LAL DED

(The great Kashmiri Saint Poetess)

Dr. V. V. B. Rama Rao

Kashmir has been the great invigorating force in areas of Aesthetics down the centuries in Aaryavarta that has now come to be called Bharat and India. The Laakshanika treasures Kashmir contributed to literature in all our languages strengthened the feeling of our oneness and thus promoted unity in diversity.

In the domain of Spirituality too her contribution has not been less inspiring. LaL Ded lived in mid 14^th century. 1355 AD is the generally accepted year of her birth. There is no authentic information on how, when and where the great Shiva Yogini, the speaker of immortal vaakhs and the sublime spiritual doyen attained siddhi, the merger in the Universal Spirit. Her vaakhs are aphoristic, telling, unsophisticated pieces of philosophical expression pregnant with spirituality. They are remembered throughout the land and used in everyday speech even in the present day Kashmir. She was also acclaimed as the one who had elevated the common man’s language to the level of edifying spiritual discourse.

English scholars Sir Richard Temple and Sir Richard Grierson were fascinated with the vaakhs and besides their own studies, they got some researches initiated into Lal Ded. Several great Kashmiri scholars were roped in. This resulted in great tributes to Lad Ded for her service to mankind at large. In 1973 Professor Jayalal Kaul’s book LAL DED was published by Sahitya Akadami. Jayalal had taken great trouble to come up with an authentic version of the vaakhs after dealing at adequate length on the great saint’s life, legends and her achievement in terms of language reform.

Lal Ded was born into a devout family at Pandrethan. At twelve she was married and sent to her in-laws in Pampur, where as per custom she began to be called Padmavati. The mother-in-law was cruel. The young bahu was given only a few grains of cooked rice deftly strewn over a round black stone and covered with a cloth to give the impression of a plateful. She was subjected to all kinds of harassment. But her own inner resources kept her going. Her guru Siddh Srikantha (whom she had known for several births by then) stood her in good stead. With her mind always on Parama Shiva, becoming an antarmukhi, turning the searchlight inward, seeking the inward, by stages she transcended her own guru. A number of legends, stories and anecdotes were woven round her and circulated widely in Kashmir. Divine powers were ascribed to her. Her Vaakhs reveal the spiritual heights she had scaled.

In recent years Kashmir News Network and committed spiritualists like Virendra Qazi and a host of others have put a lot of information on the internet for the benefit of all. Kashmir Education, Culture, and Science Society has been coming up with a series called Culture and Heritage of Kashmir. The book under review is the second in the series. In November 2000 in collaboration with N. S. Kashimiri Research Institute, the Society organized a seminar on Lal Ded and the present volume is its offshoot.

The volume has three sections. Section I contains papers presented by M.K.Kaw, A.N.Dhar, S.Bhat, S.S.Toshkani, Neerja Mattoo, Roop Kishen Bhat, P.N.Kachru, S.N.Pandita, Dwarkanath Munshi, each dealing with some facets of Lal Ded and her achievement.

Section II has two Book extracts from Jayalal Kaul and C.L.Sapru. For some reason, M.K.Kaw’s Concluding Remarks at the end of the seminar figures in this section.

Section III has Some Vaakhs of Lal Ded and their English Translation by Neerja Mattoo. It has been mentioned at the end that the contribution is from her forthcoming book on women poets of Kashmir.

I give here three samples of Jayalal Kaul’s translation and three from the same vaakhs by Mattoo.

K’s rendering: Patience to endure lightning and thunder, / Patience to face darkness at noon, /Patience go through a grinding mill - /Be patient whatever befalls, doubting not / that He will surely come to you.

M’s rendering: Be ready to endure lightning and cloudbursts / Or a sudden pall of darkness at noon / Or the body ground between two grindsotnes! / Accept it all with patience and contentment will come.

K’s rendering: I reined in the steed of the mind, / And, by constant practice, brought together / the praanas coursing the ten naadis. / The nectar of the Mystic Moon / flowed down, suffusing my whole being, / And the void merged in the Void, / (The stilled mind merged in Pure Consciousness).

M’s rendering: The mind-horse I reined in and put on course, / Holding him still with the ten air-channels. / The mystic moon melted and downwards flowed, / And the void was absorbed into the void!

K’s rendering: For love that would not let me be, / I, Lalla, set forth in search of Him. / And toiled and toiled for days and nights, / Then, lo! The most auspicious moment of life — / I saw the Pandit in my own house.

M’s rendering: Driven by love, I Lal, rushed out / And searched till the end of night and day, / But the Pandit I found esconced (sic) within, / And that for me was the perfect moment, propitious my stars!

Literary translation has always been a tricky thing. The Fidelity-Freedom divide is formidable. It is steering between Scylla and Charybdis. It is the Serbonian bog where armies whole have sunk. There is Henry Gifford’s insightful observation that no translation is final. One should always be aware that the translation is a service – to those who cannot read the original. Then, no ordinary reader sets two different translations of the same text side by side to evaluate a work. There is the ‘impekkable’ dictum of Bottom’s that comparisons are ‘odorous. Still, as one who has recently translated Lal Ded’s vaakhs into Telugu (in spite of my severe handicap of not knowing a word of Kashmiri language), I am jubilant that I could have access to Jayalal Kaul’s monumnetal work. The tributes paid to this great man at the seminar reinforced my conviction that his work would stay for several years to come.

While commending the KECS Society’s work on the saint-poetess, I must say that it would be a spur to the emergence of more light both on the saint’s life and vaakhs in terms of more lasting translations / renderings, this after all, is the need of the hour for the simple reason that spirituality alone can provide the solution to all the problems mankind is now confronted with and also the solace and the peace that passes understanding.

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