Tag: History

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Earthquakes, Gods, Bulls and Mosquito Buzz

Kashmir Earthquake 1900 by Captain Benson

In one hand she held a steel glass and with the other,praying in whispers to gods, she was sprinkling the cemented ground with water. With the spring of childhood in my feets, I didn’t realize it was earthquake. It was my first earthquake and I had witnessed my aunty perform an old ritual. She was pacifying the angry gods. This was the day that I believed I had seen a UFO but now I believe it must have been just a CEMA tubelight fitted lamppost.

An early western visitor to Kashmir wrote a strange scene he witnessed in a village somewhere in Kashmir. There had been an earthquake that had turned one of the nearby village springs into a hot spring. When this news reached the village, the visitor noticed that the pandits of the village left for the spring with their batte deechas, big metallic pot with rice gains and placing them in the hot water proceeded to prepare race. Rice was going to absorb the furious energy of the gods. And bellies were going to have a fill.

As I retold the incident, I was informed that Kashmiri Muslims believed that the earthquakes were caused when the celestial bull that holds the earth on its horns is irritated by a (must be) celestial mosquito.

Following this lead I came an interesting belief from Judaic world.

Verrier Elwin, an early authority on Indian tribal people, in his book Myths of Middle (1949) wrote:

The traditional Hindu view of earthquakes is that Varaha, the board incarnation of Vishnu who supports the earth, is shifting the burden of the world from one tusk to another.

In Sylhet [now in Bangladesh] the Hindus say that below the earth is a tortoise; upon this a serpent and upon this an elephant. Should anyone of them move, there is an earthquake. The ordinary Mussalman of the same area is said to believe that the earth rests on the horns of the bull which has a mosquito at its side.

This Muslim belief finds its origins in Judaism.

Howard Schwartz tells the story in his book Tree of souls: the mythology of Judaism (2007)

Once, when Aaron the Priest, brother of Moses, was offering sacrifices on Yom Kippur [Day of Atonement], the bull sprang up from beneath his hands and covered a cow. When that calf was born, it was stronger than any other. Before a year was out, the calf had grown bigger than the whole world. God then took the world and stuck it on one horn of that bull. And the bull holds up the worlds on his horn, for this is God’s wish. But when people sin, their sins make the world heavier, and the burden of the bull grows that much greater. Then the bull grows tired of its burden, and tosses the world from one horn to the other. That is when earthquake take place, and everything is uncertain until the world stands secure on a single horn.

May be the mosquito buzz part was the Indian touch.

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Yashodhara Katju – First Kashmiri Actress

In 1941 when Pandit Nehru’s young niece decided to join the film industry not only did Yashodhara Katju become the first Kashmiri heroine of silver screen but perhaps one of the first woman from a good family to set foot in the not so good film industry – an event that was certainly newsworthy.

Film India, August 1941.
From FilmIndia Magazine collection generously shared with me by Indian film enthusiast Memsaab who runs one of the best blogs on Indian Cinema.

Text from the news-piece:

Well-known Society Girl Joins Indian Films

Miss Katju, niece of Pandit Nehru Comes to National Studios

Fourteen year-old Yashodhara Katju comes from a famous family of Kashmir Brahmins who have settled in the United Provinces for generations.

Well connected by ties of blood and friendship with some of the leading families of U.P. Yashodhara is at present studying in the Senior Cambridge class and in addition happens to be an accomplished dancer, having taken an extensive training under some of the best dancers in the country. She is reported to be a fine exponent of the Manipuri and Kathakali schools of dancing.

Her first screen role is likely to be in “Roti” a social picture directed by Mr. Mehboob for the National Studio.

Yashodhara Katju. Film India, August 1943

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Interestingly, right next to that news-piece was an ad for Afghan Snow cream. One of the biggest name in beauty creams in India right until the 1970s.

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Mahjoor’s Kutubkhana Collection

Mahjoor was also a historian and took deep interest in numismatics. He collected 500 rare coins mostly belonging to the period of Queen Deda of the Varma dynastry which rules Kashmir several centuries before the advent of Islam in the state. He gathered a number of documents and manuscripts in both Persian and Sanskrit languages. One of the manuscripts, Shar-e-Tul Islam, which deals with Islamic  years old. He also acquired barch paper treatises on grammer written by Abhinavagupta and Mammatacharya.

This collection, fondly named “Kutubkhana” by Mahjoor himself, was offered by his descendants to the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, Srinagar, to be lodged in a national monument where it could be preserved safely. But due to what the grandsons of the poet term as “shortsightedness” of the authorities in the state, this was not to be. The academy undervalued the treasure (it offered only Rs. 38,000) and Mahjoor’s grandsons later sold it to the National Archives for Rs. 71,000. Six years ago this “Kutubkhana” thus found a niche in the premises of the National Archives, New Delhi, under the title of “Mahjoor Collection”.

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From life-sketch of Mahjoor by T.N. Kaul in his book Poems of Mahjoor (Sahitya Akademi, first published 1988)
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Kashmir by Pierre du Jarric, 1597

 “The kingdom of Caximir is one of the pleasantest and most beautiful countries to be found in the whole of India, we may even say in the East. It is completely surrounded by very high mountains which for the greater part of the year are covered with snow, and all the rest of the kingdom is a beautiful plain clothed in verdure, and well watered by springs and rivers: a very pleasant land for those who dwell therein. Owing to the mountains, the climate of the country is somewhat cold, though it is more temperate than that of the kingdom of Rebat, which joins Caximir on the east. In the month of May, great numbers of wild-duck come from the mountains of Rebat and settle in huge flocks on the streams which flow near to the town of Caximir, the capital of the kingdom, because of the warmer climate. About three leagues from town there is a lake of sweet water which, though not more than two leagues in circuit and half a league broad, is so deep that large vessels can float upon it. In the middle there is an artificial island on which the king has a palace, where he refreshes himself when he goes to shoot the duck which abound on this lake. On the banks of a river, the waters of which flow through the lake, there is a species of very large tree, the trunk and leaves of which resemble those of the chestnut, though it is quite a different tree. The wood is very dry, and has a grain like rippling water; it is much used for making small caskets and similar articles. the country abounds in wheat, rice and other food grains. They plant vines at the roots of the mulberry trees, so that grapes and mulberries are seen hanging from the same branches. People say that this kingdom was one of the most formidable in these parts, and that the Great Mogor[L] would never have been able to subdue it but for the factions which existed amongst the inhabitants. Knowing that it was a kingdom divided against itself, he invaded it with a large army, and easily made himsef master of it. Formerly all the people of this country were Gentiles; but about three hundred years ago they joined the sect of Mahomet, and the majority of them are now Saracens.”

Pierre du Jarric.  (Akbar and the Jesuits, Page 75).

Pierre du Jarric, a 16th-17th centuries French priest of the Jesuit order and a professor of philosophy and theology at Bordeaux, travelled to Kashmir in 1596- 1597 as part of Mughal encampment and was first to introduce the western world to Kashmir when his travel letters were published in Antwerp in 1605. 

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I looked for this description for a long time and finally found it in a footnote to Kalahana’s Rajatarangini by Ranjit Pandit. Interestingly the above passage also alludes to the Chinar trees of Kashmir.

Image: Found it in ‘Letters from India and Kashmir’ by J. Duguid, 1870. [The illustration is by MR. H. R. ROBERTSON, and engraved by MR. W. J. PALM KB, principally from the writer’s Sketches.]

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Indo-Pakistan football, 1951

Dr, Frank Graham of U.N.O knew how to score in baseball. He did not know the Indo-Pakistan football game with its peculiar rules. The learned doctor returned with a swollen bottom.  Delhi, Sept. 12, 1951

For this cartoon by an unnamed  artist in FilmIndia dated October 1951. (Thanks to Memsaab Greta!)

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Maha Mahadevi Mata Rani Maharani Victoria

There’s an old Qurratulain Hyder short story having a minor character of a tribal woman whose most precious piece of jewellery was ‘tooria’ – a necklace of coins embellished with the image of Queen Victoria.

And I thought nothing could top that. Then I came across something bizarrely interesting in Walter Rooper Lawrence’s Valley of Kashmir. Visiting Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer, he noticed that –

“An interesting fact about the Hindus of Kashmir is that they worship the likeness of Her Majesty the Queen Empress. This prevails not only among the Pandits of the city, but also among the village Hindus. It appears to be their custom to regard as divine the sovereign de facto, but in the case of the emperor Aurangzeb they made an exception, and his likeness was never worshiped, for he was a persecutor of the Hindus.”

I tried imagining how that photograph or an etching (or a coin) would have sat in the dark thokur kuth, God room, of the Pandit. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Kashmiris were apparently quite happy with the coming of British. After the incompetence of Chak regulars, indifference of Mughal lords, the barbarity of Pathans and in-humaneness of Sikhs, the Queen must have appeared like a Goddess to put an end to all their sorrows. With the coming of British came the post service, the telegraph, the education system, the hospitals, the canals, etc. And it was all done in the name of the Queen. Francis Younghusband writes how easily he found hospitality in the remote North just because of the good work done under Queen Victoria’s name. With the British came the British sense of fair-play. It is said that around that time a distressed poor Kashmiri could often be heard saying (often half-meant threats) that he would take his case to the Queen herself and that she shall dispense justice. Talk about Mata ka Darbar. (Isn’t it interesting that only Mata Ranis hold darbars?)

Decades later, Tagore wasn’t the only one singing odes to British Empire. During World War 2, owing to the lack of enthusiasm among Kashmir Muslims for joining the British Army and to counter the German propaganda that fighting Germany meant going to war against the Ottoman Caliphate since the Turkish forces had joined hands with Germany, Mahjoor, the Kashmiri Bard, was assigned the task of writing a moving qaseeda for the British Empire. Mahjoor came up with Jung-e-German which became a rage in Kashmir (I wonder if Jum’German finds its origins in the popularity of this qaseeda). Mahjoor wrote:

When the liberal, benign and unassuming
British came to aid governance
Our destiny woke up from sleep
Long live our Gracious Emperor!

King of England who rules the world,
Grant him power and pageantry
May his kingdom be blessed
Long live our Gracious Emperor!

The poem also praised the Dogra ruler. He went on to write two more panegyrics praising Maharaja Pratap Singh and his successor, Maharaja Hari Singh. It is safe to assume Mahjoor the nationalist hadn’t yet been born, in fact may be that concept hadn’t yet taken seed in the Kashmiri mind. Interestingly enough Mahjoor never got any benefit for writing the poem. He was told that since he hadn’t brought in any volunteers personally, he wasn’t entitled to any special benefits.

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Information about Mahjoor and the lines from Jung-e-German comes from Trilokinath Raina’s work on the poet.
Image: A rare image of Queen Victoria laughing. Found it in The People’s Almanac presents The Book of Lists (Bantam Edition, 1978) by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace.

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Sale Purchase Deal documents from 1872 AD, 1876 AD and 1880 AD

This is another incredible guest post by Man mohan Munshi ji. Can’t thank him enough for sharing these! And he has promised to send in more surprises!
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Document from 1872 AD
Document from 1876 AD
Document from 1880 AD

[…]three original legal agreements pertaining to Sale purchase deals executed by my great grand father Munshi Daya Ram in  1872 AD, 1876 AD and 1880 AD  which I located in a heap of  junk in 2003. The said agreements have been drafted in Persian and the revenue stamp /paper is bilingual i.e Persian and Sanskrit . A few words / signatures are in 1872 document are in Sharda script. The dates of the said agreements english in the text are given in Bikrami and Hijri Samwants which have bee calculated are as follows:

                          Bikrami             Hijri                  Ad/CE
                          1929               1279                   1872
                          1933                —                        1876
                          1937               1398                   1880  
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Martand as described by Sir Alexander Cunningham

 I  mentioned writings of Alexander Cunningham in a previous post about Pandav lar’rey (House of Pandas, as Martand temple was common known among Pandits).

British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham (1814-93), as a young British Army Engineer officer was stationed in Kashmir after the first Sikh War of 1845-1846. In November 1847, he measured and studied most of the ancient structures that existed in Kashmir. Because of his pioneering work he came to be known as the father of Indian Archaeology.

I recently came across some more extracts from his work ‘An Essay on the Arian Order of Architecture, as exhibited in the Temples of Kashmir (1848) ‘ while reading ‘Letters from India and Kashmir’ by J. Duguid, 1870. Here are the extracts describing Martand temple and its illustrations from the book:

From Shadipore by water, passing through Srinuggur, a three days’ journey brings you to Islamabad, near which are the ruins of Marttand. A series of steppes, called karayas, are a feature in the conformation of the valley, which is believed by competent judges to have once been a lake, and these table-lands its surrounding shores. The slow results of time, or a sudden convulsion of nature, forced a passage for the waters through the Baramula pass, and thus rapidly, or gradually, drained it of all but the eternal springs, sources of its existing lakes and rivers. In after periods of those remote ages when Kashmir flourished, these places became favourite sites for the erection of temples, the most celebrated of which, both in extent and splendour, was that of Marttand, dedicated to the sun. Instead of my incomplete description I now insert that of General (then Captain) Cunningham in his work on ” The Arian Order of Architecture”  :-

” The temple consists of one lofty central edifice with a small detached wing on each side of the entrance, the whole standing in a large quadrangle surrounded by a colonnade of fluted pillars, with intervening trefoil-headed recesses. The central building is 63 feet in length, by 36 feet in width at the eastern end, and only 27 feet at the western or entrance end.

” It contains three distinct chambers, of which the outermost one, named Arddha Mandapa, or the half-temple, answering to the front porch of the classical fanes, is 18 feet square. The middle one, called Antarala, or mid-temple, corresponding to the pronaos of the Greek, is 18 feet by 4 1/2 ; and the innermost one, named Oorbha Griho, or ” womb of the edifice,” the naos of the Greeks, and the cella of the Romans, is 18 feet by 3 1/2.

” The first and middle chambers are decorated, bat the inner is perfectly plain and closed on three sides. The walls are 9 feet thick, and its entrance-chamber only 4 1/2 feet thick, being respectively one-half and one-fourth of the interior width of the building.

” On each side of the porch, flush with the entrance wall to the westward, and with the outer walls, the northward and southward, is a detached building or wing, 18 feet long by 13 1/2 broad, with a passage 4 1/2 feet wide, between it and the wall of the entrance chamber.

” The width of the passage between these wings being exactly one-third of that of the wing itself, the roof which covered the two would have been an exact square, the form required as the basis of the pyramidal roof of the Kashmerian architecture.

” Within, the chamber had a doorway at each side, covered by a pediment with a trefoil-headed niche, containing a bust of the Hindu triad.

” This representation was itself only another symbol of the Sun, who was Brahma, or the Creator, at morn, Vishnu, or the Preserver, at noon, Siva, or the Destroyer, at even.

” The chamber was lighted during the day by semicircular openings over the closed doorways on the three sides, but in the evening, as the entrance was to the westward, the image of the
glorious sun was illumined by his own setting beams.

” The temple is enclosed by a pillared quadrangle 220 feet in length by 142 feet in breadth, containing 84 fluted columns. This number the Chourasi (84) of the Hindus is especially emblematic of the sun, as it is the multiple of the twelve mansions of the ecliptic (typified by 12 spokes in his chariot -wheel) through which he is carried by his seven steeds in one year ; or it is the product of his seven rays multiplied by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The 84 pillars are therefore most probably intended for that number of solar rays. Thus, even the colonnade is made typical of the deity to whom the temple is consecrated.

” It overlooks the finest view in Kashmir, and perhaps in the known world. Beneath it lies the Paradise of the East, with its sacred streams and cedarn glens, its brown orchards and green fields, surrounded on all sides by vast snowy mountains, whose lofty peaks seem to smile upon the beautiful valley below. The vast extent of the scene makes it sublime, for this magnificent view of Kashmir is no pretty peep into a half-mile glen ; but the full display of a valley 60 miles in breadth, and upwards of 100 miles in length, the whole of which lies beneath the ken of the wonderful Marttand.”

A stream of water passed through the quadrangle, and is supposed to have been filled on ceremonial occasions. From General Cunningham’s description, Mr. Sulmann, an artist who has given much attention to the study of Indian architecture, produced the accompanying drawing, which may very closely represent the temple in its former glory.

Martand, as it must have been

From Marttand a short walk leads to the sacred springs and grove of Barwun on the plain at the base of the karaya. Seated near the tank a group of Hindoos surrounded a calf, which a priest, grasping the tail, poured water over, and prayed. He was consecrating it, to become a sacred bull in after-life. This operation completed, the calf walked off, and the priest with the devotees knelt beside the water. Before them was a tin platter of roasted maize, and continuing to drone in a loud voice not unlike a presbyterian preacher, they threw handfuls of the corn into the water, at which the fish rose on all sides. But when the prayer was ended and the remainder of the corn was thrown in at once, a hill of fish rushed at it, many supported above the water by the shoal of their companions below.

” Angler, wouldst thou be guiltless ? then forbear, For these are sacred fishes that swim here.”

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Read complete An Essay on the Arian Order of Architecture, as exhibited in the Temples of Kashmir (1848) here:

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Wan Raaz Trivikramasen

‘Wan Raaz Trivikramasen! Answer King Trivikramasen’ Baital needles the king into answering his trick questions in a 1960s (?) Kashmiri production of Baital Pachisi for Radio Kashmir. The popular  radio show was probably based on Kashmirian Somadeva’s Vetalapanchavirhsati  in which the hero, the King  is called ‘Trivikramasena, the son of Vikramasena’ ** but still refers to the semi-legendary Vikrama or Vikramaditya of Jain tradition.

More about  Vetalapanchavirhsati  Here

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Changus Sings Again: Recreating an old Kashmiri melody from year 1835.

The year must have been 1835. Godfrey Thomas Vigne, an English traveler in Kashmir,one of the first, was visiting a decaying old village called Changus( Shangus, as it is now called), a miles from Achibul (or Yech-i-bul, as he called it) in Anantnag district. He had heard that in the old glory days of Kashmir, this village was renowned for its colony of dancing girls. The singing, dancing and the beauty of  the nautch women from this village was renowned all over the valley. The most famous among these danseuses was a women named Lyli. Englishman’s local host, a nobleman named Samud Shah, spoke of her with signs of regret, and expressions of admiration. But Lyli was long dead and so it seemed was the village. There were still some dancing women in the village but none refined like the days of yore. Like most places in Kashmir, this village too had lost its muse. The dancing muse – Terpsichore, no longer lived in that village. Or so it seemed. While he was walking around in the village, he heard a woman sing a song whose opening notes reminded him of a certain old comic song  “Kitty Clover” by one Mister Liston and yet to him the song’s import seemed rather amorous. He was fascinated enough by the melody to have copied it into a sheet and then have it published in his book ‘Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo ‘ (1844) under the title ‘Kashmirian Dancing Girl’s Song’.

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When I first saw that small sheet of music given in G.T. Vigne’s ‘Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo ‘( see my post about nautch girls of Kashmir ), a strange thoughts occurred to me, ‘What song had G.T. Vigne heard that day? Wouldn’y it be nice to some how recreate that tune! Would it sound familiar?’.

With no knowledge of sheet music, I set about doing something about it.

(Sheet for Kashmirian Dancing Girl’s Song given in Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo)

After experimenting with a number of software, I settled with  a software called SharpEye2 that reads sheets from images and converts them to Midi format. The music sheet generated by the software isn’t perfect. Facility for editing the notes is provided but it isn’t very flexible. After tweaking the sheet, the end result looked something like this:

 It isn’t pefect but still good enough.
And here is the sound generated (MP3 converted from Midi format):


Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play



Don’t know about ‘Kitty Clover’ (couldn’t find anything on it) but the opening notes are certainly wonderful and it indeed sounds Kashmiri.
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Enjoy a variation on the song with images of Shalimar Bagh:

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