Kashmiri Brahmins and their Distinctive Culture
by S. L. Pandit In the varied and colorful
patterns that through centuries have evolved to form the rich mosaic of
Indian society, the Brahmins comprised the accepted highest category of
the ancient Vedic caste hierarchy. Further, it is understood that through
our several millennia of history and legend they have played vital roles
as scholars, scientists, teachers and occasionally as military experts
and political advisers of rulers and empire builders, while denying to
themselves opportunities of amassing wealth and other material benefits
that are now widely associated all over the world with the rat race for
political power. Even so, with their wide patterns of regional characteristics,
the Brahmin communities had acquired distinctive social and ritual traditions
varying from region to region. But largely they had held together as a
unifying force through their acceptance of Sanskrit as the principal medium
of culture, religion and higher levels of research. As we know, while all
the North Indian languages have been derived from the Aryan Sanskrit, even
in the South, with its distinctive Dravidian languages as hoary as Sanskrit,
the supremacy of Vedic Sanskrit had been accepted as the principal medium
of inter-regional commerce of the highest level from Kashmir to Cape Camorin,
till the time when following the consolidation of Muslim rule over the
sub-continent, Persian was imposed as a dominant official language till
English took its place following the establishment of British rule over
the sub-continent.
In short, the point is that while it is this hierarchy
of Sanskritic culture that held together the Brahmin community all over
India, at the same time the Brahmin communities of various regions, in
due course, evolved their special characteristics governing their social
life and religious practices and affinities. Among these the Brahmin community
of Kashmir, in spite of their limited numbers and partial geographical
isolation from the rest of the subcontinent, built up through centuries
some special features of social and religious behaviour which enabled them
not only to hold together as an influential minority community in Kashmir,
but that later a smaller migrant group of this community, mainly urban
based in North India and Rajputana, came to leave their distinctive impress
on the cultural and political developments taking shape in the country
during the past two centuries. It is, however, a fact that even these talented
migrants continued to draw their inspiration in various ways from their
past heritage in Kashmir, which continued to be their principal regional
base till the last decade of the present century. So it might be of interest
to us as representatives of that past heritage to know and understand the
principal distinctive features of that heritage, especially
in the context
of general religious practices and social behaviour.
First, a brief mention of the origins, historical
and legendary, of the Kashmiri Brahmin community. According to accepted
traditions in the rest of the country, Kashmiri Brahmins are believed to
be a branch of the Saraswat Brahmins who were so called because they were
believed to have settled along the course of a semi-mythical river of North
India called Saraswati, and named after the Vedic goddess of learning,
soon after the Vedic Aryans settled firmly over this region of India. Then
there follows a legend that when this river dried up, these Brahmins got
scattered. There is a tradition that quite a large section of this uprooted
community settled in the Western Konkan coast of the present state of
Maharashtra,
where they still hold together socially and call themselves "Saraswat Brahmins".
Others moved further North into the Valley of Kashmir and, as the story
goes, settled there after securing the permission of the Naga tribes who
then ruled over this region. So, in the course of centuries, while holding
fast to their traditional Aryan Vedic moorings, they sought to work out
certain patterns of religious and social behaviour which distinguish them
marginally from the Brahmanic traditions of the rest of India.
This in short is how legendary tradition places
the settlement and evolution of this Brahmin community in Kashmir. Some
discerning Western scholars have tried, in view of the distinctive physical
features of this community, to class them as probably the still continuing
purest possible stock of Vedic Aryans who, in some still not positively
located past age, came to settle in the Indian subcontinent. There is no
doubt that the members of this small Brahmin cormnunity continue even upto
now to hark back to their Vedic past. But it is obvious that, in their
comparatively isolated mountain girt habitat, they tried to recreate for
themselves in the Valley parallel important traditional places of pilgrimage
so dear to Hindus in the rest of India. For example, they had marked a
spot in the North of the Valley where a mountain stream flows into a lake
as Harmukat Ganga and would till very recent times consign the ashes of
their departed ones in its waters when they could not easily reach the
traditional river Ganga venerated by all Hindus through countless ages.
Similarly, about twelve miles below Srinagar at Shadipur, they treated
the confluence of the Jhelum (Vitasta as named in our ancient Sanskrit
texts) and a mountain stream still named Sind in Kashmir, as of equal status
in sanctity to Prayag (now Allahabad) where, the waters of the holiest
rivers of the Hindu faith, Ganga and Yarnuna along with the legendary Saraswati,
mingle their streams before they move onwards to empty their waters in
the Bay of Bengal. Similarly, many other leading places of pilgrimage in
India are duplicated in the valley. In fact, as several foreign travellers
to Kashmir have observed during the past three to four centuries, the whole
valley of Kashmir is dotted with Hindu pilgrim centres located at lakes
and springs and on mountain tops. In this pattern also fall the holy springs
named usually as Nagas, obviously harking back to an unrecorded pre-Aryan
phase of Kashmir chronicles.
To these distinctive features of Hindu tradition
in the Valley, may be added the unique and still preserved texts of works
that, like Nilamat Purana and Kathasaritasagara, are a product of ancient
wisdom expressed in the latter work of imaginatively conceived tales like
the famed Panchatantra tales about beasts and birds. As in the rest of
India. the emergence of the Buddhist movement was meant to question the
sanctity of the caste system and the Vedic ritualistic worship. With the
later complications of Buddha's simple creed, as has happened to most other
religious movements in the world, there followed in India a revival of
what may be described as Brahmanic Hinduism, paving the way for the imposition
of a sort of absurdly rigid caste system and untouchability. While the
impact of this counter- revolution led to unprecedented and almost inhuman
rigidity in certain regions, there was no revival of the caste system in
Kashmir. For one, the Brahmin community of Kashmir appears to have cooperated
with the spread of the Buddhist faith, for many Kashmiri Brahmins travelled
to China and the Far East as missionaries of this movement without rejecting
altogether their Brahminic past. Then came Islam to the valley, first through
missionaries of this new aggressive foreign faith and later in the form
of rulers in the fourteenth century A.D. The proselytizing zeal of Sultan
Sikander, in fact, led to a crusade of total suppression of the Hindu religion
and destruction of its places of worship. With this onslaught, while the
lower Hindu castes altogether disappeared from the scene, only a small
section of the Brahmin caste refused to submit to this holocaust, preferring
death or voluntary exile from their homeland. But human history is dotted
with numerous surprising developments. In the history of Kashmir, a new
movement was marked by the benign era of Sikander's son and successor,
Zain ul-Abidin, popularly still remembered as Badshah or the Great King,
who ruled over Kashmir for half a century and most zealously pursued a
policy of reclaiming and rehabilitating the Brahmin community as a value-
based section of the population. So, in the absence of any lower Hindu
castes for several centuries, the Brahmins of Kashmir have traditionally
remained immune from the worst absurdities of the Hindu caste system.
Apart from the tolerant phase of Muslim rule first
firmly inaugurated by Zain ul-Abidin and later zealously revived by Akbar,
the history of Kashmir was marked during this era by the emergence of other
harmonizing factors among both the Muslims and Brahmins of the Valley.
While some scholarly and saintly Brahmins evolved a new universal aspect
of Hindu ethos in the form of Shaivism, the Muslims were deeply involved
in a tolerant aspect of Islamic Sufism marked by the rise of what is called
the Rishi cult in Kashmir. These new developments came to be personified
in the careers and utterances in native Kashmiri of Lal Ded (a Hindu wandering
woman saint) and Saint Nur-ud-Din Noorani whose tomb is still venerated
both by Muslims and Hindus as a seat of pilgrimage at Chrar, a hillside
village, west of Srinagar, and recently vandalized by non-Kashmiri militants.
It is true that the Kashmiri Brahmins belong basically
to the main stream of the centuries-old Indian Brahminhood. Nevertheless,
because of their comparative geographical isolationism the Northern Indian
plains and the disappearance of the lower castes under the impact of Buddhism
and later of Islam, they evolved a distinct pattern of social behaviour.
For one, they were not obsessed by a "touch-me-not" policy, so characteristic
till recent times of the Brahmins in some other region of India; and, in
fact, they were willing to accept uncooked eatables even from Muslims.
Moreover, in their cuisine, they had no hesitation in taking to flesh foods
like lamb and fish, while they rigidly avoided till recent times consuming
poultry products, both flesh and eggs. Following the consolidation of Muslim
rule, while they retained their attachment to Vedic Sanskrit as the medium
of their religious scriptures, they easily took to learning Persian when
it got confirmed as the principal official language for transacting official
business and later even for their private
correspondence.
In the context of what has been already observed,
with the evolution of Shaivism as a distinct religious philosophy, the
Shiva worship assumed special importance along with the continuing veneration
of other gods of the Hindu pantheon and the various aspects of the worship
of the Goddess as the Supreme Divine Mother. It is thus not surprising
that, with the ascendancy of Shiva worship, the observance of Maha Shivratri
Festival in the first dark fortnight of the month of Phalgun (corresponding
to February in the international Christian calendar) came to be observed
as the principal religious festival in the annual calendar of Kashmiri
Brahmins. In the traditional Hindu pantheon, Shiva is represented in various
forms, as the Destroyer in the Hindu trinity comprising in addition Brahma
(the Creator) and Vishnu (the Preserver). But later Shiva is represented
also as the Nataraja or the Supreme representative and inspirer of dance
and music. Moreover, in Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva is projected as the abiding
revelation of cosmos and of all life, both visible and invisible. This
amounts to a projection of some modification of the ancient Upanishidic
presentation of all the universe, as we see it or perceive it intellectually,
as Maya, an illusion or play show as projected by the Eternal Divine Creator
of time and space. Traditionally, among Kashmiri Brahmins the festival
of Shivratri was spread over the major part of a fortnight, with special
distinct religious and social rituals marking each day of the period and
culminating obviously in thc night-long worship followcd by feasting on
the night of the thirteenth of the dark fortnight of Phalgun. Incidentally,
in the Valley of Kashmir this festival period was also expected to prepare
the people for the oncoming of the spring season marking a renewal of all
life in the mountain girt and snow-bound Valley. As an example, the Festival
of Durga Puja in Bengal has provided a parallel in its religious and social
dimensions to Shivratri as celebrated in Kashmir through centuries past.
With the recent dispersal of the terrorised minority Brahmins of Kashmir
over the Indian subcontinent and abroad in distant lands, obviously in
their vastly changed social and working environments, our people have not
now adequate leisure and urge to observe this subnational festival as elaborately
as it used to be celebrated back in the Valley of the gods. Even so, we
should observe it all over the world, may be in abridged versions, with
as much faith and fervour as our forbears celebrated this festival over
several centuries past.
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