Dhruv Kotru Profile picture
May 20, 2022 10 tweets 8 min read Read on X
From Tip of the Tongue to Manuscript - A Brief History of Vaakh's of Lal Ded -
There is nothing greater in Kashmiri literature than the Vaakhs of the 14th century's great Saint- poetess #LalDed. There is perhaps no Kashmiri who does not have a Vaak on the tip of his (1/9) #LALDED #LALVAAKHS
tongue. The popularity of these sayings is so ubiquitous that an average Kashmiri always finds use of one or the other Vaaks during conversation to make a point with the desired emphasis. However, even as the Vaaks are popular but the story of their compilation is barely (2/9) #Manuscript #LallaVaakhs
known to the world. Here goes the fascinating story:

Until as late as the 19th century there were no manuscripts of #LallaVaakhs but they survived on the tongues of the #Kashmiris and also had been transmitted by word of mouth from generation to generation. Reportedly, (3/9)
Edwin Arnold, the famous author of Geet Govinda, The Song Celestial was the first western scholar to have collected them in 1885. But this claim awaits further confirmation and definite investigation. The first partial manuscripts of these sayings were collected in 1895 (4/9)
by #AurelStein including the 60 #Vaakhs compiled by Bhaskar Razdan. In 1911, Stein deposited the two manuscripts at @UniofOxford @bodleianlibs .The first definitive search for the complete manuscript of #LallaVaakhs was set in by #GeorgeGrierson. However, no complete (5/9)
manuscripts existed then. Grierson entrusted the job to Pandit Mukund Ram Shastri who collected them from the oral utterances of an ascetic named Dharma Das Dervesh of the village Guch in Kashmir. Mukundram recorded them as he received even though meaning of several words (6/9)
were unknown to him. The transmission was in accordance to the tradition to pass on them as they were received from the earlier reciter. Mukundram passed the manuscript to Grierson who 6 years later assisted by Lionel Batnett finally came out with the first scientific (7/9)
edition under the title #Lallavakyani in 1920 published from London. The analysis of meters used in the utterance of these Vaaks bearing the unique local touch is the work of #PanditNityanandShastri. Since then, the same set of Vaakhs have been used by several scholars (8/9)
like Pandit Anand Kaul, Pandit Jayalal Kaul, B.N.Parimoo, Pandit Gurtoo & more, in recent decades to produce their editions of the Lalla's sayings.(9/9) #SNPArchives @nirupamakotru @dkandathil @MattLaemon @Dilleye #TuJantaHeKyaHaiKashmirKeBareMai
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More from @dhruvkotru

May 7, 2022
India's oldest written history Rajatarangini - The Ancient Political History of Kashmir.
A thread...
#Rajatarangini was authored by a Kashmiri Brahmin named Pandit Kalhana. Written in the 12th century, (1/11)
its original manuscript called Codex Archetypus was a heirloom of single family for 9 generations. The seventh descendant was the famed #Saivite Sivopdhyaya. (2/11)
Written on paper in #sarada script in the hand of the far famed scholar and copyist Rattanakantha Popularly called Ratha Razdan for his fast writing and cursive handwriting difficult to read, (3/11)
Read 12 tweets
Apr 28, 2022
Kashmiri Pandits owe it to Sir Marc Aurel Stein.

The caption sounds a bit unrealistic but nothing is more truer. The #KPs had produced in the past an enormous amount of literature written in Sanskrit but all that lay secretively (1/14) A Thread #AurelStein
in the possession of their owners who guarded them like sacred amulets.Everything lay hidden and unknown about Kashmir's Hindu era until the last quarter of the 19th century. Even the KPs themselves were ignorant of the glorious achievements of their ancestors. It was (2/14)
the fortuitous visit of the German Indologist, Georg Buhler, to Kashmir in 1875 that brought the ancient Sanskrit treasures of Kashmir before the world for the first time. At the time he collected 300 manuscripts and thus the world for the first time ever became familiar (3/14) #GeorgBuhler
Read 16 tweets
Apr 25, 2022
Kashmir: The Fountainhead of World’s Folk Literature
#TuJantaHeKyaHaiKashmirKeBareMai - A Thread
Credits: #SNPArchives
Atop the Mount Kailasa Shiva narrates the stories of seven Kings of Vidayadharas to his wife Parvati. Overheard by his invisible attendant Kausambi, (1/11) #TuJantaHeKyaHaiKashmirKeBareMai - A Thread #SNPArchives
he brings the stories to humans. Kanabhuti narrates the stories in #Paisachi that #Gunadhya in service of King Satavahana converts them to writing. Comprising of 7 lakh Slokas written in blood, yet the king Satavahana despised the effort for having been written in (2/11)
Paisachi; a language he abhorred and knew not. Heartbroken and dejected Gunadhya returned to forest and read the stories to forest animals and subsequently burned the stories leaf after leaf after he read them to the animals. The animals who heard the stories later became (3/11)
Read 12 tweets

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