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| Kashmiri women sitar players. 1962. Photograph by M.Zikmund – J.Hanzelka. |
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Women Sitar Players. 1962
Group Photographs, Early 20th century
Guest post from Man Mohan Munshi Ji. Some old group photographs he recently came across at his home. He shares…
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| Photograph taken in front of the Assembly Hall at Jammu. I can’t identify anybody nor can surmise any date |
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| Group photograph taken on a farewell function or retirement of an official of Jammu & Kashmir Government probably round about 1908. Please note two Europeans in the chairs. I can identify only one person in the last row on the extreme left – Munshi Amarchand, who retired from service in 1926. |
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| A picture taken in 1920s From L to R. in chairs B.N.Munshi, Prof Sarwanand Thussu and standing in the center unidentified. |
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View from The Window, 1916
A postcard from 1920s based on a photograph from 1916.
View from the famous workshop of Habib Joo (State jeweller and wood carver), Subhana (jeweller and silversmith), Ahmed Joo (coppersmith and wood carver) and Jubbar Khan (papier maché maker and wood carver).
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Pandit Minstrel and His Song, 1911
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| Krishna Boya Greb, Kashmiri Minstrel, 1911 (seems to be holding a ‘dutar’) |
Although the singing traditions of Kashmir are usually associated with Kashmiri Muslims but around hundred years ago, a visitor to Kashmir could run into a thriving community of Pandit singers too.
Yet, the only documented record of them comes from a few pages in a work titled ‘Thirty Songs from the Panjab and Kashmir’ (1913) by Ratan Devi and Ananda Coomaraswamy.
In 1911, while collecting Kashmiri songs in valley, they found that:
“Kashmiri Pandits are rarely musicians: those who are, claim to sing in many rags and talk boastfully of Kashmir as the original source of the music of Hindustan reckoning Kashmir another country, and not a part of India.
We heard three Pandit singers of some reputation, all old men. As accompaniment to the voice they use a small and rather toneless sitar. One also played on a zither (independently, not as an accompaniment), striking the many strings (tuned with much difficulty), with small wooden hammers held in both hands, making a sweet tinkling music. We were told that this Pandit was accustomed to sing to sick people, and even effect cures, but to our thinking, he sang no better than the others, that is, not very well. The so-called various rags sung by the Pandits are all very much alike, and musically distinctly uninteresting. The only song which seemed to us all worth recording was the following “Invocation to Ganesh” sung by Krishna Boya Greb, Pandit, son of Vasu Dev Boya Greb, to a sitar accompaniment. This very slow, rather hymn-like tune, if imagined to be sung in a rather nasal and drawling voice, will give a good idea of the general type of Pandit songs, expect as regards the words, which are exceptional. The curious actable staccato does not appear in any other Kashmiri song here recorded.
Invocation to Ganesh
Tsara tsar chhuk parmisharo
Rachhtam pananen padan tal
Gaza-mokha balaptsandra lambo-dara
Venayeko boyinai jai
Hara-mokha darshun dittam ishara
Rachhtam pananen padan tal
Translation [one Pandit Samsara Chand helped with the text, but the translation are all mostly flawed]:
Thou art all that moves or moves not, Supreme Lord!
The sole of Thy foot be my shelter!
Gaja-mukha, Bala-chandra, Lambo-dara,
Vinayaka, I cry Thee ‘Victory’!
In all wise show me They face, O Lord!
The sole of Thy foot be my shelter!
Some other Pandit songs:
Love Song
As nai visiye myon hiu kas go
yas gau masvale gonde hawao
Zune dabi bhitui dari chhas thas gom
Zonamzi osh ma angan tsav
yar ne deshan volingi tsas gom
yas gau masvale gonde hawao
Do not mock, my friend (f.); had it befallen another like me,
That fair flower had been a plume in the wind!
As I sat on the moonlit balcony, he came to the door;
I learnt that my lover had come to my courtyard,
If I meet not my darling (m.) I shall suffer heart-pangs
That fair flower had been a plume in the wind!
[There are a bunch of other songs given in the book by the only one I could easily recognise was the ‘Spring Song’ for its refrain Yid aye…(Eid has come)]
Yid ay bag fel yosman
Karayo kosmanan krav
Yid ay bag fel yosman
Nirit goham vanan
Yut kya tse chhuyo chavo
Trovit tsulhama mosman
karyo kosmanan krav
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And yes, Pandits still lay claim on giving India Natya Shastra, or at least giving the most authoritative commentary on it through Abhinavagupta.
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Previously:
And Then There Was T’song
Modes of lighting in Kashmir and evolution of lamp around late 19th century and early 20th century. Based on notes on specimen found by Dr. William Louis Abbot (1860-1936) in Kashmir in between 1891 and 1894 and presented in ‘Fire as an agent in Human Culture’ (1926) by Walter Hough for Smithsonian Institution United States National Museum.
About the kind of torch used in Kashmir: “Mass of fat formed upon a stick, around which is wound a wick of fiber.” [Torches of Birch bark are still widely remembered]
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No. 10 Stone Lamp with pointed spout. Cashmere, India.
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“Doctor Abbott also got pottery lamps from Kashmir. They are saucers of thin terra cotta pressed in on opposite sides to form a handle by which the lamp may be grasped. Another lamp from Srinagar, is napiform of red terra cotta with spout. The wick channel is cut through the rim and the reservoir is open above, as in the Turkestan lamps. This specimen is decorated with incises triangles and the border is scalloped. the native name is song [should be T’song].”
“Modification of the saucer lamp are plentiful for the purpose of placing the wick. Examples are shallow groves pounded in the Cashemere copper lamps and the bending in of the edge of the pottery saucers from ancient sites in Syria, North Africa, and other localities, modifying features suggesting the beginning of the wick spout. […]
The next step is in the measures taken to install the wick. By this step the lamp assumed the shape which it retained for thousands of years, This shape is familiar in the classic lamp, which has a circular reservoir and projecting beak for the wick.
The beak also arises in another manner that is germane to the construction of the lamp. The acute triangle form lamp cut from soapstone by the Kashmir and secured by Dr. W. L. About has the trough contained from the reservoir to the apex of the triangle and related to the shape of the excavation in the vessel. This introduced the pottery lamp in the form of a foot with open wick trough extended as a clumsy spout or beak. The reservoir is closed over, and through the top as through the next of a bottle oil was poured in. This form is ancient, being sculpted on a stone zodiacal slab of Nazi Maradah, son of Kurigalzar II, about the middle of the fourteenth century B.C. It is also shown on the cap of a kudurru or boundary stone bearing the star emblems representing Babylonian deities. Identical lamps are still in use in Turkestan and Kashmir, and have been found in Mohammedan stations in Egypt, Asiatic Turkey, and Spain.”
“In Cashmere, India, walnut oil and oil expressed from apricot seeds were used in lamps.”*
* A decade later, Sir Francis Younghusband noticed Kashmiris were mostly using rapeseed oil for lighting.
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| Pandit ritual involving T’song for 15th day of Shivratri. Jammu. 2013. |
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| An illustration of Kashmiri boat lamp found in ‘Aus dem westlichen Himalaya: Erlebnisse und Forschungen’ by Károly Jenö Ujfalvy (1884) |
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video: ‘Bumbro, Bumbro’, 1964
Came across this mesmerising bit in A Bhaskar Rao’s “The Dancing Feet” (1964), a Shantaram Production about folk dance forms of India. [link for full movie at NFDC channel, where they had trouble dating the film]
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Notice the same place on the
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| Bank of Jhelum, Srinagar, 1906 |
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Got names of some of the people in the video from readers via Facebook page of the blog
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| The woman in red: Raj Dulari, was a teacher at Lal Ded school |
Zia Durrani and Nancy Gwash Lal, who were members of the original opera too.
One of the singers is Raj Begum.
Booyn G’off
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| Cave inside Chenar Tree. By a British Army Officer, around 1907. [via: bonham] |
In Abul Fazal’s Akbarnama there is an episode in which during a storm, Akbar and 34 of his men take shelter inside the hollowed trunk of an aged Chinar tree. In ‘Tuzk-i-Jehangiri’, returing to the same episode, Jehangir recounts that he too took shelter in a cave inside a Chinar tree that time, he along with five or seven of his horsemen and with their horses.
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The world is indeed getting smaller.
Kashmiri Opera Performers, tracing 1955/2013
It’s 1955. First Kashmiri opera Bombur ta Yambarzal (The Narcissus and the Bumble Bee) by Dina Nath Nadim, that has already had a few re-runs, is again put up at Nedou’s Hotel for special guest – military leader and Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Bulganin who is accompanied by First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. By the end of 1956 Uzbek communist leader Sharaf Rashidov brings out his interpretation of the story in a novella titled ‘Kashmir Qoshighi’ ( also known as Song of Kashmir/Kashmir Song/Kashmirskaya song) acknowledging Nadim’s work. Almost a decade later, in 1965 , the year of second Kashmir war between India and Pakistan, USSR’s famous Soyuzmultfilm studio produces an animated film called Наргис based on Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir. Interesting the film retained the original Kashmiri names of all the characters sketched originally by Dina Nath Nadim, all the names except Yambarzal who is given the popular name Nargis, the name of this film.
[More details at a post from 2011: ‘Bombur ta Yambarzal’. From Russia. With Love.1965.]
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A group photograph of the artists who gave performances in honour of the visit of Soviet leaders at Srinagar.
Image from Photo division India. -0- |
Within an hour of posting this photograph to Facebook page of the blog, I started getting comments identifying the people in the photograph, words along the way painting a beautiful picture of connections and relations:
Archana Kaul That is my mom( Nancy Kaul now Nancy Dhar) when she was in college, and is seated first from the left!!
5 hours ago
Puneet Dhar I wonder if Zia Durrani is also here? Bindu check with Ma? Is that her next to Ma?
5 hours ago
Indira Rao Archana, your mom looks absolutely lovely! I still fondly remember her teaching us music. One of the ghazals she taught us (hum apne gham ka fasana) continues to be one of my favorite
4 hours ago
Zia Durrani I am the one standing all the way to the right!! My cousin Farkhanda is the fifth standing from the left. She died last year. Gargi is the second standing from the left. I recognise some other faces, but can’t remember their names.
4 hours ago
Sudha Koul Principal Mahmuda ( Govt. College for Women, Srinagar.), the tall one standing in the middle, so young and striking! Thanks Bindu!
26 minutes ago
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Comment in July, 2018
Roshan Dass Raj Dulari the one sitting in the middle of front row must be around 77 now. she is a bundle of talent
double gilaas
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| Cherry Earrings July. 2013. I had to promise my little cousin a ‘pizza treat’ for posing |
My mother remembers
in spring
she would run around with cherry earrings.
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| Cherry Picking. Kashmir. 1953 (From the archive of Indian Photo Division)
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dimyo dilaas
gandyo walaas
peirtho gilaas kulni tal
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Kashmiri word for Cherry comes from Persian word for Cherry: gilaas
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Update: April, 2016
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Irania film “The Silence” (1998)
Kashmir in Sven Hedin’s Trans-Himalaya, 1906
Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares some scans from his copy of Sven Hedin’s Trans-Himalaya : discoveries and adventures in Tibet (1909). On way to Tibet, Sven was in Kashmir in mid of 1906. Among the scans are two old photographs of famous Nedou Hotel of Srinagar. I add some recent photographs of the hotel sent in by another friend.
Sven Hedin who entered Tibet even after having been denied official permission to enter; The British Government allowed him to proceed via Jammu & Kashmir on his way to Eastern Turkistan from where he crossed into WesternTibet and carried explorations in areas never visited till than by any white man. His publication “Trans Himalaya” published in two volumes in 1909 is a master piece [in fact he later brought out a third volume covering mostly his visit to the source of Indus. Read the books here via archive.org: V1 (covering start of his journey from Kashmir), V2, V3]. He made his preparations for his journey in Kashmir initially. He is profuse in his thanks to a Kashmiri gentlemen Pandit Daya Kishan Koul Diwan Sahib who arranged everything from supplies, equipment, mules ponies and four soldiers as body guards. He has also acknowledged the services rendered by about thirty six Asians mostly Ladakhis who accompanied him to Tibet where when discovered by local authorities they did face trouble. Besides others, he also thanks Sir Francis Younghusband, the then British Resident at Srinagar who had explored Muztag and other passes of Karakorum Range between Eastern Turkistan and Jammu and Kashmir and also led the British Expedition to Lhasa in 1905-6.
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title cover
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Four body guards for Sven Hedin arranged by Pandit Daya Kishan. Sitting: Ganpat Singh, Khairullah from Peshawar. Standing: Bikom Singh and Basgul from Kabul. Both Singhs are Dogra Rajputs
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Previously:
Sven Hedin in Kashmir [From Pole to Pole: A book for young people by Sven Hedin]
