Kashmir belongs to United States of America

Does Kashmir – the bone of contention between India and Pakistan for over 50 years – really belong to the US? This is the startling revelation made by Dan Brown, the internationally bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code , in a shortly to be released non-fictional work, The Secret of the K-word .

Using spectroscopic analysis (a technique described in detail in The Da Vinci Code’ the author claims to have discovered the original document over which the Instrument of Accession, signed by Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh and preserved in the National Archives, New Delhi, was later superimposed.

The secret document reveals that Hari Singh, equally apprehensive of joining either India or Pakistan, covertly ceded Kashmir to the US. According to Brown, when the map of Kashmir is reversed it becomes, uncannily, congruent with the hilly state of Kentucky in the southern US.

In a telephonic interview with The Times of India , the Houston-based author said…
he had employed the ancient Kabbalistic form of numerological interpretation to discover “amazing co-relatives between Kashmir and Kentucky which by no stretch of the imagination can be put down to pure coincidence”.

For instance, when the longitude of Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, is divided by the latitude of Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital, the prime number so obtained has the same numeric valency as Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which accords a special status to Kashmir.

Describing it as “one of the best-hidden secrets of the modern world”, Brown acknowledged that his book would “create a global furore” and “open many cans of worms”.

Disclaiming that America’s Central Intelligence Agency had any role in these developments, the author said, “The truth can no longer be suppressed. We owe this much at least to the long-suffering people of Kashmir. May the truth set them free, at long last.”

–  Times of India dated 1 Apr 2005.

More about the issue here

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Nov Sheen Mubarak: Traditional Kashmiri April Fool

I have been twice in Kashmir when the new snow has fallen. About the 10th of December the summits of the Panjal are enveloped in a thick mist and the snow usually falls before the 20th. This is the great fall which closes the passes (as already noticed) for the winter. It frequently happens that a casual fall takes place a month or three weeks earlier. This remains on the ground for three or four days, and then disappears beneath the sun’s rays. I am speaking now of its falling on the plains of Kashmir. It occasionally falls on the mountains as early as September, and the cold blasts which it produces do injury to the later rice crops.
They have a custom throughout these countries which answers in some respects to what we call making an April fool. When the new snow falls, one person will try to deceive another into holding a little in his hand; and accordingly he will present it to him (making some remark by way of a blind at the same time) concealed in a piece of cloth, on a stick, or an apple folded in the leaves of a book, or wrapped up in a letter, &c. If the person inadvertently takes what is thus presented to him, the other has a right to shew him the snow he has thus received, and to rub it in his face, or to pelt him with it, accompanied with the remark in Kashmiri, “No shin muburu”* – new snow is innocent! and to demand also a forfeit of an entertainment, or a nach, or dance, or some other boon, of the person he has deceived. The most extreme caution is, of course, used by every one upon that day. Ahmed Shah of Little Tibet, told me that some one once attempted to deceive him, by presenting him with a new gun barrel, and pretended that he wished for his opinion about it; but that he instantly detected the snow in the barrel, and had the man paraded through the neighbourhood on a donkey, with his face turned towards the tail.

– G. T. Vigne, an Englishman visited Kashmir in 1835, wrote in Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo, the Countries Adjoining the Mountain-Course of the Indus, and the Himalaya, north of the Panjab with Map, Volume 2.
 Snow at Gulmarg, Kashmir. - April, 2006.Photograph: Gulmarg,  April 2006

I don’t know if this funny tradition was popular or if it still is popular in the valley; I haven’t heard about it from my elders.
* Shouldn’t that Kashmiri line be -” Nov Sheen Mubarak“. Yes, it should be.

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I talked to my parents and it turns out that the tradition prevailed even during their younger days.
 Nov Sheen Mubarak
One the morning of first snow, while shaking hands with someone, if you found snow in your hand, you could expect the line Nov Sheen Khoti, New Snow is On You – which meant you owned that someone a treat.

Nov Sheen, New Snow, also had a special significance for newly wed brides. If a mother-in-law played out this prank on her new daughter-in-law (and she often did), then the bride’s parents were obliged to send over gifts to their daughter’s new family.

With time, this curious practice became an ingrained tradition and during the first year of marriage, after the first snow of winter, a bride’s family was expected to send gifts to the bride’s new family.

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One fine day, a telegram was received in Srinagar.
On receiving the news of snowfall in Kashmir, a young and recently married man, who at that time happened to be posted ‘on duty’ in the distant land of Jammu, sent the following message to his in-laws in the Srinagar city:

 Nov Sheen Mubarak. Namaskar. Send Transistor.

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Connection between Zeethyaar Shrine and Shankaracharya Temple

The Shiv temple atop Shankaracharya Hill was originally dedicated to a form of Shiva known as Jyesthesvara and is believed to have been (partly) built by King Gopaditya (253 A.D. to 328). The hill was known as Gopadri and even today, at foot of this hill, in south direction, there is a village called Gopkar.

The Shrine at Zeethyaar is dedicated to Zeestha Devi, a form of Parvati.

But interestingly enough, Aurel Stein, in notes to his translation of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, mentions ‘Zeethyaar’ as the spot of a shiv temple dedicated to Jyesthesvara (the name of the lingam present there) and the spot for holy Tirtha of Jyether. According to the Mytho-folklore ( based on Jyesthamahatmya), at this particular spot, Siva liberated Jyetha, i.e. Parvati, from the Daityas (demons) and on marrying her took the name Jyesthesa. [Check out his ‘Note C-i.124 Jyestharudra at Srinagari’]

Later, on page 453 he asserts:

“In Note C, i.124, I have shown that an old tradition which can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century, connected the takht Hill with the worship of Siva Jyestharudra or, by another form of the name, JYESTHESVARA (Jyesthesa). And we find in fact a Linga known by this name worshipped even at the present day at the Tirtha of Jyether, scarecely more than one mile from the east foot of the hill.
This Tirtha, which undoubtedly derived its name from Jyesthesvara, lies in a glen of the hillside, a short distance from the east shore of the Gagri Bal portion of the Dal. Its sacred spring, designated in the comparatively modern Mahatmya as Jyesthanaga, forms a favorite object of pilgrimage for the Brahmans of Srinagar. Fragments of several colossal Lingas are found in the vicinity of jyether and show with some other ancient remains now built into the Ziarats of Jyether and Gupkar that the site had held sacred from an early time. It is in this vicinity that we may look for the ancient shrine of Jyestharudra which Jalauka is said to have erected at Srinagar. But in the absence of distinct archeological evidence its exact position cannot be determined.”

Oddly enough, among the the Kashmir Pandit community, Zeethyaar is now mostly remembered as a “Devi” spot.

Images:

  1. Shiv temple on Shankaracharya Hill, as seen (zoomed in) from Dal Lake. June 2008. 
  2. New Shiv temple at Zeethyaar Shrine, on the foot hills of Zabarwan.June 2008.

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You may also like to check out my post (with photographs) on the Zeethyar Temple

Martand, House of Pandavs, Pandav Lar’rey

In 1889, Walter R. Lawrence, the British Land settlement officer in Kashmir, writing in Valley of Kashmir (1895), for the chapter Archaeology, quotes these line written by Sir Alexander Cunningham:

“The ruins of the Hindu temple of Martand, or, as is commonly called, the Pandu-Koru, or the house of Pandus and Korus – the cyclopes of the East – are situated on the highest part of a karewas*, where is commences to rise to its juncture with the mountains, about 3 miles east of Islamabad. Occupying, undoubtedly, the finest position in Kashmir, this noble ruin is the most striking in size and situation of all the existing remains of Kashmir grandeur.”

 Pandavs, of course, still get credit for all kind of ancient structures strewn across India.

Sir Alexander Cunningham (1814-93), British archaeologist and army engineer, better known as the father of Indian Archaeology, as a young officer, was stationed in Kashmir after the first Sikh War of 1845-1846. In November 1847, he measured and studied most of the ancient that existed in Kashmir. On the subject of Martand, Pandavs and Ptolemy – the celebrated Greek geographer of the second century AD who lived in Egypt, Cunningham wrote:  [The ancient buildings of Kashmir]

 ” are entirely composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking the highest polish, a property to which I mainly attribute the present beautiful state of  preservation of most of the Kashmirian buildings; not one of these temples has a name, excepting that of Martand, which is called in the corrupt Kashmirian pronunciation, Matan, but they are all known by the general name of Pandavanki lari or ” Pandus-house,” a title to which they have no claim whatever, unless indeed the statement of Ptolemy can be considered of sufficient authority upon such a subject. He says ” circa autem Bidaspum Pandovorum regio ” — the Kingdom of the Pandus is upon the Betasta or (Behat), that is, it corresponded with Kashmir. This passage would seem to prove that the Pandavas still inhabited Kashmir so late as the second century of our era. Granting the correctness of this point there may be some truth in the universal attribution of the Kashmirian temples to the race of Pandus, for some of these buildings date as high as the end of the fifth century, and there are others that must undoubtedly be much more ancient, perhaps even as old as the beginning of the Christian era. One of them dates from 220 B. C.** “

The origin of the Sun temple of Martand is a bit blurry, but King Lalitaditya (A.D. 693 to 729) is believed to have built it. Cunningham mentions that the Rajatarangini credits King Lalitaditya as the builder of Martand temples. But, he further mentions:

“From the same authority we gather — though the interpretation of the verses is considerably disputed — that the temple itself was built by Ranaditya, and the side chapels, or at least one of them, by his queen, Amritaprakha. The date ‘ of Ranaditya’s reign is involved in some obscurity, but it may safely be conjectured that he died in the first half of the fifth century after Christ.”

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* karewas: Kashmiri word for plateau like geographic formations found mostly to west of the river Jhelum and believed to have been created by draining of the great ancient lake that was once supposed to be Kashmir.

** Francis Younghousband in his book Kashmir (1911) mentions the temple believed to be dating back to 220 B.C. is Jyesthesvara Temple built atop a hill by Gopaditya (253 A.D. to 328). This is the site of present day Shiv temple atop Shankaracharya hill. The temple is first supposed to have been built by Jalauka, the son of great Emperor Ashoka, in around 200 B.C.

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About the old Image of Martand Temple near Bhawan:
The Photograph was taken by John Burke in 1868 for Henry Hardy Cole’s Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir. This and one more photograph was later was used in  many other later publications. I found it in the book: Archaeological Survey India: Kashmir 1870.

John Burke (1843-1900) was an Irishman who came to India as an apothecary (pharmacist) with the Royal Engineers, but in 1861 became an  assistant of an already established photographer William Baker, a retired Sergeant who had a studio at Peshawar. Between the years 1864 and 1868, the duo was one of the first to photograph Kashmir. Together they started the famous Baker and Burke Studio (1867-72). In 1873 Burke parted ways with Baker and started his own studios J.Burke & Co. in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore. The studio in Lahore opened in 1885 and was in business till 1903. Burke was also one of the official photographer to the army during the Second Afghan War of 1879 – 1880.

Here’s a slide show of old photographs of Martand temple taken from Archaeological Survey India: Kashmir 1870.

Some of these may have been taken by Samuel Bourne, a prolific British photographer who worked in India from 1863 until 1870. He first photographed Kashmir in 1863.

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You can take a look at the book “Archaeological Survey India: Kashmir 1870” here at the digital archive of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts

View of the Valley and An Atmospherical Phenomena

Image: View of the Kashmir valley on way to Qazigund.
June 2008.

Qazigund of Anantnag district, is the first major a town and a major road stop on way to Kashmir. Hence, it is often called the “Gateway to Kashmir”.

Karl Alexander A. Hügel (April 23, 1795 – June 2, 1870) born in Bavaria, Germany, was an Austrian army officer, a diplomat and a botanist. After experiencing rejection in love, he decided to roam around the world and became a explorer. He set out in 1831 and by the end of his journeys in 1836, he had visited lands as far and distant as Australasia, Far East, near East and much of Indian sun-continent including Punjab and Kashmir.

In late 1835, after visiting the plains of Punjab, Hugel traveled to Kashmir valley, entering it using the Muzaffarabad route – the then preferred route for Kashmir.

The account of his travel to Kashmir and Punjab can be found in ‘Travels in Kashmir And The Panjab By Karl Alexander A. Hügel’, Translated from German (Kaschmir und das Reich der Siek (Cashmere and the Realm of the Sikh), published 1841) by Thomas Best Jervis, published 1845.

On Tuesday, November 24th of year 1835, Karl Alexander A. Hügel was traveling in the area that is now known as Anantnag district and was on his way to a place that had already been renamed, only a couple of centuries ago in  seventeenth century by Aurangzeb, as Islamabad. With a small entourage of servants and guides, Hügel, riding on a horseback, arrived at the ancient town of  Bijbehara, a place whose ancient Sanskrit name, he thought, must have been ‘Vidya Wihara’, Temple of Wisdom. He rode across the ancient bridge built on the river Jehlum and noticed how “Large lime-trees overgrow the piers of this ancient bridge.” At Bijbehara, he found no ancient great ruins, no signs of this place being an old capital of a Kingdom. Instead, he had to content himself by buying some old coins “of a date prior to the Mohammedan dynasties” from the local bazaar and thought “bazars are the chief attraction in every place throughout India.” About half a mile up ahead from “Bijbahar”, on the either side of the Jehlum river, Hügel noticed the ‘Badsha Bagh‘ or the ‘Garden of High King’ – the ancient gardens built by Dara Shikoh, according to Hügel it was the “the residence of the luckless Dara, the brother of Aurungzib.” and was told that in ancient times a bridge used to connect the two spacious gardens of both sides. From here he decided to proceed for Mattan and have a close look at Korau Pandau. But, it took him so much time trying to find a guide for this place that by the time he reached the ancient “caves”, running late, he thought it best to leave immediately for Islamabad. Had he stayed longer at Mattan, maybe his guide would have mentioned that Kashmiris know these ancient structures as Pandav Lar’rey – Abode of Pandav and believed to have been built in around mid 8th century by King Lalitaditya (A.D. 693 to 729).

During this journey in Anantnag district, Hügel took note of an interesting atmospheric phenomena and made a very curious comment. He wrote:

I observed with much interest to day the optical illusions, at this season almost peculiar to Kashmir. There is so little transparency in the air, that places at a mile’s distance only, appear to be removed to four times that distance, and mountains only four miles off seem to be at least fifteen or twenty. If the weather be tolerably clear, one can see to this last distance, but the twenty miles appear twice as much. To these peculiarities of the atmosphere, I attribute the exaggerated terms in which many travellers speak of the extent of this country. It was dark when we reached our halting place but every thing was in the best order and a supper of trout from the sacred tank of Anatnagh was a great relish after the day’s journey.

Navreh ‘thal barun’: Kashmiri New Year

It’s March 27th 2009 and it’s the first day of the New Year. It’s Nevreh – the Kashmiri New Year decided in the pages of Jantri or nachipatir, almanac, Vijeshwar Panchang that’s based on the movement of moon and not the sun. It’s a Lunar calender. So Nevreh Mubarak everyone!

Navreh  ‘thal’ steel plate looks pretty much like the Soonth Thal. Thali has some rice (in older days it used to be paddy),  tcho’vor – small roti made of rice flour/bread (here it is actually a bread piece), pen (it is supposed to be standing, so in older days they had pen stand also placed in the plate), inkpot, some currency notes (here we have a coin), milk or curd (we got milk), dooyn – walnut in odd number (here we only got one almond), some salt (actually meant to be took noon or rock salt from Pakistan), some flowers – narcissus flower would be great, and a small mirror. I also read that in older days they used to put in some newly sprouted grass and a weed known as Wye (it supposed to be good for sharpening memory functions of the brain. At one time, my nani fed me a lot of this weed). The specialty of Navreh thaal is the new year’s nachipatir – the one with the great image of ‘Vishnu in Space’.

The thal is prepared on the preceding night, then covered with a piece of cloth and kept overnight at the center of the house i.e. kitchen, chowk’e or may be the thokur kuth, prayer room right next to chowk’e.

In the early hours of the morning, eldest woman of the house, grandmother or mother, with the thal in her hand and blessing on her lips, one by one  wakes everyone up and asks each one to look at the thal, look one’s face in the mirror, take up the pen and write something, anything, but OM would be prefect.

In the after noon, using the rice from the thal, yellow rice taher is prepared.

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“The 2nd of the month Caitra is a festival to the people of kashmir, called Agdus(?)*, and celebrated on account of a victory gained by their king, Muttai**, over the Turks.”
– India by Al-Biruni, page 258
Abridged Edition of Dr. Edward C. Sachau’s English Translation
Edited with Introduction and Notes by Qeyamuddin Ahmad,
Second Edition
Third Reprint 1995

* Okdoh in Kashmiri. It literally means 1st day. But the festival ‘Hur Okdoh’ marks the first day of fournteen days leading to Herath (Shivratri).
** Lalitaditya Muktapida, emperor of Kashmir from 724 AD to 760 AD whose military might (Kashmiris claim) captured areas as far and as wide as Central Asia, Bengal and Karnataka.

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Received the following traditional Navreh greeting through SMS:

Sount’ik vaavan Kul’aye
aleravith nave navreh
huk dutnei sadda
shushur chel’ravith
poshwaren manz
anuun bahaar 
Navreh Mubarak 
Aurzu Te Aay

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Read more about Navreh here

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Thanks to Kashmri pandits around the world (mostly USA) and thanks to the post about Soonth, search query stats of this blog yesterday (and today morning )looked like this:

Notice the “thal” queries: Kashmir thaal barun rice walnut pen, thal barun things, thal barun how, thaal barun and thal barun song.

Kashmir side of Pir Panjal

Something miraculous happens when you cross to the Kashmir side of the Banihal Pass. Your spirit seems to soar. It’s true. While the weather was rainy and gloomy on the Jammu side of Banihal, on the Kashmir side, it was a perfectly day – The air was light, cool and clear, and the sun was shining benevolently. You almost turn an animist.

Almost every one who wrote about visiting Kashmir from this particular route, at this particular moment – the after ‘Jawaar Tunnel Moment’, takes a pause, gives in to the churning of the spirit inside and takes another heartful look at the unbound beauty of nature.

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