confused religion Archives

Kashmiri Dancing Girl
by V. C. Prinsep

An extract from Imperial India; an artist’s journals’ (1879) by V. C. Prinsep, who visited Kashmir around 1877.

One evening I went to a wedding. I was not allowed to join in the ceremony, but viewed the proceedings from an upper window. Seven days the tomasha had lasted, and day and night were women howling congratulatory verses to the bridegroom who sat feasting with his intimates the while. On a certain day rings are put into the bride’s ears and nose; on another her hands are marked with henna, and so on. She lived in a house hard by, where the happy man was allowed to see her for a short time each day, being conducted to and fro with mush ceremony and many torches stinking and reeking, as I found to my cost. I have taken down many of the distiches sung on the occasion, and am trying to get them translated, when, if they are worth it, I will add them to my diary. The continued howling of the women becomes very irksome after a time, and although the sight was curious, I was glad to get away after a couple of hours. The bride was nine years old.
The following is a translation of the songs sung at a Kashmirree wedding [by Major Henderson, C.S.I., the political officer in Kashmir]: –
Mother of the Bridegroom to the Bridegroom.
Urge on thy steed in every direction.
I will prepare thy seat in the garden pavilion:
On thy right the Koran, on thy left the necklace.
Thou art worthy to be called Lalla Gopal!

The Lalla Gopal in the verse needed some explanation. A note in the book adds, ‘Lalla Gopal, one of the names of Krishna, who was supposed to have been the type of loveliness. Curious, this, when sung by a Mohammedan!’

Prinsep further explains:

The song is a good picture of the manners of the country, and the way that the Moslem and hindoo customs have acted on each other. Whilst at Sreenugger I have painted two or three nautch girls, and it was through them that I got to this wedding, as they were amongst the singers. now these girls, like most nautch girls in India, were all Moslemehs, yet had they all the caste feeling of Hindoo. Of moral sentiment they were entirely innocent, but they would never permit any one to drink out of their cup or smoke from their hookah, and they always went about these two utensils, for smoke and tea are the two things necessary to a Kashmiree. So in this song a Kashmiree Moslem is made to say “beautiful as Krishna.”

There is another interesting line given in that song:

Singing women to the Bride and Bridegroom.
The parrot of Lahore and the Mainah of Kashmir!
How did you both become mutually acquainted?

[Check Heer from Kashmir, an old folksong from Punjab]

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Update August 4, 2017

Two readers (Indu Kilam and Sushma Kaul) at FB managed to recall Kashmiri lyrics for a similar sounding song.

Gare hai drayus bazaar kune yae,
wati samkheum bab papune yao,
dachin kene thovnam koran parvunei,
khover kene thovnam shama dazuevoneu
lut lut hutamas auush traviniye,
dapunam kuri ye chu tchaluniye

here shama is lamp.

On the steps of a temple

Photograph from article ‘Behind the shutters of a Kashmir Zenana’ by Marion Whiting for Harper’s Magazine, Volume 129, 1914.

Village Martand (Mattan) figures mostly in this travelogue and as suggested by the title of the writing, focuses on women.

Among other things, she gives us description of Muslim New year being celebrated by the villagers at ruins of Martand temple:

That evening the new moon rose as advertised, and the New-Year celebrations began. But we were not prepared for what was to follow. Dinner was over, and we were lazily sitting in our comfortable camp-chairs warming ourselves in front of a huge bonfire. Presently the sound of singing came up from the village below, and soon it grew louder and louder. Then, emerging from the darkness into the light of our camp-fire, appeared what proved to be the entire population of Martand. First came a crowd of men and boys, and directly behind them women, singing, as they walked, a low, monotonous sort of chant. Close to the ruins of the temple they stopped, just near enough for us to make out in the firelight the outlines of their long, white scarfs and loose-hanging smocks. The singer arranged themselves into rows facing each other, each woman placing her hands on the shoulders of the woman next to her. Meanwhile the men had squatted on the ground in a circle around the performers, their knees up under their chins, their shawls wrapped tightly around them in a fashion peculiar to the Kashmiri. All the while the women were singing the same chant, over and over again, swaying back and forth in rhythm with the music. First one row would take the air, and then the other would respond in a sort of cadence, with always the same theme repeated again and again. The scene, so unexpected, was wonderful, the firelight illuminating the figures, the tall columns of the old temple rising behind, and the black night enveloping everything beyond. Our Kashmiri factotum was called upon to explain what it all meant.
“They come to the old temple to sing to Mohammed. they tell the story of his life. They tell his wanderings and his preachings, and then they tell long stories of what the Koran say must do. How the women must obey their husbands, how fathers must teach their sons, and how they all must worship the great God Allah!”
“Do they often come to the temple to sing?” we asked.
“Only at the New-Year,”he answered.
“And do the men never join in the ceremony?”
“no. Only the women; they do the singing.”
“But this was originally a Hindu temple,” we persisted. “Why do Mohammedans come here?”
“It is the custom,” he answered, vaguely, shrugging his shoulders.

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An interesting photograph by Howard Sochurek in from 1951 for Life Magazine. We can see a group of people dancing in front of Martand Temple.

Tag: confused religion

A strange wedding song, 1877

On the steps of a temple, 1914