Tag: immigrant tales

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The Big Bores

The garden dividing A and B blocks was decked up like a gaudy bride. Twinkling fairy lights, tied and twisted over potted plants and tallish trees, blinked into the cool December haze. Chairs had been laid out in a crescent shape under the jamun tree. A sprinkling of idle chatter and laughter enveloped the late evening air.
To prevent the mud from dirtying bare feet, and the ladies’ high-heeled stilettos sinking in, a thick cotton rug had been laid on the ground. Smell of rose incense and aromatic foods permeated the thick winter chill.
‘You call this chilly? Baap re. What would you do in Kashmir then?’
‘Why don’t you just put a rubber stamp on your forehead? Kedar suggested. ‘Razdans, the bores from Kashmir, that way you won’y have to announce it over and over again. In Kashmir this, in Jammu that. Arabian Sea is like toilet water when you compare it to Dal lake, the air in Mumbai is like breathing poisonous gas…’

Kedar was sick of Mrs Razdan’s rants. He had spend the last fifteen minutes in that corner behind the table. and in spite of his resolution not to be rude to elders, he found he couldn’t help himself. He walked off with a flourish, hitching up his trousers and jabbing his fingers int he air, rapsta style. The New Year was a few weeks away, by then he would have got his act together, he promised himself. Besides wasn’t it rude to be as boring as the Razdans? Actually, he decided, as he sauntered off, their boringness had been far worse than his rudeness, so all in all, it was okay.
~ Swapnalok Society: The Good News Reporter (2009) by Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, fiction for young teens about the way television news works. The story is based around happening in a Mumbai urban society where a Kashmiri Pandit family also lives.
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The new crop of Kashmir Pandit immigrants have been in living in these urban settings, away from Kashmir, for more than twenty years now. It’s only natural that we ought now be part of stories coming from these urban centers. Stories which do not revolve around Kashmir and in which a Bhattni just pops up as one of the characters. (It is kind of funny that the clearest example of it should have some from the mind of someone who gave us pop-hit ‘Dole Dole; in year 1995 [youtube]).

Mixed Housing societies have always been good theme for ‘Indian Stories’. We find them in writings of Salman Rushdie and in cinema of Sai Paranjape. The stories often suffer from usual racial stereotype syndrome: Gujrati goes ‘Kemcho’, Tamil goes ‘Aiyyo’, old Parsi goes ‘Dikra’, Marathi doesn’t go ‘Bokmay’, Punjabi doesn’t go ‘Pencho’, Sardarji goes ‘Peg lagao’ and now Kashmiri goes…’Kashmir ye…Kashmir wo’…which of course is boring. 

Yes, we are big bores. Kashmir consumes us. Our world revolves around Dal Lake, Jammu is our moon and Srinagar Venus+Mars. Odd that we can write tomes about a world we no longer inhibit but barely acknowledge the ground beneath our feet. 
The new immigrant Pandits literature still revolves around Kashmir and not about characters living ‘Jamna Paar’. Jaman Paar does not exist. Perhaps it would take us another decade to start writing about the ‘Indian’ characters as we see them. Then maybe we would have some more boring stories to tells.
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Kanakavatsa, the Bihari Monk in Kashmir

14th century Thangka painting via: British Museum 

Kanakavatsa, the legendary figure from Buddhism, one among the sixteen Arahat of Indian origin from Buddha’s time, is believed to have been born in Bihar and lived with his 500 Arahats on the “Saffon Hill” in Kashmir under the patronage of the local King. In the the iconography of Kanakavatsa, a barbarian King is often shown kneeling before him worshipping. In the above image, an “an Indian adorant offers coral” while the ethnicity of Kanakavatsa by his color.

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Ghalib’s letters to his Kashmiri friends


Extracts from ‘Urdu Letters of Mirza Asadu’llah Khan Ghalib’ (1987) by Daud Rahbar
Be it known to you, dear young friend Munshi Shiv Narain, that I had no idea that you were who you truly are. Now that I discover that you are the grandson of Nazir Bansi Dhar, I recognise you as my beloved son. Thus, from now on, if I address you in my letters as “Benevolent and Honored Friend,” it will be a sin. You are undoublty unaware of the close ties between your family and mine. Listen. In the days of Najaf Khan and Hamadani, the father of your paternal grandfather was a constant companion of my maternal grandfather, the late Khwaja Ghhulam Husain Khan. When my maternal grandfather retired, your great-grandfather too unbuckled his belt, quit service, and never accepted employment again. All of this happened before I had reached the age of reason. When I became an adult, I encountered Munshi Bansi Dhar in the constant company of Khan Sahib. The latter initiateed a lawsuit against claimants to his estate of perpetual title, the village of Kaitham, and Munshi Bansi Dhar acted as his attorney in the case. Munshi Sahib and I were about the same age – he may have been a year or so older or younger. We played chess together and became fast and loving friends. It was not unusual for us to be together until midnight. Since his house was not far, I went there whenever I liked. Between their hues and ours, the only intervening buildings were the home of Machhya Randi and two blocks of rented homes owned by my family. Our larger mason is the one which is now owned by Lakhi Chand Seth. The baradari of stone which is joined to the main entrance of this mansion was my sitting-room and lounge. Then there was the mansion known as Ghatya-vali haveli and near Salim Shah’s hovel, another mansion and another adjoining the Kala Mahal, and beyond that there was another block of rented houses called the Gadaryon-vala Katra and then another similar block called the Kashmiran vala Katra. On the roof of one of the houses in his last block, I used to fly kites and we used to have kite matches with Raja Balvan Singh. There was a veteran soldier named Vasil Khan in your family’s employ who used to collect the rents from the tenants of the block of rented houses which belonged to your grandfather.
Keep listening, for I have more to tell. Your grandfather became very wealthy. He purchased extensive farmlands and established himself as a zamindar. He paid between ten and twelve thousand rupees as revenue to the government annually. Did his holdings come into your possession? Write to me in detail telling me what happened to those estates.
Asadullah
Tuesday, October 19, 1858
~ Ghalib’s letter to Munshi Shiv Nara’in Aram
Ghalib’s association with Aram began in 1858 when Ghalib negotiated with him to publish the Dastanbu (Bouquet of Flowers), Ghalib’s account of his experiences during the uprising of 1857 (covering happening between May 11, 1857 and July 31, 1858), after which the two enjoyed a warm correspondence for the next five years. As we learn in this letter, Ghalib had enjoyed the friendship of Aram’s grandfather, Munshi Bansi Dhar, though neither Aram nor Ghalib had apparently thought to make this connection before entering into their own relationship.
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“Exalted Sir,
    Today is Monday, the third of January, 1859. Clouds enveloped the atmosphere near the end of the first quarter of the day. Now it is drizzling and a cold wind is blowing. And I have nothing to drink. Disinterestedly, I have eaten a meal.
December clouds
Flood the horizon;
Yet my clay cup
Has not a drop of wine.
Sad and sorrowful was I sitting when the postman brought your letter. I recognised your personal handwriting on the envelope. This gladdened me. I read the letter. It contained no mention of obtaining my objective. This saddened me.
Tyranny has drive us abroad.
No news from home is happy.
In those low-sprites moments, I said, “Let’s have a chat with His Eminence,” and I began to write even though the letter needed no reply.
…”
~ Ghalib in a letter to his close friend Khwaja Ghulam Ghaus Bekhabar.
Khwaja Ghulam Ghaus Bekhabar (1824-1904). is said to have been descended from Sultan Zainu’l-Abidin Bad Shah, one of the kings of Kashmir. Born in Nepal, Bekhabar was raised and educated in Benaras, finding employment at the age of seventeen under his maternal uncle, Sayyid Muhammad Khan, Mir Munshi to the Lieutenant Governor of the Province of North and West, making his home in Agra, the capitol city of that Province. In 1843, during the regime of Lord Ellenborough, Bekhabar was transferred for a brief period to the Vernacular Secretary’s office at the Governor General’s headquarters. He eventually succeeded his uncle as Mire Munshi on the latter’s retirement in 1885, at which time he moved to Ilahabad where he spent the remaining years of the life.
Bekhabar kept a hospitable table and was a most sociable and entertaining conversationalist.  His home was daily gathering place for many lovers of literature, including his close friend, the poet Miraza Hatim Ali Beg Mihr. Himself a poet and writer of prose in both Persian and urdu, Bekhabar played a major role in the publication of Ghalib’s ‘Ud-i-Hindi’, a selection of the poet’s Urdu prose [ 1868, his letters mostly, something that Aram also wanted to publish around a decade ago. ].
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and in 1849 the first students at Mission School Lahore were of course…


“The Punjab was annexed April 2nd, 1849. The boy King, Rajah Dhulip Singh, was deposed and given an annual al- lowance of 50,000 pounds. He retired as a gentleman to Norfolk, England.

During these months of turmoil and anxiety, the missionary work continued as usual. Soon after the annexation of the Punjab, a letter was received by the missionaries at Lodiana, sent by Dr. Baddely, a Christian surgeon at Lahore, urging them to move on to the capital without delay, assuring them that every encouragement might be expected from the Lawrences and Mr. Montgomery and others. Accordingly the Rev. John Newton and the Rev. Charles W. Forman were appointed by the mission to take up the work of establishing the mission in Lahore. Accompanied by Mrs. Newton, they arrived in Lahore on the 21st of November, 1849.

As the Christian community had urged the establishment of the mission, an appeal was made for financial aid, with the approval of the Board of Administration and the Governor General. In response thereto, the sum of Rs. 4,238 were contributed. A suitable house was secured in the city as a temporary residence. In this house an English school was begun on the 19th of December. It began with three pupils, all being Hindu Kashmiris, two of them having been formerly students in the mission school at Lodiana. The number gradually increased until it became necessary to find more capacious quarters. Happily a soldiers’ chapel built by an English gentleman at his own expense had been placed at the disposal of the mission, and being well adapted to the uses of a school the classes were transferred to it. The number of pupils rapidly increased until, at the end of the year, the attendance amounted to eighty. Of these fifty-five were Hindus and twenty-two Muslims, and three Sikhs. Racially the eighty ranked as Punjabis thirty-eight, Kashmiris three, Bengalis seven, Hindustanis twenty-eight, Afghans three and one Baluch.”

~ ‘Our Missions In India: 1834-1824’ (1926) by E. M. Wherry.

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A rug factory that was in Amritsar


William Sloane arrived in America as an emigrant from a Scottish town famous for weaving carpets and rugs. In 1843, William Sloane along with his younger brother John W. Sloane went on to form a company called W.& J. Sloane, importing rugs and carpets into America and changing the way the rich and famous decorated their homes in that country.
In 1876 at Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, William Sloane noticed that the most popular attractions was the Oriental rugs. He bought the entire collection for a millions dollars and then displayed them at his New York store where it is said they sold ‘like lollipop’. The average price was $10,000 with one Persian masterpiece even selling for $75,000. This was the first time in America that a retail house was selling Oriental Rugs. Looking at this success, soon others jumped into the market but Sloane was still at the top of the game.
In 1882, to maintain his lead, Sloane’s got in touch with a rug manufacturer in Amritsar offering to buy their entire output. The deal was done and Sloane’s was the  become only American retail store with its own Oriental rug manufacturer. 
The manufacturer was Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s Great-grandfather was a Kashmiri migrant shawl weaver, who probably arrived in Punjab at a time when Shawls were in much demand in Europe. But that business died with the end of Franco-Prussian war. Now, the American’s it seemed had arrived just in time. Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company had left the shawl business and moved to carpets in around 1880. While weaving was done in Amritsar, they got material from Kashmir where they maintained another workshop.
It was a mutually beneficial agreement for both the parties. Sloane’s could now give their designs and requirements for rugs tailored for American taste and yet retain Oriental touch as was manufactured in India.
But this design and requirement transferring was easier said than done. The method employed was ingenious but laborious. A design once approved was traced on a huge sheet of graph paper, each square representing a knot in wool. The minute specifications and texture design were appended to the sheet and sent off to Amritsar. In Amritsar, the master weaver, the only one who could read the instructions duly translated in Urdu and intone them to the other workers. It was a painful process, considering that an average rug was 12 x 15 foot and had 3,500,000 hand tied knots, a process that took three to four years. 
This business partnership lasted right until 1948. Then India became Independent, Pakistan arrived and like many other threads, this thread too got severed. Violence engulfed the areas around the newly created borders. Shaikh Gulam Hussun found himself in middle of it all.
On April 8, 1947, Shaikh cabled Sloane’s:
“Thank god we and Swadeshi (a subsidiary wool spinning plant) escaped damage. If no further trouble hope dispatching from Amritsar fifty per cent more yardage than last year.”
The people caught in conflict were yet to grasp the scope of this violence. They were yet to understand how deep the cuts are going to be and how long will the bleeding go on.
Violence soon caught up with Shaikh’s optimism. 
In October Shaikh reported pillaging of Amritsar, the burning and looting of his home and factory. The machinery that survived was requisitioned by the East Punjab Government.
Then in 1948, India and Pakistan had their first war over Kashmir. Shaikh’s luck was finally out, but still he clung to a hope. 
“Owning to various difficulties,” wrote Shaikh with amazing stolidity in January, 1948, “we do not think we will be able to resume out business as quickly as anticipated for now we are cut off from Kashmere. The rumour was that our factory has been confiscated over there.”
That was the end of the story for Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Sloane, on the other hand now started sourcing their material directly from Kashmir.
In ‘The story of Sloane’s’ published by W.& J. Sloane Firm in 1950, we read:
“Thus was this friendly personal and commercial tie finally broken. Some day, it is hoped, Shaikh may re-establish his enterprises in Amritsar; but this is doubtful as all the Mohammedans, who were the weavers, have fled. the remaining Hindus do not weave. Sloane’s is now receiving its hand-woven rugs from Syrinagar, in Kashmere.”
Young hands at Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s factory, Amritsar. 1915.
Photograph: ‘The Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces, the Punabb, Kashmir, Sind, Rajputana and Central India: Their History, People, Commerce and Natural Resources’ (1920) by Somerset Playne
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First Kashmiri Bible and the translation affairs, 1821


The first meeting of Kashmiri language and English language happened through a translation of Bible, in Bengal. In 1821, missionary William Carey of Serampore, who spent a most of his life producing translations of Bible into various Indian languages, brought out the Kashmeere Holy Bible. Carey is known to have used native experts for most of his translations, but the names of his Kashmiri helpers isn’t known. What is known is that the script used for this book was Sharda.

A snippet of Kashmiri Bible in Sharda Script
[An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures, Volume 2.
By Thomas Hartwell Horn. 1836]
Update [Transcription of the lines by Mrinal Kaul: “yima lookh anigati andar bihith a’yes timav…………dochas (?) hiy kaayaayi andar behan vaalyen emad sapa (?).“
Which I believe would probably mean Matthew 4:16: The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.]

Kashmiri was a new language for English people. Mistakes were bound to happen. And the genuineness of the translation was yet to be tested. A mistake had in fact been made. They were soon to realize that perhaps Sharda was the wrong script for reaching out to Kashmiri people. 
An entry dated July 2nd, 1938, in journals of Rev.John Newton of Lodiana (Foreign Missionary Chronicle, 1838), we find following curious entry:
“Two parties of Kashmrii brahmans who live in Amritsar, (120 miles from Lodiana) came this morning for books. I was gratified to find they were able to read and understand Dr. Carey’s Kashmiri Testament. Ever since we came to Lodiana, we have been looking for some one who could read this work, and give us some opinion of its merits; but such a one has not hitherto been found. The fact seems to be that four sixth of the Kashmiris , or more are Mohammedans; these are accustomed to no written character but the Persian or Arabic. Those who have adhered to the ancient faith of the nation, retain likewise the old written character, which is based on the Sanscrit. There are very few of them in Lodiana, and comparatively few, I suppose at any place. Since they are so small fraction of the nation, the Kashmiri Testament can be used by a much smaller number of people, than if it had been come out in a Persian dress. The merits of the translation I could not learn from the men who were here this morning, though for the most part they made out the true meaning of what they read.”
Kashmiri language was to befuddle the missionaries for quite sometime. The confusion it caused can be gauged from the fact that a grammar for Panjabi published around the time was confused by most for a Kashmiri grammar. They obviously needed vocabularies, glossaries and dictionaries of authentic Kashmiri. 
Strangely enough, the first of these grammars and vocabularies were brought out not using the help of Kashmiri living in Kashmir, but the immigrant Kashmiris of Punjab. 
*The first grammar and vocabulary was brought out by Mr. M.P. Edgeworth of the Bengal Civil Service, and it was based on the dialect of shawl-weavers of Ludhiana, through the assistance of one Meer Saf-u-deen, ‘a respectable Syud of that place’.  The second help for understanding Kashmiri language was just a grammar by one Major R.Leech, C.B.. This one too was brought out with the help of Kashmiri weavers of Ludhiana. 
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* Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1867). 
Vocabularies, Glossaries and Dictionaries of Kashmiri Language

M.P. Edgeworth (1841), [ref]

Major R.Leech (1844) [link]

H.S. Godwin Austin (1866) [collected]
L.B. Bowring (1866) []
William J. Elmsie (1872)
[Link]
A Grammar of the Kashmīrī Language: As Spoken in the Valley of Kashmīr, North India 
by Thomas Russell Wade (1888)
[Link]

[Also to his credit goes: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration, &c …. (in the Cashmírí language). Published by the Punjab Christian Knowledge Society. First edition. Amritsar; Printed at the Safir-i-Hind Press, . . . 1884.]

Kashmiri Persian Dictionary (Sonti Pandit, 1893)
Kashmiri-Sanskrit Dictionary by Ishwara Kaula. Incomplete.

A Dictionary of Kashmiri Language (1916-1932, 4 parts) by G.A. Grierson based on material by Ishwara Kaul. [Online Word Search Engine, Part 1]

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A Strange Case of Beauty, 1907


At the beginning of 20th century, it seems, there were so many Kashmiris living in Punjab that if a random photographer went out to shoot a random Punjabi woman there was a good chance he would come back with a random shot of Kashmiri woman.

The following postcard dated 1907 (Bombay) and captioned ‘A model of Panjab Beauty’ is probably the strangest curio in my collection.

But, it obviously needed some fixing…

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Kashmir in Satyajit Ray’s Art

To get the feel of the era right for Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977), among other things, the art director used authentic antique Kashmiri shawls from private collection. The art director was Bansi Chandragupta. If Satyajit Ray is considered one of the greatest Indian film directors of all time, his regular art director Bansi Chandragupta can be considered one of the best and pioneering art directors in India.

Bansi Chandragupta was born in 1924 in Sailkot. When still a child his family moved to Srinagar where he did his basic education. In 1942, in midst of ‘Quit-India’ movement he moved to Bengal and was introduced to Satyajit Ray as a painter. Along with Ray he was one of the founders of Calcutta film society. In years to come, Bansi Chandragupta went on to be Ray’s ‘Kashmiri’ friend who helped him in creation of almost all his cinematic masterpieces.

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Portrait of a Kashmiri Girl
Bansi Chandragupta
Early 20th century 
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Fire on the Mountain, Anita Desai, 1977

An old woman living in a colonial house on a hill in Kasauli would let no one enter her little paradise – a hard won lonely life after a ages spent serving a husband, many children and many grand-children. She is a recluse. She wants no one. Not even her great-grand child. But then the child arrives. A sickly young girl who turns out to be just as much of recluse. The child doesn’t want anyone to enter she little paradise, a child’s world half lived in fantasies. A mind that seeks little adventures like looking for berries, snakes, jackals and ghosts in the peaceful loneliness offered by the hills. The old woman realizes while they are similar, there is a difference too, while her reclusiveness in self-imposed, the child was just born into it.  The old woman starts changing, she now wants to enter the child’s world and share her own world with her. She tries, but fails. The child wants no one. The old woman falls back to the age old stratagem of ‘Nani Ki Kahani‘ to try and reach out. She weaves stories of her life by taking snippets of inspirations from travelogue of Marco Polo, in desperation she makes her own father a reflection of Marco Polo who travelled far into the mysterious lands of East. The child’s mind is stirred and old woman senses a relation blossoming. She tries harder. Nanda Kaul tells her great-grand daughter Raka about the paradise where she was born, she tells her grand exaggerated stories about Kashmir.  Strange stories about a house with a private zoo and backdoors that opened into flooded rivers. The child listens. But…

Raka’s words did not reflect the poetry of this vision. They were blunt and straight. ‘Why did you come here then,’ she asked, ‘instead of going back to Kashmir?’
Nanda Kaul simply shook her head and seem to wander in a field of grey thoughts, alone. ‘One does not go back,’ she said eventually. ‘No, one doesn’t go back. One might just as well try to become young again.’

The child soon catches on to the tricks and again retreats back into her world while Nanda Kaul’s world suffers another intrusion. Ila Das, a childhood friend whose shrill voice even sends birds into frenzy, arrives at the house, this paradise of recluses. She is a recluse of another kind, she has no choice, she has no one. And the friend she has doesn’t find it in her to offer her company, even though in moment of lapse Nanda Kaul does almost end up inviting Ila Das to stay with her. The moment passes. Ila Das leaves the house. It is with her leaving that the world of this little reclusive paradise, its neatness, its sweet lies and deceptions, its inhabitants, and the fableistic preambles of the story itself, get violently swallowed by the real world. Like by fire, like by life. And the mountains go up in flames.

The book won Anita Desai Sahitya Akademi Award and Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1978. This was the first time Anita Desai visited Kashmir. Just a year ago, she had written a book called ‘Cat on a Houseboat’ (1976) for children. That one was about a cat (again a reclusive animal) that goes to Kashmir for a holiday.

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Buy Fire on the Mountain from Flipkart.com

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Shakyashri – the Great Kashmiri Pandit of Tibetans





An undertaking accomplished without analysis, 
But who would regard it as wise? 
After worms have eaten, 

Although a letter may appear, they are not skilled writers.


~ Sakya Pandita, student of Shakyashri 

http://nicbommarito.com/translation/sakyalegshe/sakyalegshe.pdf

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…
“Jagadhala, name of a place in Orissa where Sakya Sri Bhadra of Kasmir had taken refuge, after his flight from Odantapuri vihara when that place was sacked bv Bakhtyar Khilji in 1202 A.D.35”

The Indian Historical Quarterly – Volumes 30-31 – Page 144, 1954

books.google.co.in/books?id=A98BAAAAMAAJ

According to Taranatha, at Odantapuri the vihar was turned into a Tajik fort and pandits fled to other countries.9 Sakyasri went to Jagar- dala (Jagaddala) of Odivisa, i.e. in Orissa, and from there, three years after, to Tibet. Ratnaraksita went to …


Studies in Asian history: proceedings – Page 46 


books.google.co.in/books?id=2lrRAAAAMAAJ 


Indian Council for Cultural Relations 1969

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taranatha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikrama%C5%9B%C4%ABla_University

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhtiyar_Khilji

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Shakyashri Bhadra (1127­1225), whose immense learning was incomparable even in
India, who was head of the famed dharma universities of Vikramashila and Nalanda, and  who was continually blessed with visions of the mother of the buddhas, Arya Tara, was
the last of the great Indian panditas to visit Tibet. He is somehow less well­known to  Westerners than his two predecessors, perhaps because, unlike them, he did not compose
a major text of his own; yet his impact was immense. In Tibet, the name Shakyashri Bhadra, or Kha­che Panchen (‘the Mahapandita of Kashmir’), was known in the gompas of every tradition across the entire Himalayan plateau.

At Nyang, northeast of Sakya in Tsang, he was visited by the 23 year­old Khon lama and
future ‘Sakya Pandita’, Kunga Gyaltsen, whose knowledge of Sanskrit greatly impressed
the mahapandita. The descendants of Sachen had already inherited a vast ocean of
dharma, unrivalled by other institutions, of which the foremost were the tantric teachings
of the great lotsawas Bari, Drokmi and Mal.Through his studies with the mahapandita
and the junior panditas, the young Khon’s learning was increased yet more with works of
sutra, tantra and, importantly, classical secular subjects which were previously unknown3
in Tibet, brought from the now destroyed universities of India. Sapan returned to Sakya
to continue his studies with Sugatasri, one of the learned assistant panditas.

In 1214, after ten years in Tibet, he set out on the road back through Gungtang and Ngari
in the west of Tibet. Before departing Tibet, he donated his considerable remaining gold
to the astounded Trophu Lotsawa who had accompanied him that far. After a long but unmolested journey across the Himalayas by the now very aged mahapandita, he arrived  back in the luscious valley of his Kashmiri homeland, not seen since his youth. There, he
restored many viharas and greatly increased the teachings, as the sun of dharma was
setting on the country of the Aryas. Shakyashri Bhadra passed into nirvana in 1225. His
life was one of remarkable accomplishments, and great historical significance. For the
fortunate followers of Shri Sakya, the blessings of Shakyshri Bhadra endure in the precious jenangs and sadhanas held by contemporary Sakya masters.

http://www.dechen.org/resources/pdfs/shakyashri.pdf

Śākyaśrībhadra was born in Daśobharā, in Kashmir, in 1127 (some sources have or 1145). He had a brother named Buddhacandra. At the age of ten he studied grammar under the brahman Lakṣmīdhara. At the age of twenty-three, in 1149, he was ordained by Sukhaśrībhadradeva who gave him the name Subhadra.
At the age of thirty he went to Magadha where he received initiations from Ṥāntākaragupta, Daśabala, and Dhavaraka.
When Śākyaśrī was seventy-seven he was invited to Tibet by Tropu Lotsāwa Rinchen Sengge (khro phu lo tsA ba rin chen seng+ge, b. 1173) who went to the Chumbi Valley in search of him; they met in a town called Vaneśvara. Śākyaśrī was initially disinclined to accept the offer, as Tropu Lotsāwa was, at the time, quite young. Tropu Lotsāwa was able to ask questions on doctrine to each of the paṇḍitas in his retinue, and the following discussion impressed Śākyaśrī sufficiently to convince him to go to Tibet, arriving in 1204.
He was accompanied by several Indian paṇḍitas: Sugataśrī, an expert in Madhyamaka and Prajñāpāramitā; Jayadatta, in Vinaya; Vibhūticandra, in grammar and Abhidharma; Dānaśīla, in logic; Saṅghaśrī, in Candavyākaraṇa; Jīvagupta, in the books of Maitreya; Mahābodhi, in the Bodhicaryāvatāra; and Kālacandra in the Kālacakra.

http://www.treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/sakyasribhadra/2810

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Kha che pan chen (‘The Great Kashmiri Pandit“; Kha che, which literally means ‘big mouth‘, being the appellation by which the Tibetans refer to Kashmiris and Moslems). Kha che pan chen spent the years between 1204 and 1214 preaching
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 The Royal Chapel (Chogyel Lakhang) depicts clay images of the ancient kings. Images of Atisha, Kamalashila, Padmasambhava, Shantarakshita, Manjushri, eleven-faced Avalokiteshwara,Vajrapani and Shakyashri of Kashmir are also seen in this chapel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palcho_Monastery

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kha che – 1) Moslem. 2) Kashmir. 3) person from Kashmir, Kashmiri. 4) saffron
kha che skyes – saffron [lit. the produce of Kashmir]
kha che gur gum – Kashmiri saffron
kha che mchog – saffron [lit. the chief article of Kashmir]
kha che ‘dus bzang – Hinayana proponent
kha che pan chen – the great scholar of Kashmir, Shakya Shri
kha che paN chen – the great scholar of Kashmir, Shakya Shri
kha che pan chen zla ba mngon dga’ – Kachey Panchen Dawa Ngön-Ga. Same as {kha che pan chen}
kha che pan chen lugs – the tradition / system of {kha che pan chen}
kha che paN chen lugs – the tradition / system of {kha che pan chen}
kha che ba – syn {kha che bye brag smra ba}
kha che bye brag smra ba – the Kashmiri sub-school of Vaibhasheka
kha che bye smra – {kha che bye brag smra ba}
kha che dbang thang – wealth, possessions, property
kha che yul – syn {kha che lung pa} Mohammedan country, Kashmir
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‘grel pa zla zer – by the Kashmiri pandita {zla ba mngon pa dga’ ba} a commentary on {slob dpon dpa’ bo’i yan lag brgyad pa}
tsong kha brgyad bcu pa – Eighty Tsongkhas, eighty verses in praise of Tsongkhapa by the Kashmiri Pandita Punya Shri

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He: Sakya Pandita


A Treasury of Aphoristic Jewels: The Subhāṣitaratnanidhi of Sa Skya Paṇḍita in Tibetan and Mongolian

Sa-skya Paṇḍi-ta Kun-dgaʼ-rgyal-mtshan, James E. Bosson, 1969
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