By Dr. S.S. Toshkhani

Introductory:

As a daughter of Sanskrit, Kashmiri has a number of traits that it shares with other modern languages of Aryan stock, and yet it has its own peculiarities also. What makes it a unique language in the Indian Linguistic context is the fact that it is analytic and at the same time synthetic holding many a secret of the development of modern Indo-Aryan languages.

That is perhaps, what Dr. Siddheshwar Verma means when he says that Kashmiri reveals linguistic strata of various ages  -  "Vedic, Buddhist Sanskrit, Pali, Kharoshthi Prakrit" etc. No wonder then that Georg Buhler considers it to be of greatest importance in the study of a comparative grammar of Indo-Aryan languages, preserving, as it does, not only several old word forms but also revealing how new word-forms evolved from old bases. Grierson too seems to ensorse the same view despite his controversial classification of the language. The study of Kashmiri, he says, is an "essential preliminary to any inquiry" regarding "the mutual relations of modern vernaculars of India".

Distribution:

Kashmiri or Kashur’ as its native speakers numbering over 31 lakhs according to the 1991 census call it, is spoken in the region extending from Uri to Matrigam in the north, Verinag to the Pir Panchal ranges in the south, Zojila to Kashtawar in the east and Shopian to Lagan in the West, covering an area of about 10,000 sq. miles. Besides the Kashmir valley, there is a sizeable concentration of the speakers of the languages and its dialects in Kashtawar, Ramban, Pogal Paristan, Reasi, Poonch and several other mountainous areas of the Jammu region. Today a large number of its speakers-around 5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits have been displaced from their original linguistic habitat and relocated in Jammu, Delhi and other places in India. There is a clearly perceptible dialectic variation in respect of accent and usage in the Kashmiri spoken in Kamraz (Skt. Kramarajya-North Western Kashmir) and Maraz (Madvarajya-South Kashmir) and the standard Kashmiri of Srinagar and adjoining semi-urban areas. The main areawise dialects, however, are Kashtawari, Pogali, Siraji and Rambani which preserve several old and archaic elements of the language. Unfortnuately, there has been no attempt to study these dialects systematically which could well reveal secrets of its development of Kashmiri from the regional. Prakrit and Apabhramsha.

Origin:

There exists a very strong evidence to show that Kashmiri has descended from the vedic speech or, as Buhler  has pointed out, from "one of the dialects of which the classical Sanskrit was formed." The presence in Kashmiri vocabulary of a large number of lexical and phonetic items that can be directly traced to  Vedic corrobate this fact. For instance, the Kashmiri word ‘yodvay’, meaning ‘if’ is the same as Vedic ‘yaduvay’, the corresponding word for it in Sanskrit (and Hindi) being ‘yadi’. Similarly we have the word ‘ada’ in Kashmiri, meaning ‘so, then, thereupon, yes’, which can be hardly distinguished from the Vedic ‘addha’ of which the Prakrit form too is ‘addha’, Again, the Vedic ‘sanna’ appears as ‘son’ in Kashmiri having an identical meaning ‘deep’. Or take the Kashmiri word ‘basta’ which comes straight from Vedic ‘bastajin’ meaning ‘goatskin’, ‘bellows’. It is from the Vedic root ‘taksh’ that the Kashmiri word ‘tachh’ (to scratch, ‘to peel’, ‘to plane’, ‘to scrape’) is derived, Sanskrit ‘ksh’ changing to ‘chh’ in Kashmiri as in Laksha>lachh, vaksha>vachh, draksha>dachh, akshi>achhi etc. And from this very root comes the Kashmiri word ‘chhan’, ‘a carpenter’.

Generally, Kashmiri words have evolved from Vedic or old Indo-Aryan through intermediairy Pali or Prakrit forms. Thus, Vedic ‘prastar’, from which the Hindi ‘patthar’ (=a stone) is derived, changes through the intermediary Prakrit ‘pattharo’ to ‘pathar’ (=on the floor) and ‘pothur’ (=the floor) in Kashmiri, retaining the original sense. Vedic ‘atyeti’, ‘comes upon, goes by’, ‘enters’ is another example. It becomes ‘achcheti’ in Prakrit and from it the Kashmiri ‘atsun’. (=enter) is derived. In fact, numerous such examples can be adduced to show that Kashmiri preserves not only phonetic and semantic but also morphological elements of Vedic speech.

The phonetic aspects of the tendency in Kashmiri to retain some most archaic word forms has been analysed at some length by Dr. Siddheshwar Verma. It will be interesting to look at some of the examples he gives to provide evidence on how Kashmiri shows contact with older layers of Indo-Aryan vocabulary. One such word that Dr Verma examines is ‘kral’, the Kashmiri for ‘a potter’. While all other modern Indo-Aryan languages, he points out, except Nepali and Sinhalese, have words for it derived from the Sanskrit ‘kumbhakar’, post-Vedic development, Kashmiri alone preserves the phonetic remanants of the Vedic ‘Kulal’, an older word. Similarly, the Kashmiri word ‘tomul’, uncooked rice’, he says, has retained the initial ‘t’ of the Sanskrit ‘tandulam’, while in other modern Indo-Aryan languages, ‘t’ has changed to ‘ch’, as in Hindi ‘Chawal’, Bengali and Oriya ‘Chaul’, Sindhi ‘chavir’, Nepali ‘chamal’ and so on.

It is on the basis of such linguistic evidence that eminent linguists like Morgenstierne, Emenean, Bloch and Turner have arrived at their conclusions about Vedic origin of Kashmiri. Supporting this view, Prof. S.K. Toshkahni goes even further to point out some pre-Vedic developments in the language like the existence of words like ‘sost’ and ‘rost’ which later become ‘sahit’ and ‘rahit’.

Grierson's folly:

Grierson, however, disregards all this massive evidence and holds an entirely different view about the origin and affliation of the Kashmir language. Kashmiri, he insists is "a mixed language, having as its basis a language of the Dard group of the Pishacha family allied to "Shina’. He accepts the fact that there is a predominance of Indo-Aryan vocabulary in Kashmir, but attributes this to a powerful influence of Indian culture and literature for over two thousand years. Almost echoing Grierson's views, Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterji observes that "the Kashmiri language is a result of very large overlaying of a Dardic base with Indo-Aryan. But neither Grierson, nor Chatterji have cared to show what this Dardic base or sub-stratum precisely is. Nor have they been able to produce any evidence of this ‘overlaying’. Grierson's view are largely confined to the realm of hypothesis and fly in the face of actual facts of the language. This insistence on equating Kashmiri with Paishachi and therefore, with Dardic and Iranian makes little linguistic sense.

The Paishachi speech exists only in the few examples that Prakrit grammarians have given of it, there being virtually no other record available. And a glance at the phonetic and morphological features of Paishachi as given by them proves beyond any shadow of doubt that linguistically it has nothing to do with Kashmiri.

Grierson has further muddled the issue by placing Kashmiri in the Shina-Khowar group of Dardic languages and clubbing these in turn with the Kafir group. Both Morgiensterne and Emenean have rubbished this classification and shown very clearly that Dardic languages “are of pure IA (Indo-Aryan) origin and go back to a form of speech closely resembling Vedic”. Emeneau has further pointed out that though the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, “they did not pass through the MIA (Middle Indo-Aryan) development represented by the records".

The problem with Grierson is that he bases his arguments on a false premise, overlookking the fact that if there are some cognate words in Shina and Kashmiri, it is not because of any Dardic connection, but because both the languages draw upon Sanskrit or the old Indo-Aryan as the basic source for their respctive vocabularies. He also ignores totally the fundamental differences that exist between the Linguistic features of Shina and Kashmir. What is more unfortunate, however, is that many later scholars have accepted his views uncritically, giving rise to a fallacy that still persists. As P.N. Pushp has clearly pointed out, "the data adduced by him in this regard is just confined to tentative resemblances: just some casual sounds and vagrant vocables regardless of the evidence offered by the structural framework that the Kashmiri language shares with sister languages including Sindhi, Panjabi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali”.

Structural Framework:

What this structural framework actually is and how it developed can be known only when the language is “historically studied and structurally analysed”. In other words when we examine the written evidence of its gradual development through various periods of time. Like other Indo-Aryan Languages, Kashmiri too started assuming its distinct shape as a modern language around the 10th century after emerging from the MIA stage of Prakrit  and Apabhramsha. And though much of its early literary output has been lost, whatever written evidence is available to us today of the language is sufficient to help us draw a clear outline of the process of its development.

The earliest extant record of Kashmiri we come across is in the form of a commentary on the verses of a work titled “Chhumma Sampraday”, which can be assigned to 11th century or so. The work, though in verse form has nothing as such to do with poetry but with the teachings of an esoteric Tantric sect of the times. A scrutiny of these verses shows that linguistically they are closer to regional Apabhramsha, though Prakrit forms also abound. This will be clear from the following two examples from the work:

Bhava sabhave sab avinashi

Sapan sabhavan vi uppanna

Te aj niravidhi agam prakashi

Idassa dishti Kali vipachhanna

Vigalani shunnya ashunnya swarupa

Vividh padarthu sathu kavatet

Ashayu chitti sada nirupa

Vichchi viju virtha prghatet

The nascent features of early Kashmiri that appear in the 'Chumma Sampradaya' take a more pronounced and distinct form in later works like the ‘Mahanaya Prakasha’, ‘Banasur Katha’ and Sukha-Dukha Charit, presenting a somewhat continuous picture of linguistic development from the 10th-11th tury to the end of the 15th century.

Surely Kashmiri must have acquired a distinct form in the 11th century for we have Kshemendra, a great stalwart of Sanskrit Literature recommending to upcoming Sanskrit poets of his times to study bhasha kavya or poetry written in the regional dialect alongside Prakrit and Apabhramsha works. Bilhana, another great Sanskrit poet, who lived in the 12th century, admires women of his native land for having the same command over Sanskrit and Prakrit as they had over their 'janma bhasha' or native tongue-obviously Kashmiri.

In Kalhana's Sanskrit chronicle "Rajatarangini", also written in the 12th century, we come across a curious piece of linguistic evidence in the form of a single sentence-"Rangassa Helu dinna" (the village of Helu was given to Ranga). But it is Amir Khusro's 'Nuh Siphir' that we find the nomenclature 'Kashmiri' being used as such for the first time (c.1300). Khusro has placed Kashmiri along side Lahori and Sindhi as one of the prominent languages spoken in India at that time.

If 'Chhumma Sampraday' presents the earliest recorded form of the Kashmiri language, 'Mahanay Prakash' documents the next stage of its development. Grierson considers it to be a work of the 15th century, but Prof PN Pushp and Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterji assign it to the 13th century which seems nearer the mark as an examination of its language with its tendency for Prakritisation shows. Grierson confuses its author Shiti Khntha with Shiti Kantha the author of a grammatical work, 'Balabodhini Nyasa' who lived in the 15th century. Interestingly, the author of 'Mahanaya Prakasha' has described the language of his work as "Sarvagochara desha bhasha', or "the regional dialect intelligelbe to all".

According to Dr G.V. Tagare, the term 'deshi', 'deshya' or 'deshi bhasha' generally imply the spoken language of a particular province. It is in this context that the term "desha bhasha" used by Shiti Kantha has to be understood. This is made further clear by repeated references to "attharasa desha bhasha" or eighteen provincial languages in Jain Prakrit works. There is little doubt that Kashmiri too must have one of eighteen languages in the early medieval period.

"Mahanaya Prakasha" (Illumination of the Great System or the System of the Great Meaning) is work of the Krama (Gradation) School which is akin to the Kula (Familial) School and is based on Shaktopaya or the Energic Way. It deals with the Goddess, the Wheel of Energies and ritual sex and emphasises that the Great Meaning or the Absolute Sense expresses itself gradually through the four forms of speech: para (transcendent and undifferentiated), pashyanti (visioning), madhyama (interjacent) and Vaikhari (displayed) word. Obviously all this terminology and the esoteric practices of jnaansiddhi, mantrasiddhi and melapsiddhi associated with the propitation of deities like Vameshi, Khechari, Bhuchari, Sambarbhakshini and Raudreshwari cannot by any stretch of imagination be taken to be poetry. But the importance of Mahanaya Prakasha lies in the fact that it is the only written evidence we have of the Kashmiri in the 13th Century. Its linguistic strtum appears to be definitely old, revealing how the language was emerging from its Prakriti-Apabhramsha form. Here is one example:

Yasu yasu jantus samvid yas gas

Nila pit sukh dukh sarup

Udyisdatta Samani samaras

Kamkampan tas tas anurup

In this  verse the Kashmiri pronouns yasu-yasu-yas-yas (<skt. 'yasya', Pali-Prakrit 'yassa', whoever, whomever) and 'tas-tas' (< skt. 'tasya', Pali-Prakrit tassa', to that person. can be clearly recognised and also the genetive marker - 'as' (< skt-'asya') used with 'jantu' ('a c-creature') in 'jantus'. in fact a large number of Kashmiri words can be found in their older forms in Mahanay Prakash - an aspect dwelt at some length by Grierson in 'The language of the Mahanay Prakash'. It is a brilliant analysis in which Gerirson accepts that the vocabulary of the work is predominantly Indo-Aryan, but attributes it to the authors being a Sanskrit scholar- something that does not appear to be convincing in view of Shiti Kantha's claim of having composed it in 'sarvagochar desbhasha'. Surely, Shiti Kantha's would not have made this claim without any basis.

While "Chhumma Sampraday" and "Mahanay Prakash" are the earliest recorded specimens of Kashmiri language and literature, the first heartbeats of Kashmiri poetry in the real sense of the word can be heard in the vaakhs or verse sayings of Lal Ded only. Born in the early decades of the 14th century when Kashmir was in the throes of an unprecedented political upheaval with a collision between two cultures, the indigenous and Islamic, thretaening to tear the entire social fabric apart, Lal Ded played the dual role of a poet and spiritual leader to ensure continuity and stability. No other Kashmiri poet has scaled the poetic heights that she attained and influenced Kashmiri psyche so deeply as she did. Even today her vaaks or verse sayings are a source of immense spiritual solace to Kashmiri speaking people, suffused as they are with great wisdom. Her mystic insights, and her vision of the relationship between the individual soul and the supreme being, her awareness of the human condition and a deep sense of compassion, her protets against everything that demeans a human being and restricts his freedom of will and her Shaiva world-view of the oneness of all conciousness make her - what she is regarded to be - the greatest cultural icon of the Kashmiris.

Lal Ded translated her existential anguish into soul sterring poetry, emphasising the inwardness of spiritual exprience and lashing out at religious formalism and external ceremony. But more than anything else, she chose to speak to the common masses in their own mother tongue rather than the literary language of the elite, borrowing her imagery ferom everyday life and making accessible to them the subtle truths of Kashmir’s Trika philosophy.

This direct contact with the life and concerns of the common people charged her language with tremendous power and made her poetry glow with a unique incadecence. In fact she shaped and enriched the Kashmiri language in a manner that it formed the basis on which a new Kashmiri identity was forged. Here are a few of her representative 'Vaaks' which are etched indelibly on the collective memory of Kashmiris :

*Ami pana sodaras navi chas laman

Kati bozi day myon mye ti diyi tar

Amyan takyan pony zan shraman

Zuu chhum braman gara gatshaha

(With a rope of loose-spun thread am I-towing my boat upon the sea.

Would that God heard my prayer

and brought me safe across!

Like water in cups of unbaked clay

I run to waste.

Would God I were to reach my home!

(--Tr. Prof Jaya Lal Kaul)

(Gagan tsuy bhutal tsuy

tsuy dyan yavan tu rath

Arga, tsandun, posh, pony tsuy

Tsuy sakal tu lagizi kyah?

(Yea, Thou alone the heavens, thou the earth,

And Thou alone the day, the air, the night

And Thou alone the slumbering and rebirth

Thi offerings of sandal oil and light!

Yea, Thou alone all these, for Thou art all,

What, then, to offer Thee, what name to call?

(--Tr-Nilam Cram Cook)

*Gwaran vonanam kunuy vatsun

Nyabra dopnam andar atsun;

Suy gav Lali mye vaak tii vatsun,

Tavay hyotum nangay natsun.

(My Guru said, "But one thing you must know

How, from within, still further in to go!"

The words became my precept and my chance

And so it came I, Lalla naked dance.

(--Tr. Nila Cram Cook)

If we look at the diction of these verses, we will find that Lal Ded uses words which are commonly used in the colloquial Kashmiri of today. In fact, her language appears to be surprisingly close to modern Kashmiri. Obviously this must not have been the language of her vaaks at the time they were composed. What it must have actually been like, we have no means to ascertain today. As these were not written down when they fell from the lips of the poetess but passed on through oral tredition from generation to generation till Bhaskar Razdan translated sixty of them into Sanskrit in the 18th century. In the intervening centuries it must have imperceptibly changed with each generation introducing its own linguistic elements and these accretions finally adding up to massive interpolations. The only way left for us to come as close as possible to the original language of the vaaks would be to critically edit the text in light of the diction of the extant works written immediately before them and after them.

However, even in the form in which the vaaks are available to us today we find that Lal Ded has used quite a number of Sanskrit and Saaskrit-derived words, pointing to the form of the Kashmiri language in her times. Here are some examples of such words: 'gagan', 'bhutal', 'dyan' (< 'dina'), 'pawan', 'sakal', 'sahaj', 'kusum', 'mudh', 'jnana', 'turag', 'desh', 'wopdish' (<updesh), tset ('Chitta'), 'Svaman', 'amritsaras', 'lay', bhan (<bhanu'), 'mukur', zanam' (< janma), tubh (<tobha), ahar, 'bhavaruj', 'artsun' (< 'archan'), 'akshar', 'rasayan, 'brahmand', 'rav' (<ravih), 'varun', 'salil', 'lavan', 'rasani' (<'rasana), 'prakash', 'shishir', 'pran', 'sham', 'dam', 'muktidvar', 'neshibod (< 'nishbuddhih'), 'shunya', 'vag' (< 'valga'), 'vak', 'manas', 'kul', 'akul', 'pashya' (< 'pashya), 'vimarsha' (< 'vimarsha), 'rajan' (< 'rajani'), 'ambar', 'laz' (< lajja), 'mrig', 'shrigal', 'nishpath', 'chidanand-as', 'jnanaprakash-as', 'jnanamarg', 'varna', 'aham', 'antar', 'nabhi', 'tslitan' (<'chetana'), 'atsitan'- (<achebra), 'ashvavan', 'geh' (<'griha') 'svalabh (<'sulabhah'), 'kesari', 'van', 'anna-s', 'dwish' (< 'dvesh), 'zal' (< 'jala') 'chamar', 'rath', 'simhasana', 'ahlad', 'charman', 'trin', 'ahar', 'ahlad', 'chhatra', 'panka', pad', 'hridi' (< 'hridaye), 'shank (< 'shnka), 'karan', 'vatsun' (< vachana') and so on.

Lal Ded chose 'vaak' as the verse form to convey her personal experiences and mystic insights and used it with such perfection that it acquired a serene dignity and subtlety of tone which no one has been able to surpass. Her mastery over the medium suggests that she must have come at the culmination of a long poetic tradition rather than having started a new one. It is difficult to say with certainty whether 'vaak' is based on any Rigvedic metrical pattern or Prakrit-Apabhramsha metres like 'arya' and 'gaha'. But one thing is certain-Lal Ded contributed the best of her creative geniues to make the four-lined stanza an ideal medium for expressing philosophical and mystic content.

(To be concluded)

Previous

Index

Next