Lalleshwari


Lal Ded, known as Laleshwari in other parts of the subcontinent, was a Kashmiri mystic of the Kashmir Shaivism school of philosophy. She was the creator of the style of mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, literally "speech". Known as Lal Vakhs, her verses are the earliest compositions in the Kashmiri language and are an important part in the history of modern Kashmiri literature. She inspired and interacted with many Sufis of Kashmir.
She is also known by various other names, including Lal Ded, Mother Lalla, Lalla Aarifa, Lal Diddi, Laleshwari, Lalla Yogishwari and Lalishri.

Life

A great deal of the records of Lal Ded's life are contained in oral tradition, and consequently there is considerable variance on the details of her life and beliefs. Numerous contemporary Kashmiri histories, such as those prepared by Jonaraja, Srivara, Prajyabhatta, and Haidar Malik Chadura, do not mention Lal Ded. The first written record of Lal Ded's life is contained in the Tadhkirat-ul-Arifin, a collection of biographies of saints and religious figures written by Mulla Ali Raina, and followed by an account of her life in Baba Daud Mishkati's Asrar ul-Akbar. In these texts, Lal Ded is described as a mystic saint, appearing in the forest to travellers. In 1736, Khwaja Azam Diddamari's Tarikh-i-Azami contained a more detailed account of Lal Ded's life. She is also noted in a Persian chronicle, the Waqiati-e-Kashmir in which she is described as being famous in the reign of Sultan Alau-ud-din and died in the reign of Sultan Shihab-ud-din.
Lal Ded is also believed to be a contemporary of Mir Sayyid Ali-Hamdani, an Iranian Sufi scholar and poet, who recorded stories of her in his own verse during his travels to Kashmir.
Most modern scholars place Lal Ded's birth between 1301 and 1320 C.E., near Sempore or Pandrenthan. She estimated to have died in 1373, and a grave near Bijbehara is commonly attributed to her, although there is no confirmation. Lal Ded is believed to have been born to a Brahmin family, and was married at the age of twelve in accordance with the local customs. Following her marriage, she was renamed, as is custom, to Padmavati, but continued to be known as Lalla or Lal Ded. Some reports sugest her marriage was unhappy, and that she left home, between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-six, to become a disciple of a spiritual leader, Siddha Srikanth or Sed Boyu, who was a Shaivite. As part of her religious education, she travelled alone on foot, surviving on alms, before becoming a teacher and spiritual leader herself.

Literary works

Lal Ded's poems represent some of the earliest known works of Kashmiri literature, and were written as Kashmiri began to emerge as a distinct language from Apabhramsa-prakrit, which was spoken in North India. A total of 285 poems, known as vakhs, attributed to Lal Ded.

Themes

Lal Ded's vakhs drawn from influences and languages that made contact with the Indian sub-continent in her life, drawing from Sanskritic, Islamic, Sufi, and Sikh cultures.
She continued the mystic tradition of Shaivism in Kashmir, which was known as Trika before 1900.

Translations

Lal Ded's works were first recorded in writing in the twentieth century, and have been frequently republished since, in Kashmiri as well as in translation. In 1914, Sir George Grierson, a civil servant and the Superintendent of the Linguistic Survey of India, commissioned a copy of Lal Ded's vakhs. A written record of the vakhs was unavailable at the time, and one was prepared by transcribing an oral narration of the vakhs performed by Dharma-dasa Darwesh, a story-teller residing in Gush, Kashmir. This manuscript was translated in English by Grierson and published as Lalla-Vakyani, or The Wise Sayings of Lal Ded. Grierson consolidated and expanded on the partial translation prepared by the Hungarian-British archaelogist and scholar Sir Marc Aurel Stein, and incorporated some archived poems that were contained in the Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings.
Grierson's translation was the first printed and published volume of Lal Ded's works. Following his translation, a number of English translations have been produced, notably those by Pandit Ananda Koul, Sir Richard Carnac Temple and Jaylal Kaul. More recent translations include those by Coleman Barks, Jaishree Odin Kak, and Ranjit Hoskote.
Her poems, known as called vakhs) have been translated into English by Richard Temple, Jaylal Kaul, Coleman Barks, Jaishree Odin, and Ranjit Hoskote.

Legacy

The leading Kashmiri Sufi figure Sheikh Noor-ud-din Wali was highly influenced by Lal Ded. He ultimately led to the formation of the Rishi order of saints and later gave rise to many Rishi saints like Resh Mir Sàeb. One Kashmiri folk story recounts that, as a baby, Nunda Rishi refused to be breast-fed by his mother. It was Lal Ded who breast-fed him.
Lal Ded and her mystic musings continue to have a deep impact on the psyche of Kashmiris, and the 2000 National Seminar on her held at New Delhi led to the release of the book Remembering Lal Ded in Modern Times. In his book "Triadic Mysticism", Paul E. Murphy calls her the "chief exponent of devotional or emotion-oriented Triadism". According to him, three significant representatives of devotionalism emerged in Kashmir in the five hundred years between the last half of the ninth and the end of the fourteenth centuries.
What this points to is the non-sectarian nature of Lal Ded's spiritual life and her song-poems. Yet, her life and work have been used for various religious and political agendas over time. As author and poet Ranjit Hoskote writes:
"To the outer world, Lal Ded is arguably Kashmir's best known spiritual and literary figure; within Kashmir, she has been venerated both by Hindus and Muslims for nearly seven centuries. For most of that period, she has successfully eluded the proprietorial claims of religious monopolists. Since the 1980s, however, Kashmir's confluential culture has frayed thin under the pressure of a prolonged conflict to which transnational terrorism, State repression and local militancy have all contributed. Religious identities in the region have become harder and more sharp-edged, following a substantial exodus of the Hindu minority during the early 1990s, and a gradual effort to replace Kashmir's unique and syncretically nuanced tradition of Islam with a more Arabocentric global template. It is true that Lal Ded was constructed differently by each community, but she was simultaneouslyLallesvari or Lalla Yogini to the Hindus and Lal'arifa to the Muslims; today unfortunately, these descriptions are increasingly being promoted at the expense of one another."
Beyond several new translations of Lal Ded's vakh, there are other contemporary performative arts that are based on Lal Ded's life and poetry. For example, there are contemporary renditions of Lal Ded's poetry in song. In addition, a solo play in English, Hindi, and Kashmiri titled Lal Ded has been performed by actress Mita Vashisht across India since 2004.