Kashmir

(i) The Kashyapa Bhumi

Next day in the company of the Kashmiri friend and his family, Ramdas left Jammu for Srinagar. The motor-bus that conveyed them traversed through a road cut on the sides of the mountain chains. When the bus trolled onward in its uphill path, it appeared as if an ant was creeping on a huge mound of earth. The landscapes and deep valleys, green with luxuriant verdure and the dense forests of pine, cedar and poplar on the heaven-kissing mountains, presented an enthralling sight of supreme beauty and grandeur. As the bus mounted higher and higher along the spiral path, new and sublime scenes of the majesty of nature unfolded themselves before his eyes and he was thrilled with joy at the enchanting vision.

At dusk the motor-bus reached the top of the Banhal mountain which was nine thousand feet above the sea level. Here the air was rarefied and the climate very cold. The party rested for the night beneath the roof of a resident pandit, who was all kindness and hospitality. The night was severely cold and the kind host covered Ramdas with thick blankets.

The ensuing day about eight o’clock the party continued their journey. They had a halt at midday for meals. At the approach of the evening they sighted Srinagar. The high hill of Shankaracharya with the temple on its top first became visible from a distance.

For the night Ramdas stayed at the house of a pandit of giant proportions, a relation of the friend under whose escort he had travelled on the bus. All the people of the house were kind and hospitable. Next day, making enquiries for the house of Janakinath, Ramdas shifted to his dwelling. Janakinath’s younger brother, Amarnath Bakshi, welcomed him and provided him with a separate small room. Amarnath, Janakinath’s daughters, children, wife and everyone in the house looked after him with great love and treated him as one of the family.

Amarnath Bakshi, a double M.A. of Punjab University, was a Professor of Philosophy in Sir Pratap College of Srinagar, and had achieved the distinction of first rank in the Presidency, both in Philosophy and Psychology. He is a noble, gentle and quiet-natured young man. He held Ramdas in high regard and was punctiliously attentive to his requirements.

Janakinath’s three daughters were constantly in attendance on him. The elder two of them, pure and glorious souls – veritable goddesses – tended and fed him with all the tenderness and care of a mother. Whenever they were with him he would feel that they always carried with them the fragrance of purity, simplicity and innocence. The younger children also had a great attraction for him. They would play, laugh and dance with him. While starting to school and on their return, some of them would straight come to him and embrace him with great fondness. The mother of the house also sought his society and felt very happy in his presence. Altogether his life in that blessed house was filled with inexpressible love and joy.

Ramdas resided in Kashmir for over three months. As on the Hardwar side, the pilgrimage to Badrinath and Kedarnath is considered to be of high importance, so also a visit to Amarnath is held in Kashmir to be of equally great consequence. There were still two months more for the pilgrimage and hence he had to wait in Srinagar for those months, as he did not want to lose the opportunity of running up and witnessing the sublimity of the charming mountains of Kashmir at their lofty heights.

Meanwhile, he had much to observe and much experience to gather in Srinagar and its suburbs. The early part of his stay was in the city of Srinagar. The houses are of old style, built of mud, and ill-ventilated and also thickly crowded. The lanes between them are narrow and full of filth and dirt. The principles of sanitation and laws of hygiene seemed to have played no part in the adjustment of life and house-building in the city. If one wanted to know what the slums were like, one had to walk through the streets of this city and dwell for some time in the houses that were huddled up pell-mell in this phenomenally unhealthy place.

The population consists of over ninety-five percent of Muhammadans, the rest being pundits of Kashmir. Kashmir came to be called by that name because of Kashyapa, the great sage, who lived there ages ago. The pundits are a very intelligent class and learned in Sanskrit. Now they have also a first-grade college, Sir Pratap College, which turns out brilliant men of first-rate University qualifications. They are a quiet and good-natured people with a strong and well-built physique. The extreme cold of winter, during which, it is said, the whole valley of Kashmir is overlaid with snow, serves to wash away the dirt and cesspools that accumulate in summer. The cold at other times of the year might tend, to some extent, to destroy the disease-breeding germs that the foul vapours, arising from the insanitary streets and surroundings, produce. But the general health of the people in the city is not up to the mark.

(ii) The Ways of Kashmiris

The dress of the people is characteristic of the rigours of the climatic conditions. Both the males and females wear a long toga or pheran, as they call it, reaching below the knees, made invariably of wool either of coarse pattu or of fine texture called pashmina. The sleeves of these gowns extend beyond the hands, the loose ends serving the purpose of gloves to protect the hands from cold. The old folk go about with the pheran, high-heeled wooden sandals having straps made of grass ropes covering their feet and an old-fashioned turban, while the young men use boots and shoes, tight pants, long coats and turbans after the Punjabi style.

The women adhere to their old mode of dress, the pheran with long sleeves. These have a small white veil covering only the back part of the head, and above the forehead they have a white celluloid band to signify that they are married. The unmarried and the widows are without this band. The ornaments the women wear are of the Muslim style; a number of thin wide rings are pierced through the edge of the ears. They have the custom of bearing the crimson mark on the forehead, which is conspicuously absent among the Punjabi ladies.

The Pandits are a fair-complexioned race. Some of the young Panditanis, Ramdas saw in Kashmir, possessed a beauty in feature and colour, which was quite unique and ethereal. Their gait was peculiarly their own. They would walk in all their majesty and stateliness like veritable queens.

The spoken language of both the Muslims and Pandits is a strange mixture of several tongues, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian. It has no script. The written language, for business, legal and other purposes, is Urdu.

The fertile valley of Kashmir was in the past, before the advent of the British in India, a cynosure in the eyes of the Persian invaders, who raided and pillaged the place, converting by force most of the Hindu population to Islam. The present generation of Muslims in Srinagar are the descendants of pandits converted during the invasions and reigns of Muslim kings. In language and mode of dress a Muslim and a pandit have no difference. The distinction is made out from the absence of the sandal mark between the eye-brows on the face of the Muslim, while the mark is very prominent on that of the pandit.

In regard to food, it is almost common between the two communities. Both of them are rice and meat eaters. The hubble-bubble used in smoking is in evidence in every house, and they have almost a craze for tea drinking, which they do four or five times a day. For keeping warm in winter they do not use the stoves employed by Europeans in their houses in Europe. They have small portable firepots called kangdi made of willow basket having a handle of the same material, with an earthen bowl-like vessel fitted into it. Charcoal is used to make fire in the bowl. These kangdis are kept within their pheran causing the heat to radiate all over the body underneath the gown.

The staple food being rice the cultivation is mainly of rice crops. The rice they produce is a big grain of reddish colour. The principal vegetable they are very fond of, and without which they can hardly relish their dinner, is sag of kadamb. Ghee and milk are seldom used by them. They take plenty of curds and cheese. Milk is abundant in Srinagar. Although the Muslim element is in the majority, there is no cow-slaughter in Kashmir, as the Maharaja’s Government has prohibited it. The fruits of Kashmir are of the cold climate, and apples, peaches, pears, berries, etc. can be had in plenty and very cheap.

The religion of the Pandits is Shaivism and Shakti worship. They are opposed to the order of sannyas denoting external renunciation. There are sadhus among the Pandits and they are mostly house-holders leading a religious life. The pandit is proud of his learning and intellectual attainments. He would say: “Where the Western philosophy ends, there the Eastern philosophy begins; where the Eastern philosophy ends, there the Kashmiri philosophy begins.” The pandits are undoubtedly an intelligent and keen-witted race. Their status as brahmin prevented them from taking up avocations of manual labour, trade and handicrafts, in which fields the Muslims are widely employed. The world renowned Kashmir shawls are made by the skilled Muslim weavers. In wood carving, furniture making and papier-mache work the craftsmen of Kashmir are famous. Pandits go in only for the learned professions, but now these departments being over-crowded, they are slowly entering trade and other lines of employment.

Music is unknown among them. They sing in a droll and droning voice the Sanskrit slokas and mantras in chorus, their intonation having a distinctive touch of Persian accent.

The women in Srinagar are very backward in education, while the husbands are Bachelors and Masters of Arts. In many cases the wives are perfectly illiterate and except their Kashmiri jargon, a mixed language, through which alone they can convey their thoughts verbally, they have no other means of intercourse. But late or post-puberty marriages are very common among them. Often the girls are allowed to grow up to seventeen or eighteen years of age before they are married. The dowry system amongst them is as pernicious an incubus as in other parts of India.

Ramdas had an occasion to attend a marriage ceremony of the Pandits. When the ritual was in progress and the purohits were breathlessly chanting the mantrams, Ramdas went into the room where the celebration was held, to see the bride and bridegroom. The bridegroom could be seen whereas the bride was completely covered with a veil made of a thick white sheet of cloth. It is clear that many customs of the pandits are borrowed from the Muslims, whose close contact with them, probably for centuries, has influenced them into adopting many of their customs and modes of living. Ramdas attended their marriage feast, but he did not partake of it as he was mostly on milk diet during his sojourn in Srinagar. The hundreds of guests assembled for the occasion were served food on the floor on which they were made to sit in three or four long rows, as is the vogue in other parts of India. But what struck Ramdas as uncommon was that the guests were served meals in big earthen bowls.

The relations between the Muslims and pandits are very cordial. The Muslims, amongst whom illiteracy prevails to an amazing degree, are naturally undeveloped in moral culture, clean living and refined manners, although they are accomplished in arts, handicrafts, trade and agriculture. The Muslims have free access to the houses of pandits. They can even enter the kitchen and the dining rooms of the pandits.

Untouchability is unknown among Kashmiris, and in the Hindu-fold, caste distinction has no place, except that the pandits make some difference in the various grades among themselves based upon the traditional superiority and prestige of ancestry. But there is free inter-dining and inter-marriage among all classes of pandits.

Regarding the produce of the land, in addition to rice and fruit, of which latter, a large quantity is exported to other parts of India, the people cultivate saffron or keshar in special fields at the close of the summer. The soil of Kashmir is rich and alluvial.

(iii) Hari Parvat

For some days Ramdas did not move out of the house of Janakinath. The first outing was in the company of the lads of the house who took him to the playground, an oblong plot of plain land covered with a thick green turf, one side of which was bordered by an avenue of tall poplars. He watched the sports of the boys. Here he came in touch with some educated Muslims who surrounded him on the turf and put him various questions on religious and spiritual matters. Since his sympathies were alike for all the religions of the world, he spoke sometimes in English and again in Hindi about the greatness of the Prophet Mohammed and the value of the teachings of Koran. They eagerly listened to his expositions and evinced friendliness and love for him.

He was paying every evening a visit to the playground for some days. Then the young friends escorted him to Hari Parvat. Hari Parvat is a hill situated about a mile from the city of Srinagar. The pandits look upon this hill with great reverence since there is also a temple of a goddess on one side at its top. They give a religious significance to a walk round the hill, for which purpose hundreds of pandits and their women are seen every morning pouring out of their congested houses. The morning exercise and the fresh air in the open also tend to a great extent to counteract the evil effects upon their health due to the unhealthy vapours of the dirty city in which they live most of the time. The stroll and a darshan of the goddess on the hill they consider as nothing short of a religious duty, since on each such occasion they can withdraw their minds entirely from the cares of the world to the thought of God.

On the other side of the hill is a neatly-built fortress, once the strong-hold of the old kings of Kashmir. Ramdas visited the temple of the goddess, who is represented by a huge rock, flat on the side facing those who go to it for darshan. This flat surface is covered over by a thick layer of red paint and decorated with flowers and flower garlands. There are a few resident pandits inside the temple building who are the worshippers of the goddess.

He was attracted by the cool and bracing breeze on top of the hill and spent a night alone on a stone slab lying about fifty yards in front of the Devi’s temple. The deep love which Amarnath bore for Ramdas made him display great anxiety about him at this time. He remained on the hill till evening on the ensuing day. Amarnath visited him in the morning and arranged for his milk. The legend goes that the hill was the trysting place of sapta-rishis – the seven ancient sages, the invisible guides and teachers of mankind.

Ramdas had frequent occasions to roam around this hill. Along the path is a small temple in charge of sannyasis. When he visited this temple he came in contact with a young sannyasi, Anand Swarup of the Gowd Saraswat Community and a native of Cochin State. He had his residence in a small room in the upper storey of a rest-house near the temple. He was a sincere sadhaka who lived a retired life, filling his hours with a deep study of the scriptures and in spiritual discipline and contemplation. Ramdas enjoyed many blissful hours in his company. He was so kind and loving to Ramdas.

The main river of Kashmir is Jhelum or Vitatsa as the pandits denominate it, a tributary of the Indus. The river flows right through the middle of Srinagar and on both the banks of it are studded the residences of pandits and Muslims of the place. The habitat in many cases project out into the river, supported on wooden posts. The river is held very sacred by the pandits, but all the drains of the city empty themselves into it and render its water thick, dark, muddy and impure. The pandits wash and bathe in the waters of this stream. Long and slim boats which they call kisti ply on the river. The boats are manned by Muslims. For pleasure-trips and sight-seeing these light boats are largely employed by the populace. Kistiwalas carry on a roaring business. A number of wooden bridges are constructed across the river to connect opposite banks.

One day a student friend, who was visiting Ramdas at Janakinath’s house, proposed to take him up the Shankaracharya hill. He and Ramdas boarded a kisti. The skiff glided up the river until it came to a landing place at the foot of the hill. After a short walk they reached the bottom of the hill, where there was an ashram of sannyasis. The spot is called Durga Nag, because of a pure spring in the compound of the ashram – Nag meaning a spring.

(iv) Shankaracharya Hill

The friend and Ramdas now started ascending the Shankaracharya hill. The hill is a thousand feet above the level of the Kashmir valley. As they climbed higher and higher, Ramdas felt as if a screen was slowly being lifted to reveal the grandiose beauty of Kashmir. They reached the top, and a sweeping look all round thrilled Ramdas with a feeling of inexpressible ecstasy. The extensive and picturesque valley was now before him. The stately mountains tinted with a subtle blending of blue and heliotrope and crowned by dazzling flakes of snow were standing in all their dignity at the borders of the valley all round, like guardian angels of the land.

The vast lakes, scattered all over the valley, scintillated in the sun like huge mirrors reflecting the glory of the mountains and the groves of trees covered with green foliage. The Dal lake, the largest of them, at the base of the hill on which he was viewing the scene, bore on her placid bosom big red lotus flowers, beside which swans gambolled and sported.

From the height, Hari Parvat was seen as a small mound of earth, the brown walls of the fortress standing out prominently on its top. Then again the river Jhelum: she was running in a zigzag course like a huge serpent creeping through the enchanting valley. The grey, dull houses in the city were visible from a long distance. What with the flashes of water, the greenery of the vegetation, the multi-hued mountain ranges and the clear blue sky above, the scenery was such that his eyes feasted on the sublimity of God’s fascinating creation or manifestation.

He turned his attention to the temple. It is constructed of blocks of granite stones, oval in shape at the top and ending in a dome. It has a raised square platform on its sides. A flight of stone steps leads the visitor to the sanctum sanctorum in which the phallic emblem of Shiva, an image about three feet high, smooth and polished, stands. A sadhu is in constant attendance in the temple during the day-time. At the top of the temple dome and all round, at the lower ground level, are installed electric flash-lights with huge reflectors. These are said to be a gift made by the Maharaja of Mysore during his visit to Srinagar. In the night, even from long distances from the valley below, these lights illumine the location and structure of the temple.

The great Vedantin, Sri Shankaracharya, when he visited Kashmir in his parivrajak or itinerant life, is said to have made his stay on this hill, and it was at his initiative that the temple of Shiva was first established on the hill. Hence to this day the hill is called after his name. The pandits have a story in connection with Sri Shankaracharya’s visit.

Sri Shankaracharya and his disciples took their abode on the top of this hill for several days, and none of the pandits of Srinagar went up to see them and accorded them hospitality. So the sage and his disciples had to go without food and water. After some days a few pandits paid a visit to him on the hill.

Now the sage observed: “We have been starving here for many days and you, great and learned as you are, did not think it fit to offer us the hospitality which the shastras enjoin on every human being as his or her dharma.”

To this the pandit replied:

“The fault is not ours. We would certainly welcome and treat with respect and kindness those guests who would visit our city, but since you have chosen to occupy a hill, far away from the city, avoiding and renouncing the life of the world, in which also the Lord’s power and glory are manifest, we are justified in our attitude towards you and your disciples. As regards your starvation, you need not have undergone it if you had possessed the yogic power by the exercise of which you could have provided yourself with all that you needed.”

Sri Shankaracharya was a monist or adwaitist who looked upon the world as illusion. Probably he did not then believe in God’s Shakti in manifestation.

He replied: “The world is an illusion. It has no existence although it seems to be existing to one whose mind is obsessed by ignorance.”

“You are mistaken,” retorted the pandits, “the world does exist, it is the expression of divine Shakti, the supreme cause of creation, protection and destruction of all the visible forms that comprise the universe. External renunciation of the world is a folly springing from a false conception of God and His power. Shakti is sporting in the vast phenomena of life, change and movement in the universe. The true vision does not discard the world as non-existent but looks upon it as the manifestation of God, the lila of His Shakti.”

To show Sri Shankaracharya an example of the workings of Shakti, it is said that a pandit invoked the Goddess with the incantation of a mantra and touched a spot on the ground where they sat, and instantly water as from a fountain oozed out of the ground.

The pandits say that Sri Shankaracharya was greatly impressed by the teachings and the exhibition of God’s power by the pandits, and had to change his line of thought for the one represented by the pandits.