The story of the arrival and
spread of Islam in Kashmir is closely associated with the life and teachings of
a Shaivite mystic Lal Ded (‘Mother Lal’) and her adopted Muslim son Nund Rishi.
Known variously as Lalleshwari, Lalla Arifa, Lal Diddi, Lalla Yogishwari and
Lallishri, much of her early life is shrouded in mystery and magical
hagiography. But we know that she was born to a poor Brahmin family in 1320. As
was the custom of the time, she was married at the age of twelve. But marital
bliss held little charm for her. She was drawn to the world of Yogis and mysticism.
When sent to fetch water by her mother-in-law, she would make use of the
opportunity to visit a Siddha Yogi, Srikanta, who introduced her to the
mysteries of the mind and self-contemplation. Hagiographical tales tell us that
her mother-in-law accused her of infidelity and subjected her to humiliating
taunts. Stung by her petty jibes, at the age of twenty-four, Lal Ded renounced
the world to adopt the path of an itinerant Yogini. She would go from village
to village, singing songs in the praise of Creation and the agony of human
existence. Three frequently occurring tropes in her poetry are ravan-tyol
(pain of losing), mandachi hankal (iron fetters of shame), and nangai
natsun (dancing naked). Adopting the fearless path of the Jain munis
of yore, Lal Ded took to roaming naked. As she would put it:
“My Guru gave a single precept
Turn your gaze from outside to
inside
Fix it upon your hidden self
I, Lalla took this to heart
And naked set forth to dance!”
Children took to pestering and
throwing mud at her. On one occasion a silk merchant took pity on her and gave
her two pieces of silk to cover herself. Lalleshwari hung one on her left hand
and the other on her right. Every time a passerby abused her, she would tie a
knot on the cloth hung on her left, and whenever a noble soul recognized the
Yogini in her and bowed with respect, she tied a knot on the one on the right
hand. At the end of the day, she took the two pieces of cloth to the silk
merchant and said, “See brother, abuse and praise weigh the same”.
As years passed Mother Lalla came
to be loved and revered by all. A contemporary Muslim chronicler describes her
thus-
“She danced in ecstasy like the
Hebrew Nabis of old and the more recent Dervishes.”
Fifteenth-century Islamic
Tazkiras refer to her as Rabia Sani (Like Rabia), Maryam Makani
(like Mary), Arifa-i-Majzuba, and Majnun-i-Aquila.
A Suhrawardi Sufi Baba Daud Khaki
(16th century Kashmir) eulogized Lal Ded thus:
Passion for God set fire to
all she had,
And from her heart rose clouds
of smoke.
Having had a draught of ahad-i-alast
(submission to God)
Intoxicated and drunk with joy
she was
One cup of this
God-intoxicating drink shatters reason into bits,
A little drowsiness from it has
more intoxication
Than a hundred jars of wine
But what was Mother Lal’s
religion? To which sect did she belong? Some of her poems go-
“Whatever I uttered with my tongue became a Mantra”
“I was passionate,
Filled with longing,
I searched far and wide
But the day the truthful one
Found me
I was home”
“Shiva abides in everything, everywhere
Discriminate not between Hindu and Musalman
Those who are wise, look inside
That is all you need to know
Her poems use Shaivite, Tantric,
Nath Yogic, Buddhist, and Sufi tropes. She belonged to none, and she belonged to
all.
Lal Ded would sometimes visit a Kubrawi Sufi, Saiyad Hussain Simnami at Kulgam who had a khanqah there. As a holy person, he had been given a small land grant through which a free kitchen was run. During his lifetime only one man converted to Islam- Salar Sanz, who was a pasban (village watchman). But he is a significant character in the story of Kashmir because many years after he had died, a child was born to his wife. He was named Nuruddin/Nund; he would later become famous as ‘Nund Rishi’. By his death in 1438 AD, this ‘ill-begotten’ child would convert a majority of Kashmir’s rural society to his version of mystical Islam.
Perhaps as a metaphor for the social rejection that an illegitimate child would have faced, hagiographic accounts say that for three days after his birth Nund would not drink milk. Then on the third day, Lal Ded arrived and said, “Why you weren’t ashamed of being born, but you are ashamed of drinking milk”. Listening to these words, the baby began suckling from his mother. According to some other accounts Lal Ded breastfed him herself. Mother Lal had taken the unfortunate child under her protection.
While growing up Nund would frequently visit her, and through her began to acquire a mystical temperament. She preached a version of folk mysticism that concerned itself with discovering the eternal within. Philosophical debates and religious scholasticism were immaterial to her. Nuruddin would pay glowing tributes to the piety of his spiritual guru in later life. One of his verses reads-
That Lalla of Padmanpore (Pampore)
Who had drunk the fill of nectar
She was an avatar of ours
O God, grant me the same spiritual power
At the age of thirty, Nuruddin decided to renounce the world and become a Rishi. He retreated into a cave to contemplate.
While these spiritual churnings were occurring in rural Kashmir, at the capital in Srinagar, Islam entered through a different path. The first Muslim king at Srinagar was a man named Rinchana. He had been born into the royal family of Ladakh but had gotten embroiled in quarrels and committed murders, which forced him to flee. He then entered the service of the king of Kashmir, Suhadeva, and soon rose to power and became king himself. A later day Brahmin chronicler Jonaraja writes that in the initial days of his rule Rinchana had sought initiation into Shaivism. But the Deva Swami (head priest?) had found him to be unsuitable. Some years later, a travelling Sufi of Turkish origin Bulbul Shah converted him to Islam. But Rinchana still performed yagyas, visited temples and kept Brahmin advisors in his service. After his death, in 1339, his Muslim Prime Minister Shah Mir, replaced his successors and crowned himself the Sultan of Kashmir, founding the first Muslim dynasty of Kashmir. However, older traditions were slow to disappear. A successor Alauddin built a math for Brahmins and Qutuddin held royal yagyas like the Hindu kings of the past.
All of this changed when the sixth Sultan of the Shah Miri dynasty, Sikandar Shah ‘But Shikan’ (breaker of idols) ascended the throne. In the words of Jonaraja, he was responsible for ‘terminating Kashmir’s culture of tolerance’. Possessed of fanatical zeal, he vowed to destroy every idol in his sultanate. According to Jonaraja’s account, the temples of Martand, Vijeyeshvara, Chakradhara, Sureshvari, Varaha, and Tripureshvara were destroyed at his orders. And several more, the accounts of which we read elsewhere. He also imposed jaziya on Brahmins.
Most of these policies were reversed by his successor Zain-ul-Abidin (1420-70), who abolished the jaziya, banned cow slaughter, and once again patronized Sanskrit scholars (including our chronicler Jonaraja). He also commissioned the translation of Mahabharat and Rajtarangini into Persian and called back Brahmins who had left during the oppressive reign of Sikandar Shah ‘But Shikan’. Fortunes of Brahmins associated with the imperial machinery kept varying over centuries, but overall, they would retain their influence over its bureaucracy as a literate and cultured class till the 1930s.
While these events unfolding at Srinagar are historically significant, they had little to no impact on the contemporary rural society of Kashmir. The language used at the royal court had always been Sanskrit, and later, Persian. Neither of these high-classical languages was understood in the countryside. Srinagar had a rich culture of literature, philosophical speculation, and debate, but the literate class that took interest in it stood deracinated from the peasant society. Early Islamic preachers were not any better placed to preach in rural areas. Missionary scholars like Sayyid Ali Hamadami, who gave religious advice and guidance to the Sultans at Srinagar, spoke Persian which was not understood in rural Kashmir. The peasant society mostly turned to itinerant Yogis, Siddhas, and Sufis who conversed in the people’s dialect. Lal Ded, her guru Srikanta, and Nuruddin belonged to the peasants’ world, which revered all holy men and did not preoccupy itself much with the scholastic intricacies of sectarian differences among them. So much so that in popular memory, many of Nund Rishi’s poems are attributed to Lal Ded, even though they are suffused with Islamic tropes.
Nuruddin’s poetry exudes a mystical spirit that scoffs at sectarian nitpicking-
“What good things have you
discovered in this world?
That you let your body hang
like a loose rope
The Hindu and Musalman sail
the same boat
Have your play and go home”
“Among brothers of the same parents,
Why did you create a barrier?
Muslims and Hindus are one
When will God be kind to His servants?”
The poetry that he preached among peasants is a curious mix
of Islamic and Yogic imageries-
“Nirguna, manifest yourself to me,
Your name (alone) have I been chanting,
Lord, help me reach the acme of my spiritual desires,
I do remember (with gratitude) how kind you are
You removed all veils between Yourself and the Prophet
And You revealed the Quran to him”
With these songs on his lips,
Nuruddin Rishi roamed from village to village. Rishinama Tazkiras
(hagiographies) narrate the story of his discussions with a famous Brahman ascetic
Bhum Sadh, who became his fellow traveller. Another Tazkira recounts the
story of his meeting with a group of 1200 Brahmins under the leadership of Tuli
Raina and the metaphysical debate that subsequently followed. Many of these seem
to be exaggerated accounts, meant to glorify Nuruddin Rishi’s intellectual
prowess. However, what is notable in Nuruddin’s response to the Brahmins’
intellectual challenge is the absence of such words as kafir (infidel)
and mushkirin (heretics). His dialogues with Brahmins in fact remind of Kabir-
“O’ Pandit, O’ believers in Triguna
Past and future are linked through the present
O’ pestering Pandits, whom do you want to deify
Merge your mind in your vital breath”
Of greater significance than the
accounts of his discussions with pandits are the stories of his dialogues at village
gatherings. Such low-born characters as tanners, sweepers, village dancers (bhand),
and acrobats (dambel maet) appear in these accounts, engaging Nund Rishi
in spiritual discussions. His poems reflect his embeddedness in the peasants’
universe-
“To the cultivators-
Perform your duties from Jeth
Magh is the period of fecundity: be thoughtful
One who realizes early will surely
Strive in His way
Realize early that Spring bubbles over,
Make hay while the sun shines
Beware of falling behind, Spring is a
Trap (for the thoughtless)
One who realizes early will surely”
Strive in His way…”
Nuruddin’s followers came to be known as Rishis. It was these Rishi ascetics, and not the Ulema and the Sufis who became the apostles of mysticism in the eyes of the rural masses. Rishis did not marry, abstained from meat, retired to deep caves for long periods of time, lived on fruits and roots and tried to avoid injury to wild animals and insects. Some occasionally consumed ashes as a substitute for food, and some dressed as Yogis. Many of these practices had no strict Islamic sanction. Vegetarianism in particularly baffled clerics travelling from Iran and Central Asia. When enquired about his abstinence from meat by Mir Muhammad Hamadani, Nund Rishi retorted that he was vegetarian because his religion was against cruelty. Within a few decades, Nuruddin’s Rishis spread throughout the length and breadth of the valley. They lived on the mountaintops and caves and became in the eyes of locals indistinguishable from the Yogis and Buddhist monks who had long made these their abode. In time they came to constitute Silsila-i-Rishiyan (the Rishi Order).
More than a hundred year later Abul Fazl, (Akbar’s court chronicler), makes note of their presence in Kashmir thus, “…the most respectable class in this country (Kashmir) is that of the Rishis who, notwithstanding their insistence on freedom from all customs, are the true worshippers of God. They do not unleash calumny against those, not of their faith and are generally a source of benefit to the people.”
And later Jahangir in his memoirs, "they possess simplicity and are without pretense. They abuse no one and eat no flesh. They have no wives and always plant fruit-bearing trees for the benefit of future generations. There are about 2,000 of these people."
We do not hear of Rishis after the eighteenth century. As time progressed many of their eclectic-syncretic practices were gradually dropped. Their shrines remain popular centres of pilgrimage, and vegetarianism is still practised on the eve of their anniversaries (urs). So, what remains of the lamp of wisdom and universal faith lit by them? Perhaps not much. But, so long as Lal Ded’s poetry reverberates through the valley, there will always be hope. Kashmir’s Islam after all was born in the lap of Mother Lal, who saw the doing of Shiva in everything and made a saint out of a shunned child.
“We are the progeny of the same parents
Then why do we bicker
Let Hindus and Muslims adore God alone
And share their sorrows and joy together”
(Attributed to both Nund Rishi and Lal Ded)
Bibliography:
Kashmir’s Transition to Islam: The Role of Muslim Rishis (15th-18th
Century), Mohammad Ishaq Khan, Manohar Publication, New Delhi, 2002
Kashmir Under the Sultans, Mohibbul Hasan, Gulshan
Publishers, Srinagar, 2002
Comments
Post a Comment