Nund Rishi. 14-15th century. This popular image Nund Rishi comes from a manuscript dated 17th century and titled “Kashmiri Kalaam”.*
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The Mullas flourish on money
fests
These Sheikhs like honey
stick to wealth
The sufis half-naked
do no work
yet, enjoy
unrepentant
many scrumptious meals
None pursue knowledge,
It’s all just another game
these selves
unrestrained
Seen them lately?
Catch them live
Try this old trick:
Announce a grand feast,
from pulpit
now watch
This Mulla run to the Masjid
“Run sick Mulla! Run!
Run to your Masjid.”
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*According to Kashmir Research Biannual Vol 1 No 1 P N Pushp, 1960. The painting comes from private collection of Hakim Sayyid Shah Sahib of Astan-e-Pain, Kashtawar. Water colors in Kangri with Mughal touches.
“Whatever exists in whatever Mandala of the earth, exists in its quintessence in Kashmira, Whatever exists in Kashmira Mandala, exists within the waters of the Vitasta.” —Nilmatapurana, Story of Nila Naga, 6th-9th century AD
The story of Kashmir usually begins with its birth in water: Gods and Supermen emptying a primordial lake to let humans inhabit it and granting them rights to the land and its riches. The story was retold in various ways in Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic eras of Kashmir’s history. Though the story gradually changed with each retelling, the belief that life came out of water remained. Dwellers of the valley saw Kashmir’s water bodies, the rivers and the springs as the source of life. The change of seasons and the dramatic impact it had on environment were all too obvious to the valley’s dwellers. They marveled that their valley brimmed with beautiful life in the harsh Himalayan environment. Out of this awe of nature and its transformational powers came their first metaphors.
When matters of morality and ethics were given a thought, when earliest oral stories were put into text, much like the people in other parts of the world, like people living in other mandalas, the people of valley put their words into the mouth of animals and let them talk like wise sages. People, their lives still tied to a wild world over which they didn’t have full control, understood and appreciated these primitive literary devices. Until a few decades ago, an average Indian child’s introduction to wildlife were the stories from Panchatantra. It was a work that made the young mind conscious of the not so otherness of other beings on this planet. One of the primary sources of Panchatantra, as it is available to us now, is Tantrakhyayika, a work of 11th century prolific Kashmirian poet Kshemendra.
The stories and the storywriters from Kashmir became travellers. From pit-dwellers man had evolved into a modern man, an explorer of text and world. Stories now were intertwined in languages from various distant land and yet the metaphors derived from nature remained. 11th-century Kashmiri poet Bilhana was born in a rural Kashmiri village Khonamuh about 15 kilometres south of Srinagar. The English translation of his love verses, Caurapâñcâśikâ, are quoted extensively in John Steinbeck’s Great-depression era American novel Cannery Row (1945), In his work Vikramankadevacharita, an eulogy dedicated to Western Chalukyan king Vikramaditya VI, the poet gives us a description of Khonamuh, a birth place of ancient legends, some say even of Brihatkatha the lost work that forms the source of Somadeva’s 11th century work Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of streams of story), the pieces from which can even be found in Arabian nights and in writing of Salman Rushdie. About his birth place place Bilhana writes (trs. Georg Bühler):
“What shall I sing of that spot, the ancient home of wonderful legends, the sportive embellishment of the bosom of Himalaya? One part bears the saffron in its native loveliness, the other the grape, pale like a cut of juicy sugarcane from Sarayu’s bank. […] When (Bilhana) took from Kashmir the pure lore of all Sastras, he, forsooth, made the qualities of the snowy mountains his own. Else, how could he, when angered, have reduced, in every land, the faces of disputants to the likeness of lotuses blighted by hoar-frost?”
In these lines not only do we find one of the earliest description of a Kashmiri village but also the way the metaphors born in Kashmiri’s unique eco-system continued to be employed by a writer born in Kashmir and living as a immigrant in mainland where he was picking up new metaphors of a distant land where Sarayu was the source of life and metaphors. The influence of water, of rivers and springs on human life was too immense for the writers to ignore.
When the dwellers of the valley chose to tell their history, poetry was the medium and river the metaphor. So, the 12th century poet Kalhana titled his work Rajatarangini or ‘The River of Kings’. We read about formation of new cities after humankind’s triumph over unruly rivers, giving order to chaos. It tells us “that during the reign of Avantivarman (855 AD-883 AD), one Surya engineered alterations in course of rivers to control frequent floods” and “made the streams of Indus and Jhelum flow according to his will, like a snake-charmer his snakes.” River was a divine serpent that man had finally managed to master. Or, so he thought.
Literature produced in Kashmir, till then, was mostly in Sanskrit. But there is evidence to suggest that people in the Valley were multilingual. It was an ideal environment for a new language to emerge. In Rajatarangini, we hear the first echo of this new language. The line ‘Rang’assa Helu dinna’ (village Helu be given to Ranga) by a Domba singer named Ranga, around 10th century, is the first written record of spoken Kashmiri language.
The story of the birth of modern Kashmiri literature begins much later with the arrival of mystic poet Lal Ded (Granny Lalla) in early14th century just as Islam made its first appearance in Kashmir. However, Lal Ded’s life story was first written as late as 16th century and that too in Persian chronicles. In the intermediate two centuries, Kashmiri language was born out of oral traditions of ‘sayings’. Lal Ded narrated in a format that came to be known as vakhs, literally “spoken words”. In her words too, the story of Kashmir goes back to water (and would probably end in water?).
trayi nengi sarah sar’e saras
aki nengi sars arshes jay
haramokha Kausara akh sum saras
sati nengi saras shunakar
(Three times do I remember a lake overflowing. Once do I remember seeing in the firmament the only existing place. Once do I remember seeing a bridge from Haramukh to Kausar. Seven times do I remember seeing the whole world a void.)
This collection of her vakhs was translated to English by Nilla Cram Cook, an American linguist and a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and published in The way of the Swan.
In her vakhs, Lal Ded was reimagining the Valley. She was weaving metaphysical ideas with objects in physical world, a literary exercise that had fascinated the Kashmiri Trika poet-philosophers of yore. Lal Ded’s words were often cryptic and yet the common folk followed them. Take for example the lines:
It is a lake so tiny that in it a mustard seed finds no room.
Yet from that lake everyone drinks water.
And into it do gazelles, jackals, rhinoceroses, and sea-elephants
Keep falling, falling, almost before they have time to become born
Lal Ded seems to be describing a karmic play in which all beings on earth come from the same source, a source that is inconsequential and infinite at the same time. She holds the attention of Kashmiris by mentioning familiar objects like gazelles and jackals and sets their imagination afire by mentioning the unfamiliar: rhinoceroses and sea-elephants. But why does she mention rhinoceros, an animal most of her listeners must have never seen? What are sea-elephants and what do people nestled in the Himalayas know of them? The lines, in fact, are a riddle from Lal Ded whose simple answer is: mother’s teats.
Kashmiri, for centuries, was an oral language and Lal Ded’s saying survived in popular parlance because her vakhs were passed on from generation to generation, as riddles for children. Though Lal Ded presented her personal experiences and thoughts in cryptic manner, her advice to people was always lucid:
Don but such apparel as will cause the cold to flee.
Eat but so much food as will cause hunger to cease.
O Mind! devote thyself to discernment of the Self and of the Supreme,
And recognise thy body is but food for forest crows.
This idea of a moderate life was extended and built upon by her spiritual and literary inheritor, Nund Rishi. Born in Kaimuh village of Kashmir in 1375(/7) AD to a weaver family, Nund Rishi’s sayings uttered in a format called Shruk, were to become the moist soil on which the Kashmiri language later bloomed. Love of nature, trees and animals was going to be one of the main teachings of this mystic poet and of the rishis that followed him. These teachings still form the core of environmental concerns of a common Kashmiri.
It is not uncommon to still hear some Kashmiri utter Nund Rishi’s words of advice: Ann Poshi Teli Yeli Van Poshan (Food shall last till forests last) This saying, in fact, is the first instance of a Kashmiri uttering environmental concerns. While most of Nund Rishi’s literary predecessors described Kashmir as a land of abundant natural beauty with ever-flowing rivers and great garden retreats, Nund Rishi’s environmentalism seems all too sudden and dramatic. To understand it, we have to understand the era in which his sayings gained eager ears.
Shivara’s Third Rajatarangini suggests that 13th-14th century was a period of not just political and religious unrest but also a period of intense growth in terms of urban population and economy. New cities and towns cropped up in Kashmir. Most of these were at the spots where modern towns and cities of Kashmir are still expanding. This urbanisation probably started during Lal Ded’s time. In one of her vakhs she tells us:
“My wooden bow shoots
only arrows of grass
This metropolis finds
only an inept carpenter”
Lal Ded compares the helpless imperfectness of human body to an ugly metropolis (Razdan’e) designed by a greedy human mind.
By the time of Nund Rishi, this urbanisation had intensified. Houses, bridges, shrines, all were made of wood. Even Kashmir’s crafts depended on wood and animals. All this could only mean an additional strain on Kashmir’s ecology. It was during this era that Nund Rishi, also known as of Sheikh Noor-ud-din, preached the need for preserving nature to rural agrarian people who could easily relate to the metaphors he employed.
During this turbulent era, Nund Rishi gave Kashmiris an ominous vision of future:
Dear Nasar,
listen to the words of Guru
The crown of hog shall bear
a crest of peacock
River Vyeth shall run dry
sewage drains overflow
Then you shall see
the chaotic Simians rule.
While in Lal Ded’s sayings the criticism of orthodox religious establishment of Brahmins was sharp, her silence on the orthodoxy of ‘mausulas’ (‘Muslims’ of Pandit Shrivara) is perhaps understandable, that particular orthodoxy was not yet primal at the source of power, and it was not her concern. This criticism came only after her time, when the religion of the state completely changed, it comes from sayings of Nund Rishi. In the above given verses, he presents a caricature of a muslim priest, a Mulla.
Interestingly, the only oft quoted clue to Nund Rishi from Jonaraja’s Dvitīyā Rājataraṅginī is about arrest of a certain popular Mulla/Moulvi Noorud Din during the time of Ali Shah (Zain-ul-Abidin’s elder brother) time for being a rebel.
‘Life Sketch of Laleshwari – A Great Hermitess of Kashmir’
The Indian Antiquary
November, 1921
This work came after George Grierson and Lionel D. Barnett published ‘Lalla Vakyani’ (collected primarily from one Dharam Dasa Darwesh of village Goosh, near Baramulla) in 1920 which introduced the sayings of Lal Ded to western world [available here]. Anand Koul didn’t give the source of this life sketch but it can safely be assumed to be based on the lore popular among Kashmiri Pandits. In this work, he also mentioned collection some additional saying of Lal Ded which are not available in ‘Lalla Vakyani’ of Grierson and Barnett. These he published much later in 1930, offering 33 additonal sayings of Lal Ded.
Some additions to the Lallavakyani
(The Wise Saying of Lal Ded)
The Indian Antiquary
June, 1930
I have complied both the articles into a simple pdf and the works are now easily accessible here:
The Indian Antiquary, in three parts in October 1929, December 1929 and February 1930.
This was the first time someone had presented an English translation of Nund Rishi’s Nurnama. The life story of Nund Rishi is interspersed with accounts from Pandit lore, bringing in an undercurrent of a conflict that extends into metaphysical space where legacies of the saints too gradually will end up fuelling conflict.
What we get is typical Kashmiri play: eulogize mystic sayings and yet not miss a chance to indulge in childish game of one-upmanship over whose saint had a bigger halo. It’s a pattern that is now all too set in all such writings on these topics.
The three articles are combined together and available here:
When Kashmiris wanted to burn someone, they would often choose Mansur. Burning of Persian Sufi Mansur Al-Hallaj (c. 858 – March 26, 922) in Baghdad, was one of the most common idioms in Kashmiri sufi poetry.
If Lal Ded is considered the beginning of Kashmiri poetry, even in some of the lines attributed to her, we find Mansur. And Mansur is there in lines of Nund Rishi:
Koran Paraan Paraan kuna mudukh Koran Paraan Paraan kun gai suur Koran Paraan Paraan Zind kith ruzukh Koran Paraan Paraan dodh Mansur
Why didn’t you die listening to Koran
How many turned to ashes listening to Koran
How did you live listening to Koran
Listening to Koran, Mansoor went ablaze
The same lines are sung by Pandits as vakh of Lal Ded replacing Koran with Gita. [listen]
In fact in Abdul Wahab Shaayak’s Taareekh-e-Kashmir (1756), Lal Ded is called as Mansuur-al-Haaj’s sister. [*Political content in Vakhs of Lal Ded by R.L. Bhat]
A leaf from an illustrated manuscript on poetry, Kashmir, 19th century. via: christies.com.
The scene depicts the burning and crucification of Mansur al-Hallaj.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was Kashmir. This was beginning with God and the duty of every faithful monk would be to repeat every day with chanting humility the one never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted. But we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil.
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Aassi aiys ta asi aasav Aassi dur kur patu-vath Shivas sari na zyon ta marun Ravus sori na atu-gath!
We did live in the past and we will be in future also: From ancient times to the present, we have activated this world. Just as the sun rises and sets, as a matter of routine, The immanent Shiva will never be relieved of birth and death!
~ Lal Ded
That Lalla of Padmanpore, who had drunk the fill of divine nectar; She was undoubtedly an avatar of ours. O God! grant me the same spritual power.
~ Nund Reshi
Mohammad-radiates light all around Pujari lost his wits, While offering flowers, Iswara showered rain, Come, let us blow the Shankh around Sankara. Mohammad-radiates light all around.
~ Ahad Zarger
What do we accomplish? by coming and going, From one Janama (birth) to another? I think nothing. the way out is ‘So-ham-Soo’ (I am thou). Explore, Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara, They are all-pervading, the manifest. Shall thou bear the reality? When it dawns upon thou?
~Shah Ghafoor
Shastras, I have explored, I- the Rahim Sahib, am wearing around, A Shastra myself, For Shastra is the crown of believers.
~ Rahim Sahib
Dew radiates brightness all around, Atma (Soul) cannot get out of transmigration, Siva, O Shah Qalandar, resembles none.
~ Shah Qalandar
Like a yogi I postured myself In the solitude of vana (jungle), And reduced my sharer (body) to ashes, In the process of Prana-Abhyas
~ Asad Parray
Rig Veda, Yajer Veda, Sam Veda, Athar Veda My revered guru (teacher) endowed me With these four Vedas, And gave upto me, Apparels of a yogi and gyana
~ Shamas Faqir
Kur Batus Peth Zoo Fida Qudoos Gojwari, Az Timai Kathe Yaad Paeyu Waen; Reach Sirij Kakan Mussalman Gobrae Greinz, Dil Tithai Paet Mila naeyu Pana Waen
“It is for a Bata (Kashmiri Pandit) that Abdul Qudoos Gojwari laid his life; today you (Hindus and Muslims) should remember these events for togetherness. And it was Rajkak (birbal Dhar’s son) who treated Muslims as his own children; today, you should seek union of hearts as you had done then.”
~ Mahjoor
Kiyaah kara paanchan dahan ta kahan Yim yath leji wokshun kareth gai Yikiwoti samahan akisey rai lamahan Kovi maali ravihey khan gaav
(What can I do with these fives, tens and elevens? Who spoiled the broth? I wish they would unite And would not be lost in wilderness)
~Shiekh Nooruddin Noorani
Gani kar paanis awlaadas Hani hani maaz traav deryaavas Patciye man panun kerzzen nihaar Kaafar sapdith korum Iqraar
Cut into pieces your own child; And throw his flesh in the river If you like it, have it as breakfast. I became an infidel to mould myself to become a faithful of God
~ Abdul Ahad Zargar
Thatha chha ashqini tsanji tehrunuey ratci ratci matci maaz khuon ye lo Pannuy khoon gatchi tresi kani chonuyey Suy gatci tcaangi zaalunyey lo Pannuy khoon gatci tresi kani chonuyey Suy gatci tcaagni zaalunyey lo tami key gaashi gatci yaar praznunyey Ratci ratci matci maaz khuonye lo
(It is not easy to face a onslaught of love, You shall have to eat your own flesh, And drink your blood to quench your thirst, And burn it to light a lamp; You can then recognize you’re beloved under the shine of that light, First, eat up flesh from your wrist)
~ Momin Sahib
Kaafer-e-Ishqam musalamaani maraa darkaar neist Har rag-e-jaan taar gashta haajab-e-zunnaar neist
(I am infidel of love; I don’t need to be a Muslim, Each vein of my body has turned into a sacred thread- (of Hindus))
(Soch kral is a friend of pure ones Who have a crystal clear heart? Sharpen your self and make it shine; The Almighty God is there to watch.)
~ Sochh Kraal
Akh tsi ta bey ba ganzar mabaa Habaa yi chuy gumaanay Yath faani saraayi diun chhuy shabaa Ath manz mo dim dukhaanay Pato ho marun az yaa sabaa Habaa yi chuy gumaanay
(Don’t count yourself and myself All this is a dream and nothing else. In this mortal world, do spend one night But don’t set up a shop in it You shall have to die today or tomorrow All this is nothing but a dream)
(I gave up nobility and embraced beauty I became a slave of wealth. I was like a kind on top, but my fate pulled me down)
~ Shamas Fakir
Anem soi, wawum soi Lajem soi pane saai
~ Kashmiri saying
Panun raeth pansei math
~ Kashmiri saying
Bulbul Na yeh, Wasiyat Ahbab Bool Jayen Ganga ke Badle Mere Jehlum Mein Mein Phool; Hayen
~ Kashyap Bandhu
“May be it is the bone and blood of the very ancient Dravid (whatever goes with it) civilization which has survived as the ethinic/culture core and around which the present edifice has been built in collaboration with the Aryans, the Ionian Greek, the Konkan Brahmans, the gypsies and the Central Asians”
~ Akhter Mohi-ud-Din
“You are for Kashmir, that you live for Kashmir, do well for Kashmir, and love everything of Kashmir”.
~ Mirza Arif
‘Speak of! people of Kashmir speak O, kashmir thou art a thing of beauty And a thing of beauty is a joy for ever keats cheats himself when he believes and says so Arif tells him to listen to a beloved’s woe tyranny for you, O! Dishonored land You are a charm for the one that has the upper hand’
~ Mirza Arif
“O Nila, the words of the sage will be effective for one Caturyuga. After that you will live in the company of men only. Here the Pisacas will always become weak…Prajapati is called Ka, and Kasyapa is also Prajapati. Built by him this country will be called Kashmira”
~ Nilmat Purana
The first Rishi was the prophet Muhammad; The second in order was Hazrat Uways; The third Rishi was Zulka Rishi The fourth in order was Hazrat Pilas; The fifth was Rum Rishi The sixth in order was Hazrat Miran The seventh (me) is miscalled a Rishi Do I deserve to be called a Rishi? What is my name?
~ Nund Reshi
Shiv Chaai thali thali wochaan Mau Zaan Huind tu Musalmaan Toruk Hai Chookh Paan praznan Soi Chaai Shiv seet Zaan
(Siva abides in all that is, everywhere Then do not discriminate between a Hindu and a Musalman If thou art wise, know thyself That is true knowledge of the Lord)
I renounced fraud, untruth, deceit, I taught my mind to see the one in all my fellow-men, How could I then discriminate between man and man? And not accept the food offered by brother.
The idol is but stone, The temple is but stone, From top to bottom all is stone.
He does not need the kusa grass, nor sesame seed, Flowers and water He does not need, He who, in honest faith, accept his Guru’s word, On Siva meditates constantly, He, full of joy, from action freed, will not be born again.
It covers your shame, Saves you from cold, Its food and drink, Mere water and grass, Who counselled you, O Brahmin? To slaughter a living sheep as a sacrifice, Unto a lifeless stone
The thoughtless read the holy books As parrots, in their cage, recite Ram, Ram, Their reading is like churning water, Fruitless effort, ridiculous conceit
When can I beak the bonds of Shame? When I am indifferent to jibes and jeers When can I discard the robs of dignity? When desires cease to nag my mind
The Guru (Sayyid Husain Simnani, or so we are told, not a mention of Sidha Mol) gave me only one word; Enter into thyself from the outer world; the guru’s precept came to me as God’s word; That’s why i started dancing nude.
In life I sought neither wealth nor power; Nor ran after pleasures of sense; Moderate in food and drink, i lived a controlled life; And love my God.
Whether they killed a large sheep or a small one, Lalla had her round stone (as her usual fare.)
Whatever I uttered with my tongue became a Mantra
I burnt the foulness of my soul; I slew my heart, its passions all; I spread my garments, hem and sat; Just there, on a bended knees, In utter surrender unto Him; My fame as Lalla spread afar.
~ Lal Ded
Passion for God set fire to all she had, and from her heart raised clouds of smoke, Having had a draught of adh-e-alat, Intoxicated and drunk with joy was she, One cup of this God-intoxicating drink, Shatters reason into bits, A little drowsiness from from it is heavier than Intoxication from a hundred jars of wine.
~ Nund Rishi quoted by Suhrawardiyya Sufi Baba Dawud Mishkati*
Adam is the progenitor of the human race, The Mother Eve has the same primordiality, (So) from where have the ‘low-castes’ descended? How can a ‘high born’ deride his own ancestry?
One who harps proudly upon one’s caste? Is bereft of reason and wisdom, Here the good alone can claim noble descent; In the Hereafter ‘caste’ will be extinct, Were you to imbibe the essence of Islam? Then no one would be purer than you.
(By) displaying the caste in the world, What will thou gain? Into dust will turn the bones, When the earth envelopes the body: To utter disgrace will he come? Who, forgetting himself, jeers at others
Among the brothers of the same parents Why did you create a barrier? Muslims and Hindus are one When will God be kind to His servants?
~ Sheikh Noor-ud-Din
The three alphabets -Sha-Ra-Ka, are in fact the etymological representation of the three alphhabets – Ka-Sha-Ra or Kasheer
~ Professor Fida Hassnain
O, King! I hail from the land far away; Where there is no truth and evil knows no limit. I appeared in the Maleecha country, and I suffered at their hands. I am known as Ishvara Putram (the Son of God) Born of Kanya-Garban, the virgin I teach love, truth and purity of heart, I ask human beings to serve the lord. The lord God is in the centre of the Sun, and the elements. And God and the Sun are forever, Bliss giving Lord being always in my heart, My name has been established Isha-Mase
~ Bhavishya-Maha-Purana, 115 A.D.
‘During this period, Hazrat Yuzu Asaph, having come from the Holy Land to the Holy Valley, proclaimed his ministery. He devoted his days and nights in prayers, and having attained the highest status in spiritual hierarchy, declared himself as the Prophet sent to Kashmiris. I have seen in a work of Hindus that this Prophet was really Hazrat Isa, the Spirit of God, who had assumed the name of Yuzu-Asaph in Kashmir.’
~ Kashmiri historian, Mullah Nadri
‘I would like to see whole colonies of English artist, men of science and literature and divines, proceeding to Cashmer’
~ Joseph Wolff in Mission to Bokhara (1832)
When Kashmiris are prosperous, traitors are devastated When Dhars are prosperous, Kashmiris get devastated
~a Kashmiri proverb
“There is one God But with hundred names!”
“We belong to the same parents: Then why this difference
Let Hindus and Muslims (together) Worship God alone
~Nund Reshi
The mess we inherited. There are some select snippets from a collection of essays titled ‘Kashmiriyat through the ages’, edited and compiled by Professor Fida Mohammad Hassanain (who it seems spent an inordinate duration of his life trying to prove Jesus was in Kashmir and even talked to the famous charioteer of UFO gods, Erich von Däniken ) from various articles published over last decade or so by various people for various platforms. It arrived as a gift to me from its Srinagar based publishers Gulshan Books.
An elder cousin caught me reading this book and paused at the name of the editor.
‘He used to be our neighbour in Chanapora. We didn’t know he was a writer till the day his daughter-in-law got kidnapped.’
In 1991 Nahida Imtiaz, daughter of Saifuddin Soz was kidnapped by militants. Her release was secured in exchange for some other militants. My cousins tells me Nahida was Fida Mohammad Hassanain’s daughter-in-law.
None of it makes sense. Not at this late-hour. Not in this place. To call everything by its true name and the trouble to be reminded that everything is double.
“We must treat our lives as we treat our writings, put them in accord, give harmony to the middle, the end, and the beginning. In order to do this, we must make many erasures.”
~ Joseph Joubert, the French writer who spent all his life preparing to write a book but never published anything while alive.
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*Baba Dawud Mishkati and Abdul’l-Wahhab say that while the Shaikh and his brothers were once trying to break into a house. Lalla, who happened to be there, cried to Nurru’d-Din: “What will you get from this house? Go to a big house (i.e. God). you will get something there.” On hearing this Nuru’d-Din, who was thirty years old at the time, immediatley left his brothers and dug out a cave at the village of Kaimuh. Here for many years he performed his austere penances, withdrawing entirely from the life that surrounded him.
~Biographical encyclopedia of Sufis By N. Hanif
Baba Dawud Mishkati was a follower of Suhrawardiyya Baba Nasibuddin Ghazi of Bijbehara. In his ‘Asrar-ul-Abrar’, written around 1654 AD, and acknowledged as the first work to mention Lal Ded, Baba Dawud Mishkati mentions that word Rishi is derived from the Persian word raish or rish meaning the feathers or wings of a bird.
“Kartal Phtrem ta garimas drati”
(I broke the sword and fashioned the sickles from its molten metal)
~ Shiekh Noor-Ud-Din
The book was first published in 1981. It opens with a short ‘Printer’s Note’’ by noted Kashmiri scholar M.Y. Taing. He writes,”Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din’s was an era of intense cultural clash. Islam had won its political victory but it had yet to overcome the spiritual and cultural resistance of Native streams. Its task was not made easy by the preachers of the new gospel, who came from alien lands and tried to bask in the sunshine of swords, out-sheathed by the Muslim victors of the land. This only compounded the sense of cultural shock. Noor-Ud-Din with his alchemy of synthesis challenged both and won a resounding moral triumph. He gave a distinct Kashmiri coating to Islamic doctrines. This was not a verbal gimmick.”
The note was written in 1981 while he was in Jammu. Nund Rishi’s sayings are now often read in the above given context: He basically came up with a distinct Kashmiri flavor of Islam. Professor K.N. Dhar (it must be mentioned, Director of Shri Parmananda Research Institute Srinagar), the man behind this book of translation of Nund Rishi’s Shruks, in the ‘Synopsis’ to the translations, adds another, less mentioned, dimension to the context. He alludes to an old conflict within Islamic world, a question that strangely enough is still often asked, a conflict revolving around the questions whether Sufis were into free interpretation of Islamic tenants and whether that made them less Islamic and more of something else. He mentions Sufis (Shah Hamadan and his Son, and the Syeds) and their initial contribution to the spread of Islam in Kashmir through their missionary efforts that weren’t necessary so popular or effective in Kashmir. He mentions Sufi Syeds and their supposed aversion for Reshis (as documented by Dr. Mohibul Hassan and a claim apparently contested by K.N. Dhar). K.N. Dhar writes,”In this context, we should make it abundantly clear that Reshis of Kashmir derive their inspiration from the word of ‘Quran’ and the life of Prophet Mohammed. It has been wronly asserted that Reshi literature represents the amalgam of whole thinking on the terse subject of Divinity current in Kashmir from dawn of civilization. While going through the ‘Shruks’ of the originator of this Reshi Cult “Nund Rishi” the emphasis on tenets of Islam, reverence for Prophet Mohammed and also the attributes of a true Mussalman are the loudest. The language employed and approach made towards Divinity might have cut across the barriers of religions at times, but it is a common feature with all great religions and needs to be underwritten. Assimilation and in no way rejection forms their attitude to life. ” K.N. Dhar wrote this on Shivratri of year 1981 while living in Srinagar.
And then begins the writer’s English rendering of Noornama , which seems at times seem like a simple but earnest man’s mediation on Death, Doomsday and hereafter, Hell and hence the need for man to behave proper, redemption. These rendering interestingly come with footnotes (with Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Sanskrit wordings) that make esoteric references to Koran, Shariat, Gita, Vedanta and its Yogic breathing exercises, Hindu concepts of light and so on.
Sample this:
At the appointed hour of bidding farewell to this feeting world, you will be torn between the obligation you owe to your own self and those to Super-Self; even if, belated realization of yoking yourself to spiritual pursuits, will dawn upon you, yet you would be lamenting your lot in leaving behind your loving wife and riches; through the sorcery of faulty perception. If you would opt for overcoming this embarrassment, the inner perennial effulgence of unerring comprehension is the ready-made ool for you – a sinless soul inherently-to groom your inborn innate faculties to reach up to that mental beautitued called self-consciousness.
The note with this one reads: Herein explicit reference has been made to shaivistic Monism, wherein the ultimate object laid down for the realiser is to cultivate ‘Sat Prakash’ – unending and unquivering innate light – a synonym for self-consciousness. Herein yogic practice of controlling breath has been alluded to. Vedanta is at pains to exhort to the realiser the urgency of ‘Pranayama’ and through this physical and mental drill reach upto the tenth pinnacle of yogic excellence where self and super-self become one indissoluble whole.
Sitting in Ghaziabad, in middle of a power-cut, as I read these heavy worded lines in second edition of this book, printed at Delhi-6 in 2004, given to me as a gift by an uncle who I suspect is no friend of Islamists, I lament my inability to comprehend any of it. As each year passes, I am finding it more and more difficult to relate to these great Kashmiri concerns and their beautiful poetic motifs. But I also realize, as each year passes by I am drowning in more and more of these dead motifs.
“I was brought to life simply to rise above the temporal level, but my mind unbridled of course, was allured by the objects of sense. Behold! How a full baked experience of mine even got deceived? What I have, for sooth, gained by being born into this world”
I am told about things like: Hazrat Bal was seat of power for ‘Sher’ National Conference, Jamia Masjid was for ‘Bakra’ Moulvis and Nund Rishi’s Trar Sharif, giving an ironic twist to Nund Rishi’s sickle saying, was seat of power for ‘Marxist’ G.M. Sadiq.
I am drowning in mutilated motifs rendered long irrelevant. The stories are not linear, not anymore, that audience is gone, and we now read: even if sword was followed by sickle, sickle was broken and sword reformed, what if sword is broken and sickle remade, to hell with sickle, to hell with sword. Poet you are dead, irrelevant, your grave a block of cement, a shrine, rejoice, your words a line carved in quick lime, mourn, you are still revered.
“The soul is as fleeting as the body which enshrines it. This world is as ephemeral as the thoughts, which fashion it.
Such verses of mine demand un-divided contemplation, O Great Lord: do away with my sinful demeanor.”
In the homes of the ignorant the wise pandit was lost;
And the swan was lost among the crows.
My mother doesn’t expect me to remember this special place she used to take me. ‘You were too young,’ She always says. Back then my mother was a young government teacher, serving in a school at a place simply called Tsrar by Kashmiris. These were the first few and the only ‘working’ years of her life. She was learning to cook. She was newly married. She would travel to work from Chattabal to Tsrar, take a tempo to Iqbal Park, then a short walk to New Tsrar Adda, and then a bus to Tsar. In the bus she would often fall asleep on her seat. One time, after she accidentally head bumped a fellow passenger, she took to knitting in bus, just to stay awake. You can’t read books on bumpy bus rides. Knitting sweaters on the other hand is an enticing option. Soon her hands, in true old school teaching tradition, were always knitting. She kept at it even as he sat upon a class. One time she even came close to getting busted by the headmistress. That time, on being jumped by the headmistress, my mother hid the sweater she was knitting for me under her arms, holding on tightly to it under her shawl, even as the suspicious headmistress asked her to hand over the roll-register, the question papers, the chalk, the duster and finally that piece of paper in the corner of the classroom. My mother just held on to that sweater under her left arm. When the headmistress left, my mother looked out the window and sent a little prayer of thanks in the direction of the wooden minaret that stood over the ancient saint’s last resting place. While she served in that town, she would visit the shrine ritually, almost everyday. On some days, when I had no school, maybe a Christian holiday or a non-gazetted holiday or maybe on a second Saturday, she would take me along.
‘You don’t remember do you? If only could go there again! It was a good place.’
vethavavas tan nani su ti doha Nasaro ton vagara ta syan pani su ti doha Nasaro
nishi rani to vurani khani su ti doha Nasaro
vurabata ta gadagani su ti doha Nasaro
The body exposed to the cold river winds blowing,
Thin porridge and half-boiled vegetables to eat-
There was a day, O Nasaro
My spouse by my side and a warm blanket to cover us,
A sumptuous meal and fish to eat-
There was a day, O Nasaro
I don’t remember. But then… the only memory this place brings to my mind is that of a lunch break spent in my mother’s school staff room dreading the thought of having to eat Girdas that looked menacingly fungal red, felt soggy and but were in fact just mildly painted in red of sweet mix-fruit Kisaan Jam. For the window of the staff room, the town looked grey, the color of galvanized tin and then there was the minaret. I didn’t like the thought of being there. Maybe one of the reasons why in coming years minarets were going to make my nightmares interesting – rows and rows of houses with minarets slow growing from them. Or maybe the fact that I was spending a holiday in a school wasn’t much appreciated by me.
‘I won’t eat that.’
‘You don’t have to,’ a colleague of my mother came to my rescue. ‘You should take more care about what he eats. This is the time to eat. He should be eating.’ And that day I didn’t have to eat those sad Girdas.
After a couple of years working in Tsrar, service was to take her to a village more nearer to our house, it was to take her to a village called Durbal. She would take me to this place too. To the house with a solitary walnut tree. House just beyond a brook that roared like a perpetually angry lion. At Durbal, I came to form an opinion that good walnuts are delightfully sticky when green and fresh, but maybe not eatable. Here, while knitting in class room, my mother came to form an opinion or two about her students and their families and religion. Poor. Simple. Honest. God fearing. Not very bright. Funny. Tough. Once she gave a tough time to a girl student in her class. Went corporal on her, which of course was and may be still the norm in that part of the world. Next day poor girl’s parents reached the school along with half the village. Mother thought she was going to get lynched. Instead, the parents of the girl thanked her profusely and asked her to be even more strict next time. ‘ghaanch kariv sa, take her limbs apart. Make her read.’
Traveling to a remote village for work was a fearful proposition for my mother. Muslims. We were nearing 1990. Things were changing. One time there was some trouble in the city, people were out on streets, roads from village to the city were blocked, and my mother found herself on road, trapped somewhere in some village. That day, fearful for her life, she took shelter in the house of a farmer. ‘There were sharp edged instruments in that house. Sickles and what not. That must have been a Shia family. Shias are okay, I guess.’ He reached home safe and sound that day too.
A classic ‘Kashmir’ narrative. Of students gone rebel. In her class was a kid named Bobby Khan, a last bencher, a brick head, a troublesome menace for a teacher, any teacher. All good classes have such characters. They add character to a class.Years later, one of my mother’s interesting conversations about her school time would always have a line about ‘Bobby Khan who became militant. Died. Not very bright.’ Some years back, I actually managed to meet one of her students, a namesake of Bobby Khan. This Bobby went to the same school as my mother’s nephews, a private school where she taught for some time, a revolutionary new school named after a poem by Thoreau, the kind of school that didn’t think twice about taking its students to see a film like Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Bobby now worked is Saudi Arabia and had come to meet his old friends living in Noida. After the formal introduction – ‘he’s your teacher’s son’ – we had an interesting discussion on music of Cheb Khaled and the beauty of original ‘Aïcha’.
That almost sums up her entire teaching experience, a period of more than twenty years. Of these twenty years, only six or five years were spent at the job because a few years later, we were in Jammu. She was not to teach in a school ever again, nor ever to fall asleep on way to work, nor do any fancy knitting at work. Knitting at home must not be engaging, I don’t remember her knitting even though her knitting kit did reach Jammu with her. Later, as retirement closed in on her, she was to come to the conclusion that it would have been better if she had instead brought a properly fixed attested service-book along with her to Jammu. There were glaring gaps in her service-book. And without proper service-book there is no proper retirement. Retirement time can be one of the busiest time for a government servant. Fixing records. Running around. Getting clearance. One can’t afford to mess with this process or miss a single step. During this phase of her career, she took to recounting an interesting case of ‘retirement-clearance’. A woman’s clearance was put on hold because it was revealed during the cross-checking of documents that the said woman’s birthday fell on 31st February every year. The woman’s retirement plans took a costly hit. Retirement is serious business. So a couple of years before her retirement, with worries like these, my mother thought of clearing her records. At first her brother helped as he was posted in Kashmir at the time. Later her husband, my father went about the job of visiting various offices and head-offices in Kashmir to set her record straight as he was posted to Kashmir. A stamp here, a sign there, something for the kids there, a simple gift for Sahibs big and small. Things were moving. During these trips one of the biggest hurdle proved to be getting an okay for the time-period, a particular period spanning 6-8 months of her career. It turned put that during this period some unknown or known person in Kashmir was drawing salary in my mother’s name while she too was drawing a salary in Jammu. In time, even this problem proved to be a no-problem and was resolved. Both parties were kept happy. Files and paperwork were sorted out accordingly as nothing could be found on digging deeper into the case. Finally a year away from her retirement, the only part of her service-record that needed entries and signatures was for the time that she spent working in Tsrar.
At the start of that year, my father was ordered to report back to work in Srinagar, this was after a gap of about twenty years. Government was pushing for something. He was allocated a department and a division. He got himself a room in a hotel, was shacked up with a bunch of other pandits. It wasn’t going to last. At the end of the year, his division was again going to change and he was going to be out of Kashmir again. But before he moved out of Kashmir, certain service records needed to be fixed, his own and his wife’s. For his wife’s service record he was to visit Tsrar. While in Tsrar a visit to the shrine was mandatory.
On a computer screen, as I looked at the photographs of the place that still looked as if painted in the color of galvanized tin, my mother told me about the call that my father made to her from an office in Tsrar. In the government office at Tsrar, the file bearing my mother’s name had found its way to the table of a woman who claimed to recognize my mother’s name and claimed to have been taught by my mother. My father thinking of it as a good sign. Thinking, maybe the file will closed, finally, rang up my mother, explained the situation to her and handed over his mobile to the woman officer. The two woman talked.
‘We talked. But I have no idea who that girl was. Couldn’t recall anything!’
Mother too had forgotten something. I stared at the pixels that shaped the new stoney minaret that stands over the ancient saint’s last resting place. I remembered things.
ashakh chuy kun gobur maji marun
su zola kari ta kihay
ashakh chuy ganatularev pan barun
su sokha rozi ta kihay
ashakh chuy ratajama tani paravun
su ah kaari ta kihay
Love is death of an only son to a mother –
Can the lover have any sleep?
Love is venomous stings of a swarm of wasps –
Can the lover have any rest?
Love is a robe dripping with blood-
Can the wearer even utter a sigh?
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20 miles south west of Srinagar, perched on a dry bare Hill, the tomb of Nund Rishi at a place called Charar Sharif.
2010
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Lines of Nund Ryosh from ‘Kashmiri Lyrics’ by J.L. Kaul.
“Kartal Phtrem ta garimas drati”
Professor K.N. Dhar (it must be mentioned, Director of Shri Parmananda Research Institute Srinagar), the man behind this book of translation of Nund Rishi’s Shruks, in the ‘Synopsis’ to the translations, adds another, less mentioned, dimension to the context. He alludes to an old conflict within Islamic world, a question that strangely enough is still often asked, a conflict revolving around the questions whether Sufis were into free interpretation of Islamic tenants and whether that made them less Islamic and more of something else. He mentions Sufis (Shah Hamadan and his Son, and the Syeds) and their initial contribution to the spread of Islam in Kashmir through their missionary efforts that weren’t necessary so popular or effective in Kashmir. He mentions Sufi Syeds and their supposed aversion for Reshis (as documented by Dr. Mohibul Hassan and a claim apparently contested by K.N. Dhar). K.N. Dhar writes,”In this context, we should make it abundantly clear that Reshis of Kashmir derive their inspiration from the word of ‘Quran’ and the life of Prophet Mohammed. It has been wronly asserted that Reshi literature represents the amalgam of whole thinking on the terse subject of Divinity current in Kashmir from dawn of civilization. While going through the ‘Shruks’ of the originator of this Reshi Cult “Nund Rishi” the emphasis on tenets of Islam, reverence for Prophet Mohammed and also the attributes of a true Mussalman are the loudest. The language employed and approach made towards Divinity might have cut across the barriers of religions at times, but it is a common feature with all great religions and needs to be underwritten. Assimilation and in no way rejection forms their attitude to life. ”
K.N. Dhar wrote this on Shivratri of year 1981 while living in Srinagar. 
Herein explicit reference has been made to shaivistic Monism, wherein the ultimate object laid down for the realiser is to cultivate ‘Sat Prakash’ – unending and unquivering innate light – a synonym for self-consciousness. Herein yogic practice of controlling breath has been alluded to. Vedanta is at pains to exhort to the realiser the urgency of ‘Pranayama’ and through this physical and mental drill reach upto the tenth pinnacle of yogic excellence where self and super-self become one indissoluble whole.
