chi ae’sis pr’ye
kan-mool khey’th wo’yn kad’ya su dyeh

ga’yom hay’e Ram dand’ak wan
s’yeeth Seeta ti by’e Lakhman

ga’yom hay’e Ram dand’ak wan
ky’end ma’sy’nas tha’ye kho’ran

ga’yom hay’e Ram dand’ak wan

pyeth’kaayan osus na waar
burzakaayan wo’yn an’ya su baar

A transliteration of the lines:

He used to have Candy and Kheer
Now he lives on wild roots and vegetables

My Ram has gone to live in Dandaka Forest
Along with him have gone Sita and Lakshman

My Ram has gone to live in Dandaka Forest
Will not thorns bruise his soft feet
My Ram has gone to live in Dandaka Forest

Even silken robes weren’t soft enough for his skin
Now, will he roam around wearing Birch barks?

…

In this book similar lines occur in the section on Ram’s departure to forest and the subsequent laments by his near and dear ones. In book we have line:

wolukh tani burza trowikh tasa-makhamal
pakan gay trenaway az-rah-i-jangal

Interestingly, above are drawing on Persian (makhamal: velvet, rah-i-jangal: forest-way) while in my Nani’s version similar thought is conveyed using words pyeth’kaayan: Silken.

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I see Kashmir ! I see Kashmir !

A CERTAIN frog, after several ineffectual attempts, managed to climb to the top of a clod of earthclose to the puddle in which he was spawned. “Ah !’, cried he, casting one eye at some cattle which were grazing near, “what a grand sight have I ! I see Kashmir ! I see Kashmir !”

Punjabi story ‘The Frog and Kashmir’. I came across this ‘other folk-tale’ in ‘The Adventures of the Panjáb hero Rájá Rasálu, and other folk-tales of the Panjáb’ (1884) by Charles Swynnerton. [Book link]. The really interesting part of the book tells us stories of King Rasulu, ‘Muslim’ son of Raja Salban of Sialkot, claimed to be descendant of Raja Vikramaditya/Vikramajit (102 BCE to 15 CE), the legendary king of Ujjain. Also, in one of the stories Rasalu matches wits with famous Raja Bhoj of Malwa.

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Raja Rasalu beats Raja Sirikap (‘The Beheader’) in a game of Chaupat (Pasa). The sketch was taken by Charles Swynnerton from a Punjabi storybook on Raja Rasulu published in Lahore.

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A longer version of ‘The Frog and Kashmir’ was  done by the famous writer from Punjab, Mulk Raj Anand in his More Indian fairy tales (1961).

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Folk tales from Kashmir by S.L. Sadhu,1962

Almost seventy five years after Rev. John Hinton Knowles came out with his famous collection of Kashmiri folk tales, in 1962, S.L. Sadhu, came out with a new collection of Kashmiri folktales that had some old popular stories, like ‘Himal and Nagrai’, ‘Akanandun’, ‘Shabrang’ and ‘Musa – Kapas’ (interestingly, a cousin recently informed me that a version of this famous Kashmiri folktale was published in popular Indian Children’s magazine Target in 1980s with phrase ‘Musa – Kapas’ replaced with ‘Kong – Posh’) and then it had some new stories too. While Knowles told these stories like an Orientalist, with extensive notes and with an eye for origins of the tales, in a language that was at times too pedantic, S.L. Sadhu seems to have written the same stories with a sense of enjoy, a joy that might have been felt while hearing these stories in person, on cold dark night, curled up in bed, holding on to a Kangri, doing Shalfa with family. The Kashmiri in these stories does not come across as a specimen compiled by an Orientalist for study. Kashmiri in these stories comes across more strongly. And the language is what would now qualify for ‘Indian English’ with its seemingly strange use of phrases (the kind that makes western readers throw fits).

The book is also interesting as it also ties to add some new folktales to the Kashmiri literary space. Thus we have a story like ‘The Hydra-Headed’: they say a mysterious monstrous creature now infests waters of Jhelum, it is devouring unsuspecting people, waters are dangerous. The story is about the way news used to float around Srinagar. We are offered various sound-bites from the city-folks about this monster.
As we near these sounds, a picture of Kashmri society – imagined, dreamed -around 1960s and not from early 1900 when this news about a ‘man-eating crocodile’ was in fact doing the rounds of the city, an incident recorded by Tyndale Biscoe and a imaginary beast slayed by ‘Biscoe Boys’ by swimming en-mass in the river. S.L. Sadhu, a former student of C.M.S. Biscoe School, was probably paying tribute to his school in that tale.

Reading S.L. Sadhu’s collection along with the book from Knowles actually broadens the space of Folk tales in Kashmir. Sadhu wrote these stories with young readers in mind. The book embellished with some wonderful sketches by Mohan Ji Raina.

It is a shame that while the book by Knowles is still in print and easily available both offline and online, S.L. Sadhu’s book is not so easy to find.

I came across the book recently at Digital Library of India and converted it to pdf format for easy reading.

 

[Download Here]
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17 tomatoes : tales from Kashmir by Jaspreet Singh

17 tomatoes : tales from Kashmir by Jaspreet Singh
First published 2004. 
Publisher : IndiaInk (2006)
Rs. 225

It is one of those book in which something really strange happens exactly on page 30. In this one, an ageing Sardarji who is about to Umpire an India-Pakistan cricket match in Srinagar gets kidnapped by a bunch of veiled Kashmiri women who want him make India win so that a vengeful Army does not destroy their homes in case India loses. The episode ends with Sardarji getting fatally hit by a ball to his head and the match ending in an nail-biting towards an Indian win, a win decided by the dying man trying to save his recently one eared daughter. This is just one of the many strange tales told in this book about two Sikh boys growing up in an Army camp.

The stories draw on the time tested formula of telling ‘growing-up’ stories and ‘Kashmir’. So we have spin-offs on events that really happened, in this case Kargil war, The Cricket match, the ‘milk-guzzling-Ganesh’, (and I suspect Top Gun?) things like that. For Kashmir, we have silent un-speaking Kashmiris and we have Kashmiris who have strange view of the world, which include its poets. There was a time when no book on Kashmir could be published without a line or two from Thomas Moore. It seems that literary space have now been accorded to our very own Agha Shahid Ali. So we have a tale about a captured Pakistani ISI Intelligence officer and an Indian Intelligence officer, his interrogator,  both lovers of  Shahid. And in between the author pays tribute to master story-tellers. Author does a little number on Manto – in one of the stories, in a obvious allusion to a Manto story, we have a bewda Major named Manto who is haunted by thoughts of his run-away wife.  Then there are tales that are inspired by Rushdie’s work – there are passages that offer what seems to be magic realism, or it’s just that the realities offered here are just oddly unrecognizable as they unfold in Kashmir that is almost unrecognizable (even the geography of it) in these tales. (What would one call a pregnant woman who develops a fetish for jumping down from hill tops. A parachute aunty). Oddly enough when the action shifts to Indian plane, even though the oddness continues, the canvas on which they unfold become recognizable with all their madness and violence.

Strange set of stories, almost like ‘The Wonder Years’ meets ‘The Twilight Zone’ meets Kashmir meets India. Nah…I exaggerate. Just another book on Kashmir. But this one about two Sikh boys growing up in an Army camp. And yet a happy read because the writer has deliberately kept things simple. The real problem is that as not all these tales were written originally to be part of a single tale, reading them together is a bit confusing, if for no other reason, just the timeline of the stories.

P.S. I like the fact that in one of the stories that old villain of Kashmiri women, Victor Jacquemont is made butt of a joke. How did he get away with saying something like this, ‘In Kashmir, my friend, I find it difficult to disrobe and make love until I have satisfactorily explained to my beloved Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.’ But to be fair, in this particular case Jacquemont was making a fool of himself by talking about a French actress named Mademoiselle Schiasetti.

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Purchase link:

Buy 17 Tomatoes Tales From Kashmir from Flipkart.com

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Archaeological Remains In Kashmir by Pandit Anand Koul, 1935

Part 1 of this old book lists the various ancient Hindu shrine spots of Kashmir along with their contentious history (most of these places are already forgotten and so, not so contentious anymore).

Part 2 lists all the Gardens of Kashmir, not just the bog famous ones but almost all the gardens ever built in Kashmir during Mughal time). Anand Koul argues that C.M. Villiers Stuart’s ‘Gardens of the Great Mughals’ (1913) ( posted earlier here for easy reading) had only scratched the surface and that the history of these gardens had a deeper link with the locals and were not just a result of Mughal passion of Gardens. I believe these two works, one by Anand Koul and the other by C.M. Villiers Stuart, together cover all that you ever wanted to know about history of Kashmiri Gardens.

[Download and Google Doc link for sharing: HERE]
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Came across the book at Digital Library of India. It was available in a difficult to browse and read format, needed all kind of plug-ins and what not, so I converted the book to pdf format and uploaded it here for easy consumption. Happy reading!

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