Some more vintage photographs from ‘Kashmir in Sunlight & Shade: a Description of the Beauties of the Country, the Life, Habits and Humour of its Inhabitants, and an Account of the Gradual but Steady Rebuilding of a Once Down-trodden People’ by Cecil Earle Tyndale-Biscoe (1922).
A Winter scene by Pandit Vishwanath.
Back waters of Dal
Floating Gardens of Dal.
Diving from the old school.
Dussehra sequence from Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar The Clown wasn’t mere magic realism.
These proverbs and their meaning have been taken from the remarkable book ‘A Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings’ by James Hinton Knowles (1885).
Some have wives like a shady chinar, let us go under it and cool ourselves.
Some have wives like the bitch at the door, let us go and get our legs bitten.
Some have wives always in confusion, and some have wives like bad thatch upon the roof.
– Lal Ded
Salman Rushdie used the first line from this proverb in Salimar the Clown but didn’t trace the line’s orgin to Lal Ded.*
2.
Panah san kheyih buni tah jits san kheyih huni
He will eat the chinar tree- leaves and all, and he will eat the dog with the skin.
A regular cannibal, not satisfied with enough.
3.
Preyaghuch buni nah thadan nah lokan nah badan.
The chinar of preyag neither become taller, nor shorter, nor bigger.
A poor sickly child, who does not grow or become fat.
An explanation about the Chinar tree of prayag that can be found in the book:
This chinar tree is in the middle of a little island just big enough to pitch your tent on, in the midst of the Jhelum river by the village Shadipur. The Hindus have consecrated the place, and a Brahman is to be seen twice every day paddling himself along in a little boat to the spot, to worship and to make his offerings.
This chinar tree at Shadipur is believed to be the (sangam) confluence of rivers Indus (Sind) and Jhelum (Vitasta) and is called `Prayag’ by Kashmiri pandits – alluding to Prayag that is Allahabad where Yamuna and Ganga meet up. Kashmiri Pandits used to immerse the ashes and remains of their dead at this spot.
[More about Chinar and Kashmir here ]
[Image on left: The Chinar tree at Shadipore in a photograph by Fred Bremner. 1905 ]
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*The poets wrote that a good wife was like a shady boonyi tree, a beautiful chinar – kenchen renye chai shihiji boonyi – but in the comman parlance the imagery was different. The word for the entrance to a house was braand; stone was kany. for comical reasons the two words were sometimes used, joined together, to refer to one’s beloved bride: braand-kany, “the gate of stone.” Let’s just hope, Shalimar the clown thought but did not say, that the stones don’t come smashig down on our heads.
– Salman Rushdie trying to work linguistic acrobatics in Shalimar the Clown. Although a deft performer of the art, his text here seems to stay flat on trampoline, or so it may seem to a Kashmiri reader. The jump from ‘Boonyi’ to ‘Braand’ to “the gate of stone” seems disjoint.
A newly wed women was often referred to as Braand-kany. The imagery it is supposed to invoke is that the woman is the base of the house and the family. A Braand-Kany actually consists of a small stone stairway that leads to the entrance of the house. If the stones in this stairway were too loose, ill-fitted or just too slippers, often, passage to the inside of the house could become quite hazardous for the visitors. And the visitors were to remeber this house for its bad Braand-kany, a bad reflection on its inmates.
The sword was invented by Jamshed, the first of monarchs and its terror and majesty are greater than those of all other weapons. It is for this reason that when a kingdom has been taken by force of arms, it is said to have been taken by the sword.
As to the different kinds of swords there are many sorts: Chini, Rusi, Rumi, Firangi, Shahi, Hindi and Kashmiri. Of these the Hindi sword is the finest, and of all Hindi swords, that known as the mawj-idarya, the waves of the sea, is the most lustrous.
The bow was the pre-eminent weapon given by Jibrail to Adam in Paradise. It will never be superseded in this world or the next and in Paradise the blessed will practise archery.When choosing a bow you should try to acquire above all others the mountain bow of Ghazna. It’s made of horn and its aim is straight.
The Indian bow – the kaman-i-hindani-is made of cane. Its arrows do not travel very far but at a short distance it inflicts a very bad wound. The head of the arrow used with it is usually barbed and if lodged inside flesh, the shaft is liable to break off. This leaves the head, which is usually poisoned, in the flesh. It is impossible to extract.
The bows of central Asia use horse hide as the bow string. It is poor material. Use instead a bowstring of rhinoceros hide, for it will snap asunder the bow strings of all other bows to which the sound reaches whether these are made of the hide of wild ox, the horse, or even the flanks of a young nilgai.
– Fakhr-i-Mudabbir’s Adabal-harb Wa’l -Shaj’a , 13th century Military manual dedicated to Sultan Shams al-din Iltutumish, the first sovereign Muslim ruler of Delhi. Found these lines in William Dalrymple’s wonderful little book City of Djinns: A Year In Delhi.
When I read Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, the idea of Boonyi practicing archery in the quite of a kashmiri village seemed odd. Not any more. The lines from that 13th century Military manual underline the significance of the hung showdown between Shalimar the clown carrying a knife in hand and India metamorphised into Kashmira carrying bow and arrow, lying in wait, in the final pages of the novel.
She drew an arrow from her quiver and and took up her stance. The door of the night-black room was opening, and her stepfather was coming in, knife in hand, neither the knife that had killed her mother nor the knife that killed her father but a third, virginal blade, its silent steel intended just for her. She was ready for him.
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children had a showdown, The Satanic Verses also had a showdown, and these showdowns had an outcome – some one died, someone lost and someone won, but his Shalimar the Clown, significantly, had a hung showdown.
Dussehra sequence from Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar The Clown wasn’t mere magic realism.
This chinar tree at Shadipur is believed to be the (sangam) confluence of rivers Indus (Sind) and Jhelum (Vitasta) and is called `Prayag’ by Kashmiri pandits – alluding to Prayag that is Allahabad where Yamuna and Ganga meet up. Kashmiri Pandits used to immerse the ashes and remains of their dead at this spot. 
