Kashmir before the common era in Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Wikipedia: A critical analysis in 2022 (original) (raw)

Review The Making of Early Kashmir by Shonaleeka Kaul VIF October 2019

Vivekananda International Foundation, 2019

Kashmir has been the crest of India’s geopolitical problems, quite literally, occupying the geographical head of the country. Majority of the problem is maintained so by producing a selective propagandist hegemony and discourse by vested interests. A crucial step in this direction is to promulgate discourses about Kashmir that in many ways alienate its culture and history from the rest of the nation. Unverified statements and knee-jerk reactions in the media only help to aggravate the situation of a lack of understanding about the region. Any attempt to present a more holistic version of the culture and history of Kashmir that is integrated to the rest of India is frowned upon as not being academic and scholarly, and if such presentation draws from traditional Sanskrit sources, it is alleged that such a presentation can never be considered historical. Through The Making of Early Kashmir, Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, deftly presents a new discourse on Kashmir’s culture and history and successfully argues not only that a traditional Sanskrit text can indeed function as a historical text, but that the very fact that such a text is in Sanskrit and is traditional should be testament enough that it is history. This book is the result of twelve years of in-depth study and analysis of a Sanskrit text, Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, which Kaul discovered to be first poetry, and on that account, also history. Kaul argues that Kalhana’s vision behind the text is based on ethics and morality. She also argues that Kalhana did not just create history but he also created a particular region for that history or time. According to Kaul, Kalhana created Kashmir’s identity as a homeland through Rajatarangini. Thus personal identity was fused with regional identity and the region attained a self-identity. Kaul describes through her work how cultural identities take shape. She argues that the shaping of cultural identities is closely connected with the creation of a homeland and the receiving of history.

Locating Kashmiriyat in Ancient History: Tracing the Genealogy of Kashmir's Syncretic Culture

Sage, 2022

The discourse on Kashmiriyat (or Kasheryut) was majorly invoked in the late twentieth-century Kashmir by diverse, often conflicting, ideological strands to legitimize their respective political positioning in the context of post-1947 political stirrings in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the discourse has remained shrouded in ambiguity owing to the multiple, disparate meanings and connotations attached to it. More commonly the term has been understood to imply a syncretic culture of Kashmir devoid of religious fundamentalism and exclusion. So far as the historicity of Kashmiriyat is concerned, the existing scholarly writings on the discourse have tried to locate its origins in the medieval times when the interaction and subsequent synthesis occurred between Hinduism and Islam in Kashmir; a mystic manifestation, Rishism, is often referred as the best example of this ideational formation. However, the paper attempts to argue that while the idea of Kashmiriyat as syncretic culture of Kashmir devoid of religious fundamentalism holds ground, it cannot be clearly steered away from a particular religious affiliation altogether. Secondly, this paper challenges the existing historicity and ideational trajectory of Kashmiriyat and instead attempts to trace its genealogy to Kashmir's ancient past.

Uyghurs, Uttarakuru, and Kashmir

Chapman University, 2024

This paper presents the background to the scholarly disputes about relationships in the Indo-European family of languages. It was argued that since Kashmir is geo-graphically close to the Tarim Basin and has historically attested influence over it, a deeper investigation of archaic words in Kashmir with parallels in European languages is warranted. This is also because Kashmiri preserves some very early features of Sanskrit that are lost in other Indo-Aryan languages, and these features when found in European languages could indicate diffusion from Kashmir.

Ancient Kashmir A Geo-Political Profile

Kashmir presently a disputed territory between india and Pakistan has a rich past. One of the main and sources of Kashmir history "Rajtarangini" begins with the mythological evolution of the Kashmir. The present paper is only an overview of the various stages in history that Kashmir Passed. Kashmir witnesses the glory in political realm during the reign of Lalitaditya and Avantivarman like kings as well as the wrath of Mihirakula the Hun. It also was the abode of Various religions like Brahmanism and Buddhism along with Naga Cult.

Landscape in Its Place: The Imagination of Kashmir in Sanskrit and Beyond

History and Theory, 2020

Around the turn of the first millennium, new and experimental types of Sanskrit literature flourished in Kashmir. Poets like Bilhaṇa (eleventh century ce) and Maṅkha (first half of the twelfth century ce) embedded their works in the lived experience of medieval Kashmir, describing their home and family against the backdrop of the valley's mountains and cities. This regional self-awareness reached a peak in the twelfth-century poetic description of Kashmir, its kings, and its politics, the Rājataraṅgiṇī (River of Kings) written by Kalhaṇa. Kashmiri Sanskrit literature delighted in descriptions of the valley, yet this use of place and space has been until now little theorized. How is this sense of place constructed? What can the imagination of place in Kashmiri Sanskrit texts tell us about how the authors saw themselves in the world? This essay looks at these questions through a critical evaluation of Shonaleeka Kaul's monograph, The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajataraṅgiṇī. Kaul attempts to demarcate a specific Indic identity for Kashmir. Through a reading of the Rājataraṅgiṇī she posits a regionally coherent Kashmiriness that is nevertheless integrated into the wider Sanskrit cultural realm of the subcontinent. This essay both nuances and questions Kaul's broad claims while urging a careful reevaluation of Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅginī and other literary representations of Kashmir's landscape. Here I argue that the descriptions of landscape must be contextualized within the broader rhetorical strategies of the text itself, and question Kaul's underlying claim of a Sanskrit identity that speaks itself through Kalhaṇa. By doing so I hope to highlight both the historical embeddedness and agency of Kashmiri poets in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Discussion on social History of Kashmir collected

The valley of Kashmir has been praised by every historical personality who has spent time here or simply heard about it.Being a natural beauty,it has also a colourful history especially its socio-religious history .Situated at the apex of the indo Pakistan sub continent,Kashmir derives considerable importance from its geographical congruity to the principal states of central asia ,from the fact that the frontiers of pakistan,Afghanistan,the soviet union and china meet in the vicinity of Kashmiris north most border 1 Small indeed the country may seem by the side of the great plains that extend in the south, and confined the history of which it was the scene. And yet, just asthe natural attractions of the valley have won it fame beyond the frontiers of India, thus too the interest attaching to its history far exceeds the narrow geographical limits.The valley of Kashmir, an irregular oval of land, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. On a map the valley appears remote and landlocked,extending for no more than ninety miles, isolated by successive ranges of the Himalayan mountains high above the plains of the sub-continent. Its apparent impregnability is, however, illusory. Over twenty passes provide points of entry, making the valley both a crossroads and a place of refuge. A unique record of the history of Kashmir, the Rajatarangini (Chronicle of Kings), written in the th century by the poet Kalhana, describes how, since legendary times, the valley's rulers came into contact and conflict with their neighbours. Sometimes the valley formed part of a great empire, at others it comprised a kingdom in its own right 2