Lalleshwari

Lalleshwari, also commonly known as Lal Ded (1320–1392), was a Kashmiri mystic of the Kashmir Shaivism school of Hindu philosophy. She was the creator of the style of mystic poetry called vatsun or Vakhs, meaning "speech" (from Sanskrit vāc). Known as Lal Vakhs, her verses are among the early compositions in the Kashmiri language and are a part in the history of modern Kashmiri literature.

Lalleshwari ("Mother Lal" or "Mother Lalla") is also known by various other names, including Lal Dyad (Dyad means "Grandmother"), Lalla Aarifa, Lal Diddi, Lalleshwari, Lalla Yogishwari/Yogeshwari and Lalishri.

Life
Most modern scholars place Lalleshwari's birth between 1301 and 1320 C.E., near Sempore or Pandrenthan. She is estimated to have died in 1373, and a grave near Bijbehara is attributed to her, although there is no confirmation. Lalleshwari 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 Lalleshwari. Some reports suggest 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.

Records of Lalleshwari's life are contained in oral tradition, and consequently there is 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 Lalleshwari. The first written record of Lalleshwari's life is contained in the Tadhkirat-ul-Arifin (1587), 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 (1654). In these texts, Lalleshwari 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 Lalleshwari's life. She is also noted in a Persian chronicle, the Waqiati-e-Kashmir (1746) in which she is described as being known in the reign of Sultan Alau-ud-din (1343–54) and died in the reign of Sultan Shihab-ud-din (1354–73).

Lalleshwari 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.

Literary works
Lalleshwari's poems represent some of the early 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, are attributed to Lalleshwari.

Lalleshwari'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.

Translations
Lalleshwari's work were first recorded in writing in the twentieth century, and have been 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 Lalleshwari'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 archaeologist and scholar Sir Marc Aurel Stein, and incorporated some archived poems that were contained in the Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings (1888).

Grierson's translation was the first printed and published volume of Lalleshwari's works. Following his translation, a number of English translations have been produced, those by Pandit Ananda Koul (1921), Sir Richard Carnac Temple (1924) and Jaylal Kaul (1973). Recent translations include those by Coleman Barks, Jaishree Odin Kak, and Ranjit Hoskote.

Her poems, (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 (also known as Nooruddin Rishi or Nunda Rishi) was influenced by Lalleshwari. He 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 Lalleshwari who breast-fed him.

Lalleshwari 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 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 Lalleshwari'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 simultaneously Lallesvari 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 Lalleshwari's vakh, there are other contemporary performative arts that are based on Lalleshwari's life and poetry. For example, there are contemporary renderings of Lalleshwari's poetry in song. In addition, a solo play in English, Hindi, and Kashmiri titled Lal Ded (based on her life) has been performed by actress Mita Vashisht across India since 2004.