Tag: folktales

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Macabre Tales of Hakeem Sahib

Sketch of Human Anatomy from
Tashreaat Jism-i-Insani.
by Syed Hakeem Ahmad Shah. Urdu.
 Kashmir Library.

I have previously written down and dramatised a Hakeem Sahib story [Electric Fish, 2012]. The tale was narrated by an uncle of my father few years back. On that day he told me another story of a Hakeem, I left it to be written for some other day. A few months back, a relative of my wife told me another story of a Hakeem Sahib, a seemingly similar story and then it hit me that there is a genre of folktale told in Kashmir that has Hakeem and his bizarre “treatment” as the central motif. 


Thus I now narrate the two tales with some noon-mirch.


Tale 1

There was in Kashmir once a very famous Hakeem who could judge a disease merely by listening to the pulse of mareez. His fame had spread far and wide. Hakeem Sahib was once visiting Bombay for a personal matter. It so happened that the news of his stay in Bombay reached a rich Parsee who suffered from a condition that all the great medicine men of the great city had described incurable. Parsee man sought an appointment with Hakeem Sahib one morning but the request was turned down. Hakeem Sahib who was staying in a local hotel told him that he was visiting the city to settle some personal affairs and he was not in town to meet the incurables. The Parsee man was desperate and begged Hakim Sahib to stay with him for a night as a guest, enjoy his hospitality, finish his personal work and then perhaps if time permits, he could treat his host as a patient. Hakeem Sahib knew the moment he saw the man that this was a body in lot of pain. Hakeem Sahib relented and shook his hand. Parsee man took him to his house. Although rich and old, he lived a lonely life in a mansion all white. All he had for company was a Persian cat and a loyal Gujrati house help who had mastered Parsi cooking. The cook was underpaid and the cat was over-loved. Parsi man treated the cat like one would treat a child of his own. To the Hakeem all these things mattered. Hakeem Sahib thanked Parsi man for the hospitality and suggested that the night’s dinner be Kashmiri Chicken Korma. How could the Gujarati cook a Kashmiri meal? Hakeem Sahib insisted that he would instruct the cook. We must have Kashmiri food. What about the disease, the permanent pain in his stomach? After dinner, the matter will be looked into. Parsi Man found it queer but then accepted that greatness comes with a certain degree of madness. Both men had business to attend in the afternoon and agreed to meet at night. Hakeem Sahib decreed he would get the chicken on the way back in evening. And if possible some saffron for the special curry. The thought of saffron cheered up the Parsee. Perhaps that was the cure. Where will he find Saffron in this fish stinky town? “No worries, leave all that to me. Perhaps in an Irani tea shop”. Parsee man felt a knot untie in his stomach. He was already getting better. He looked forward to the meal cure at night. It was going to be stupendous affair even if the Parsee man was never hungry at night.

The two men met over dinner. The house smelt sweet with the aroma of strange spices. God knows what Hakeem Sahib put in the deg. The dish came out beautiful. However, when they sat down to eat, Hakeem Sahib excused himself, refused to eat and started walking out of the room. Why? “Why do you think I am in this port city. I am trying to catch a ship to Mecca, it was the month of Ramzaan, the month of fasting and one of the best times for Umrah. I can’t eat, it is not time yet. See me after you are finished.” Parsee Man couldn’t process it all but then it dawned on him, “Hakeem Sahib had cooked a special meal just for me. This is the cure. Bless this man!” With this thought, mustering courage to summon hunger, he dug his fingers into the dish, mixed it with some rice and with each morsel felt his life force returning.

After dinner, Parsee Man sought his Persian cat with a leftover morsel in his hand. “Here kitty-kitty! Here kitty-kitty!” He roamed around the house. “Here kitty-kitty! Here kitty-kitty!” Hearing the call, Hakeem Sahib appeared and asked him what he was doing. “I just want to feed this fine dish to my cat.” Hearing this Hakeem Sahib started laughing like a ghoul, “Hahaha…that would be quite a scene if it was possible!”

“If it is possible? What do you mean? What is so funny”

“My dear host, what you had today for dinner was a finely cooked degi Persian cat. The Kitty is inside your tummy!”

Hearing this the Parsee Man suffered a violent convulsion in the pit of his stomach. He started to vomit out the kitty. The kitty, the bits of it were all over the cook. Bitter and acidic. It went on for quite some time. He was crying and bent over. “There! There! Get it all out!” Hakeem Sahib held the Parsee man’s head back with the palms of his two hand for support. It was as if the Parsee Man wanted to vomit out a whole cat out of his body.  When it was over, exhausted, still crying but with a hint of anger, he screamed, “Why? Why the poor cat? That’s all I had.”

Handling a towel over to the Parsi Man, Hakeem Sahib explained, “That is the only cure for too much worldly love. If the love overpowers your pulse, it becomes poison, it binds your nafs… you have to sacrifice what you love the most. You are lucky the object of your affliction was a cat. What cured you was not what you ate but what you threw out. You my friend are now cured.”

Tale 2

A man once arrived at the gates of Hakeem Sahib with a disease that he was told could only be cured by the great Hakeem Sahib. With much expectation and hope he had knocked at this door. One look at the patient and Hakeem Sahib wanted to turn him away. The man was young but he was turning brittle, muscles dissolving, dark circles under the eyes, cheeks sunk-in till only a long beak was all that remained of his face, earlobes drooping under their own weight, his throat a small cage for a large Adam’s apple with taunt veins sticking out as if in anger. The man must have suffered all this transformation only in last few months. His cloths were misfit, they were still meant for his old healthy frame. One look and your could tell this man was dying. Hakeem Sahib knew he could not help this dying soul, but did not wish to leave the man hopeless. “Let him live a month in hope”. Hakeem Sahib pretended to check the man’s pulse, and asked him to come again next month with the excuse that it will take a month to prepare the medicine.  The man however was so frightened of eminent death and Hakeem Sahib seemed such a miracle cure that this man started to knock on Hakeem Sahib’s door everyday. A few times Hakeem Sahib entertained him but then started to find ways to evade the man. Every time the man turned up, Hakeem Sahib would watch him from his upper balcony window, duck and have his house help announce that he had gone out and his cure was getting prepared. Hakeem Sahib cursed himself for the torture he was enduring and the torture this dying man had to bear, walking everyday to this door only to be turned away. Hakeem Sahib expected the man to stop after a few weeks as the disease would be nearing its destination. But, the man persisted and kept coming. Hakeem Sahib perhaps had discounted a man’s will to live. As the month was about to end, Hakeem Sahib started worrying how he would now face the man. “How could I get the time of death wrong?” he wondered.

Finally, towards the end of the month, he decided to tell the man his truth. The door was opened and the man was let in. That day Hakeem Sahib observed the patient more clearly and not from the distance of balcony window. The cloths were still a misfit but the veins were gone, throat was all fine, there was semblance of cheeks taking shape on his face when he smiled and the dark circles were still there but a shade lighter. All this may have escaped a normal man’s eye but not those of Great Hakeem Sahib. Hakeem Sahib went straight for the patients wrist. “His pulse! His pulse is strong as a mule!” This was a man under a cure. Hakeem Sahib felt a pang of shock and shot at the man in anger, “Couldn’t you wait for the cure? Didn’t I tell you I was working on it? Who did you goto for cure and what did he give you to eat?” The patient was shocked at the time of questioning. “Hakeem Sahib, I am still waiting for your medicines to arrive. I haven’t been anywhere else. Why else would I come here every morning?” Regaining his composure,  Hakeem Sahib was now a bit embarrassed. He changed his tone and asked the question that really mattered, “You have partaken something that has set your body on correct path. Have you been eating anything new? “

Now it was patients turn to be shocked, “I am cured! Shukraan Hakeem Sahib! Just by knocking at your gate, I evaded sure death. You are great. Greatest of Great!” With that he started kissing Hakim Sahib’s hand.

“Foolish man! Stop this drama now and just tell me the truth. What have you eaten this whole month?”

“This month?  All the same that I have been having for the rest of my life. I tried nothing new. Nothing new…expect..”

“Except what?”

“Hakeem Sahib…every day on way to your house…I would stop at the chowk and have some Gostaba from that new Hawker. He is one fine Waza and makes the finest Gostaba meat balls I ever had – softest and the juiciest. He now has quite a following.”

“Gostaba you say. Makes sense. We will have to meet this great meat masher. Let’s go right now.”

On reaching the chowk, Hakeem Sahib grabbed the Waza by collar and making a fist with his hand, said, “Swear on Allah, I am going to make mince meat out of you if you don’t answer this question correctly: Where do you get your meat from?”

Hakeem Sahib squeezed Waza’s Adam apple as the man tried to squeal, “From the market.”

A gentle squeeze from the expert hand and out poured the truth: “From the market not….from the graveyard…from the graveyard…I am a poor man…where do I have the money…I do this for my family. From the dead bodies.”

Hearing this the former sick patient started to vomit. Hakeem Sahib started laughing like a hyena, “Hehehe… take your time. You ghoul of a man. Bring it all out. Had you died, this Waza would have made soup out of your feet and sold it in the market. Yes, bring it all out. The moment I saw you, I knew it was anger that was eating your inside. An anger that has not explanation, anger as if coming from pits of hell. Anger was eating up your soul, it was eating your body. Unchecked anger is a cannibalistic desire. The only cure for it is that it needs to be fed some other human body.  I could have never recommended that to you. So I was waiting for you to die. Your cure is not what you are throwing out, your cure is what you took in.”

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Woodcutter and the Ghoulish Wife

‘Kashmiri Woodcutter’ by Abdur Rahman Chughtai
 (Pakistan, 1897–1975) via: bonhams

I like watching zombie movies, more macabre the better. Like many, I find in them a reflection of out times. My mother-in-law does not approve of my taste in cinema, she does not like the “shikas” movies I watch, specially at a time when her daughter is pregnant. Yet, one day while I was watching one such movie, she decided to tell me a folktale. I don’t know the origin of the tale, but I have not heard anything like it and I think she told the story just to mess me up. Anyway, in service of literature and lost folklore of Kashmir, here it goes:

There was once a simple woodcutter who used to live in a forest with his wife. The couple used to frequently roam in the jungle looking for fine wood. Husband would cut while the wife would collect. One day, while going about the routine, woodcutter’s wife started acting all weird. She called out to her husband and said to him,”I smell someone is roasting some fine meat nearby, I have an incredible urge to have this meat. Please, please, O’ husband of mine fetch me the meat whose sweet whiff is making my stomach twitch.” Poor woodcutter was all confused, he could barely smell anything. He tried to reason with his wife. “In this forest, who possibly could be cooking a meal of meat. What has gotten into you? I cannot smell anything.” Wife persisted, “O’ husband of mine fetch me the meat whose sweet whiff is making my stomach twitch.” Woodcutter took in a deep one through the nose and could now smell the meat. “Even if someone was cooking, how can I get it for you?” Wife started crying, no rhyme or no reason. “What a useless husband I have? Wish I had married the butcher instead.”Seeing the mad fervor in his loving wife’s eyes, the woodcutter gave in and promised to fulfil this wish. Wife told him to go and not come empty handed or else he will see her dead face, she will put an axe to her throat.  He asked her to head back hime while he would go looking for the barbeque chops. He followed the smell and after walking some distance, the woodcutter found himself in front of a funeral pyre. Someone had burnt a body in the forest. Woodcutter was saddened by the thought that he had come looking for this meat, this cage of a soul. He even laughed a bit now at her wife’s stupid demand. However, since he had promised his mad wife a piece of roasted meat, he used his axe to fetch a piece from the fire. A shoulder, a limb, a heart or a liver, one could not tell, he just wrapped it in a piece of cloth and headed back home. “Surely, she would not eat it, if nothing else, it will be a good joke,”  thought the simple woodcutter. On reaching his hut, he told the wife all that he saw, he hoped that his wife by now would have calmed down. Instead his wife asked, “Where is the meat?” Her eyes fell on the bundle of cloth hung from his shoulder, she lunged at it, dug her hands in and before her husband could do anything, she took a chunk of meat and sunk her teeth into it and then the grind. The woodcutter was repulsed by the scene, in that moment he could see a ghoul chomping on a human prey. A strange mix of anger and fear pulsed though his veins and in that thoughtless moment, instinctively, his hands went for his axe and and the axe went for wife’s stomach. As the axe cut though the belly fat, the stomach split open and put popped a baby not yet fully formed, hanging by a slender thread and in it’s mouth a piece of meat. Three bodies fell to ground and only then the woodcutter understood his wife’s wild demand. All this time, his wife was pregnant and they did not know. He should have known a pregnant woman and her taste buds at such times can make any such demands. A husband has to be patient, caring and fulfil all her demands in the best way he can. Woodcutter could have gone and bought a piece of roast meat and she would have accepted that too happily. The woodcutter now rued his fate and cursed his gods. His wife was dead, his baby was dead, his axe had tasted its own blood.
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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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Folktale: Gagarbai ti Gagur

“My favourite tale was about the tragedy of a mouse. She was
asked by her husband to make khichree, she made it so well, morsel by morsel,
she ate it all up. Home came the mouse, mouth salivating, to find his little
wife resting. He looked everywhere in the kitchen she asked him to look – in the
cooking pot, the frying pan, the mortar and even under the small pestle used
for pounding spices – but found nothing. In anger, he threw the pestle at her
and her ear lobe fell off. Bleeding, the detached piece of flesh in hand, she
went crying to the tailor and asked him to stitch her ear whole.
The tailor asked her to get him some thread from the
threadmaker woman, who sent her to the cotton-carder man. And thus she went
from one artisan to another, and even to the cotton tree that would yield the
cotton and the bullock that would plough the field  for the tree to flower. Finally, she reached
a mound asking it for some earth, which she would take to the potter, who would
make her a charcoal brazier and, step by step, back to the blacksmith who would
provide her with a sickle with which she would cut some grass from a ridge to
feed the bullock, and thus onward. With thread in her hand she would go to the
tailor who would repair her ear. Then she would wear her gold earrings and
leave her cruel husband to go back to her parental home. Alas, that was not to
be. Giving of itself to her, the earth mound fell over her and crushed her to
death. The story, told in a sing-song style, ended with a song of lamentation
by the bereaved mouse. It made me sad but I wanted to hear it again and again,
knowing all along that it was just a tale.”
From the essay ‘Growing up in a Kashmiri Hindu Household’ by
T.N. Madan (The T.N.Madan Omnibus)
Between me and T.N. Madan, our childhood memories are separated by a gap of at least seven decades and yet we share a common favorite in ‘tales our grandmothers told’. After reading the description of story in this essay, I knew he was talking about ‘Gagri-Gagri’. But in my story the wife was hit by mortar not pestle (Kajwot and not Wokhul). I asked my grandmother if she remembers the story and if she would sing it again. She had no idea what I was talking about. She couldn’t remember it. But after nagging her for a couple of days, I was able to get her to recount some of the bits. But not the main song. My Chachi too threw in bits from her childhood memories – an alternative ending in which the wife is reunited with her repentant husband. Yet the main bit eluded me. The favorite part. The tune. It was frustrating. I even came to doubt if the story was ever told to me by my grandmother, maternal, paternal or if was sung to me by some grandaunt, maternal, paternal. How can I forget?  It’s the part where the wife asks the husband to look for Khichree all over the kitchen. And then he hit her out of tune.What was that tune?
In the Kashmiri section by Ali Mohammad Lone presented in ‘Children’s literature in Indian languages‘ (1982), I found reference to this story. Indeed, in ‘The Mouse’s Ear’ the wife was hit by mortar. That was about it. No further leads. No actual Kashmiri version of the story.
Then, about a year later while listening to my grandmother sing a Kashmiri ditty for an ancient spring ceremony. I remembered it. The two share almost the same sing-song tune. I remembered not the entire story but just my favorite part. I believe it went something like this:
He Mouse: Gagri, Gagri! Kyet chey Khetch’er 
She Mouse: Bohganas tal.
He Mouse: Yet’che na keh
Gagri, Gagri! Kyet chey Khetch’er
Wokhulas tal
Yet’che na keh

Gagri, Gagri! Kyet chey Khetch’er
Kajwatas tal
Narrator: Tyem tul Kaajwot ti la’go’unas Kanas.
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Of Kings, Persian Princes, Kashmiri Damsels and European Art

A drawing from 1860s by Austrian artist Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871). Found it in ‘Schwind des Meisters Werke’ (1906) by Otto Albert Weigmann. The drawing is based on the story of “The Magic Horse” that appears in The Arabian Nights/Thousand and one nights. The scene depicts a Prince of Persia rescuing a Princess of Bengal from a King of Kashmir.

The are a couple of variations of the story (as it reached west) but mostly goes something like this: An Indian arrives in Shiraz with a magical mechanical flying horse. The price of Shiraz takes it for a test ride without knowing the landing instruction. He somehow lands in Bengal and brings back a princess with her. The Indian steals the princess and flies away to Kashmir. The king of Kashmir rescues the princess from the Indian by killing him but wants to marry the princess much against her wish. Princess loves prince of Shiraz. Meanwhile, the prince of Shiraz arrives in Kashmir with a plan to take back the princess. His plan works and he flies away on magic horse with the princess.

What is interesting about Schwind’s this particular painting is that in an earlier version of it the reaction of King of Kashmir was muted, he was an amazed spectator. But in the later painting, the one we see here, the Kings and his courtiers are gesticulating in helpless anger. Schwind took the text, in which no mention is made of reaction of King of Kashmir and added a layer of emotion over it.

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‘Aakho Sherer-e-Sheerazo‘ (You have come from city of Shiraz) remains a popular Kashmiri song at weddings. It’s about women singing about an ideal bridegroom who arrives from Shiraz. Probably not related to the tale but an interesting fact.

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Hemjuneh, Princess of Kashmir, be-spelled and held prisoner behind a trap door.

From ‘Tales of the Persian Genii’ (1917) by Francis Jenkins Olcott. Illustration by Hungarian illustrator Willy Pogany(1882 – 1955).

The story is told by Mahoud, a jeweller of Delhi, who tries to free her from a merchant of Fez who serves an an evil Enchantress, but is turned into a red toad. Her story is something like this:

A King of Kashmir wants to marry her daughter to the prince of Georgia but the girl does not want to get married at all. Then one day an enchantress in the form of an old woman hands her a handkerchief having a sketch of a handsome man. Enchanted, the princess resolves to marry that man. She seeks that old woman’s help and is flown away to Fez only to realized that the Enchantress has brought her there on request of a local merchant who had heard her beauty. She is now stuck in a foreign land with a bunch of evil types. Luckily for her a good genie, a servant of Soloman, arrives who tries to help her. This genie first admonishes the princess for leaving home of her parents on her own will driven by words of some stranger. He then puts a spell on her to protect her. The spell works in a strange way. If the merchant of Fez looks at the princess, she shall fall asleep till the next full moon. She shall sleep behind a trapdoor that the merchant can only find on the night of full moon and can only be opened by a friend of his. It is in this scenario that the jeweller of Delhi opened the trapdoor for the merchant of Fez but then tried to help the princess.

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Kids chanting “Samamber has a lover in Iran” in front of  would-be husband of Samamber, daughter of Qazi of Kashmir. Haider Beg of Persia, a silent admirer of Samamber pays them to do it.

Illustration by Hilda Roberts for “Persian tales written down for the first time in the original Kermani and Bakhtiari, and tr. by D. L. R. Lorimer and E. O. Lorimer. (1919). The story is a Bakhtiari tale presented in the book. In this a story a woman from Kashmir goes to a place in Persia to collect herbs once every year. A man sees her and falls in love with her. The woman does’t like it, challenges him, almost kills the guy and goes back to Kashmir where her father arranges her marriage. The man from Persia arrives in Kashmir and tries to win her even as she is about to be married. After some twists, the woman falls for the Persian man and  goes away with him, gets married. Later still in the story, the man asks his wife to leave him and marry his best friend as his best friend has fallen in love with her (a scenario on Hindi cinema was to make countless flicks). She agrees. But at last moment truth is revealed, she is re-married to her original husband and everything turns out fine.

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Princess Farruchnas daughter of Togrul bey, who ruled over Kashmir. Doesn;t want to get married but later falls for Persian prince Farruchshad. From ‘Gulistan: Tales of Ancient Persia’ (1977) by Gotlinde Thylmann Von Keyserlingk, Karl Thylmann. The story is identified by Richard Burton as “Farrukh-Shad, Farrukh-Ruz, and Farrukh-Naz”.

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Kashmiri Folktale: Junky and the Dead Crow

In response to my previous post about short diminutive old Kashmiri women, Man Mohan Munshi Ji recalled an old Kashmiri folktale/song told to him as a kid by his grandmother and mother.


The story goes like this: A crow and a Shod [marijuana addict] were friends and they planned a picnic, got some mutton and cooked it in a lej [Kashmiri pot] on the bank of a stream. Shoda asked the crow to keep watch till he returned after having a wash.The crow out of curiosity lifted the lid [anuit] of the lej but unfortunately fell inside the cooking pot with the lid closed on him. When the Shoda returned he thought that the crow has consumed the mutton and run away. But, when he lifted the lid he saw the dead crow floating along with mutton pieces in the gravy. He was grief-stricken at the loss of his friend and as a sign of mourning shaved off his beard. The stream learning the reason for Shoda’s missing beard dried its water. A deer who came to take water dropped one of its antlers in sympathy. A tree under which the deer used to feed also dropped its branch. A calf also used to come to feed under the tree and after hearing the tragic death of the crow, dropped its tail. The cow after hearing the story from the calf, dried her udder. The milkman in sympathy for the crow cut his finger. His wife after hearing the tragic story, started crying and cut her arm. Then, a camel passed by and after hearing the complete story said, “Both Shoda as well as the crow got what they deserved. Rest of you are fools. What did you gain by doing silly things?”


Here are the Kashmiri lyrics and a translation.



Shoda legeji kaw gow


Crow fell in Shoda’s lej


Shodan dar kas


Shoda shaved his beard


Pokri poin chumrov


Stream dried its water


Hanglan haing trov


Deer dropped its horn


Bran Kuil lang trow


Tree dropped its branch


Vatsth harith lot trov


Calf dropped its tail


Gav maji bab gai kain


Cow dried its udder


Gure chat kis


Milkman cut his little finger


Gure Baie chat nar


Milkmaid cut her arm


Wontan dupnak toi chew fatir


Camel said you are all fools


Toi kiaze karew baif kufi


What did you do silly things?


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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.

 

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