children's books Archives

May 4, 2014October 12, 2020

Legends of Kashmir (1982) by Edna Machanick

Edna Machanick lived in India from 1951 to 1955 and often spent months on houseboats of Kashmir. Here she collected these tales from Pandits and Muslims. Much later, she illustrated and published the stories as ‘Legends of Kashmir’.

The stories included in the book are:

The Birth of the Lakes of Kashmir (A pandit folklore about origin of Springs in Kashmir, this one is about a place called Khrew, which once had more than three hundred springs and now only about eight remain. Th story and the place…some time soon)

The Rajah and the Snake Princes, rather famous story of Ali Mardan Khan and his Chinese Snake wife, also given in the most authoritative work on the subject, ‘Folk-Tales of Kashmir’ by Rev. J. Hinton Knowles (1888)

Phutu, the Dwarf. (‘Foot Two’ of English), is rather funny tale of an unlikely hero.

Lelemal

The Farmer’s Wife and the Tiger

She who became the Sister of the Prince. An interesting tale in which an evil Afghan prince is reformed after he takes a Pandit woman as sister. The story gives the name of the evil Prince’s father, who is a thorough good fellow, as ‘Sultan Jannulabdin’. An obvious reference to Zain-ul-Abidin, the Budshah. However, in this story, it is the Prince who suffers from an ailment (a curse) and is cured by a Pandit woman whom he had earlier disrespected.

The King of the Crocodiles. About a girl who is almost force married to a Crocodile who doesn’t turn out to be a bad guy.

The Princess of the Green Chili. This one about a little Chili lady raised by a Jinn. A typical ‘put-to-sleep’ Kashmiri tale involving birds.

The illustration by Edna Machanick are truly imaginative and give the magical feel of the story and the place perfectly. The only other illustrated version of Kashmiri folktales is by ‘Kashmiri folk tales’ (1962) S. L. Sadhu in which local talent was utilised, but the illustration by Edna Machanick are more expansive and detailed.

It is amazing the places our tales have traveled. Tales we have forgotten. It is amazing the places I have to recollect them from. This beautiful book of Kashmiri folktales come all the way from South Africa. The name Edna Machanick is much respected there is even a scholarship awarded in her name to female undergrad students.

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October 19, 2013October 12, 2020

River boy of Kashmir, 1946

Some illustrations by Margaret Ayer for Jean Bothwell’s ‘River boy of Kashmir’ (1946)

It is interesting to note that a lot of the illustrations in such books were based on the imagery created by photographs of Kashmir that were reaching Kashmir.

The above illustration is based on a photograph by Randolph B. Holmes in around 1915

from Tyndale Biscoe’s book ‘Character Building in Kashmir’ (1920)

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Something aside: This is funny…it took me sometime to remember where I have seen that face…

Doug Wildey’s Hadji Singh of Calcutta from the cartoon series Jonny Quest

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October 19, 2013October 12, 2020

Search for a Magic Carpet in Kashmir, 1981

‘Search for a Magic Carpet in Kashmir’ (1981) by Frances Hawker and Bruce Campbell was probably the last of its kind – a children’s book meant to introduce young ones in west to the exotic east, to Kashmir, all using some beautiful images and a simple story.

This one is weaved around photographs of two little girls Shukila and Hanifa, and send them on a quest for a Magic carpet of their grandfather’s stories.

The camera follows them as they walk around the city asking everyone about it. So, along the way we get glimpses of the city. But, the magical flying carpet remains untraced, or so it seems till…

“Hanifa drifted into deep sleep. She felt herself floating upwards. Suddenly the mountains and lakes of Kashmir seemed far below her. Was this a dream, or had she really found the magic carpet?”

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November 5, 2012October 12, 2020

Rhamon a boy of Kashmir, 1939

From ‘Our summer in the vale of Kashmir’ (1915) by Frederick Ward Denys. Below you can see the impact that these images from Kashmir had in shaping the western imagining of this land.

A page from a children’s book set in Kashmir and written around 1939.

‘Rhamon a boy of Kashmir by Heluiz Washburne, pictured by Roger Duvoisin‘ (1939).

The book tells the story of a little Kashmiri boat boy who is deputed by the King to visit the city on a special mission. There is houseboats, floating gardens, a mela, a trip to the big city alone, adventure, all the ingredients that would trigger the imagination of a young child. Most of the illustrations in the book are based on some old photograph of Kashmir, and in some cases (like the case of stealing of floating gardens) based on an old travelogue.

This is from a time when you could tell children wonderful stories about Kashmir – a far-off exotic land of simple, beautiful people, with a nice king – without you having to worry that they would one day grow-up and probably think that the world is actually a very messy place to be.

Yes, definitely it is a book meant for children

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Update: Below is an alternative view of the first image of “Living Human Welcome” published in National Geographic, Vol 40, 1921. We can see here that unlike the first image the word “welcome” is not mirrored, it actually spells right. Also, if one goes by the caption, the event was held to welcome the British viceroy (should be Minto and his wife) into Kashmir and not the Maharaja as claimed in the book ‘Our summer in the vale of Kashmir’ (1915) by Frederick Ward Denys.

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April 29, 2012October 12, 2020

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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