Abstract: Mysticism as a point of view has its basis in the total knowledge of the only source
and substratum of the whole existence, a knowledge that is attained through the revelatory
experience during a rare moment of the neatness of contemplation. An exclusive tradition is
formed by those who opine to have experienced this direct revelation. Through the teachings
of the great philosophers and prophets a persistent philosophy of mysticism has floated up time
and again. Kashmir has been famously called a “Peer Vaar”, land of saints; one among them
was Lal Ded, a renowned fourteenth century poet. In this paper an endeavour has been made
to discover the mysticism in the poetry of Lal Ded. Her poetry is a conjunction of Saivism and
Sufism. The religious stupor in her Vakhs demonstrations the mysticism that is apprehended
by a female poet of the fourteenth century wherein the influence of Muslim interruption was
very strong in the valley. Her poetry not only exults the power of the Almighty but also attacks
inhuman treatment that she got from the society due to her migration from the ordinary chores
and pleasures of life. The man subjugated society attempted to subdue Lal Ded and her poetry.
Even the historians seem prejudiced as they do not write about Ded. Still, Lal Ded appears as
one of the central voices in the tradition of Indian female mystics.
Keywords: Mysticism, contemplation, Saivism, endeavour, mystics,..etc
Lal Ded (1320-1392), born in Padmanpur near Pampore, Pulwama was a fourteenth
century poet. There are various appellations associated with her name like Lalla, Lalarifa,
Lalleshwari and Lalded. Today, she is a renowned and one of the most respected woman saint
poets of Kashmir. Married at the age of twelve, she lived an unhappy and miserable married
life. She left her in-laws at the age of twenty four for sanyas (renunciation). Influenced by the
Shaivite and Sofi schools of thought she gave up gave up ordinary pleasures and pursuits to
know God.
She became a Sofi saint apart from being a mystic of Kashmiri Shaivite. She created
the mystic poetry called Vakhs (literally sayings or speech). A Vakh is a quatrain; structures
around a theme popularly associated with Lal Ded called ‘Lal Vakhs’. Her poetry is considered
as the earliest and plays an important part in the Kashmiri literature. Her vakhs represent the
best teachings for mankind in the modern world. These quatrains represent the urge of human
soul to be one with almighty and the relation between the created and the creator. Her poetry
is a treasure of wisdom and insight, love, truth and peace. It is also rooted in humanism. Her
vakhs have been translated into English by Richard Temple, Jaylal Kaul, Coleman Barks,
Jaishree Odin and Neerja Matoo. Mita Vashisht, the famous actress has performed a solo play,
based on her life, in English, Hindi and Kashmiri, all over India, titled ‘‘Lal Ded’’.
Fourteenth century was the age of orthodoxy, where a woman was considered as an
inferior ‘other’ to a man. The orthodox traditions of child marriage and other social evils pushed
woman further behind in social, political, familial and other peripherals of the day. Suppressed
by the social dominance of patriarchy, female voices of the century emerge rebellious or speak
up into the religious credence. Religion was the only source that gave them solace from the
societal dominance of the day. Summarily, Pathak in his book comparative Indian English
Literature discusses religion as a safe escape for the women who suffered at the hands of
patriarchy of the day, where they make themselves safe from forced sexual slavery and
household responsibility:
Religious escapism was the only way out for many women whowere frustrated with life inside
the home. They chose to join theBuddhist Sangha in their attempt to break away from the social
world of tradition and marriage.Thus emergedpoems and songs about what it meant to be free
from household chores and sexual slavery. ( Pathak: 2008: 184)
Lal Ded’s poetry is an effort to tress-pass between the susceptibility of doubt and a
pledged insight attained through eagerness and experience. It prizes clarity of self-knowledge
above both the ritualist’s mastery of observances and the severe’s professional championship.
Her poetry laughs at the sages who substitute experience with scripture on the one hand and
the priests who try to find God in daily work on the other; it discards the renegades revert
dilapidation of body. In her poetry Lal emerges as wanderer; a free being in pursuit of shelter
attaining freedom of mind and soul. She is the prototype of a merger of poetic and religious
experience. In his essay “Modern Poetry and Christian Tradition” Amos Wilder says “Poetic
experience and religious experience areprofoundly and intimately related to each other if not
consubstantial, and religion requirespoetry in discourse.” (Wilder: 1965: 688)
Lal Ded is undoubtedly Kashmir’s best female poet. She has been acclaimed in the state
of Jammu and Kashmir, and in India and abroad as well. She is the perfect example of the
hybrid identity of Kashmiri culture. The Muslims and the Hindus have revered her equally. But
the turmoil of the recent decades in the states has penetrated that welded culture as well. The
religious confluence of lad Ded’s poetry has been captured in his book I Lal Ded: the Poems
of Lal Ded by Ranjit Hoskote. He writes:
Religious identities in the region have become harder and moresharp edged, following a
substantial exodus of the Hinduminority during the early 1990s, and a gradual effort to
replaceKashmir’s unique and syncretically nuanced tradition of Islamwith a more Arab centric
global template. It is true that Lal Ded was constructed differently by each community, but
shewas simultaneously Lallesvari or Lalla Yogini to the Hindusand Lalarifa to the Muslims;
today, unfortunately, these descriptions are increasingly promoted at the expense of oneanother.
In honour of the plural sensibilities that Kashmir haslong nurtured, I will refer to this mystic
poet by her mostcelebrated and non-sectarian appellation “Lal Ded”. In thecolloquial, this
means “Grandmother Lal”; more literally, itmeans “Lal the Womb”, a designation that
connects her to hermother goddess whose cults of fecundity and abundance fromthe deep
substratum of the Indic religious life. In writing of herin this book, I will also use the name by
which she is mostpopularlyand affectionately known, across community lines: Lalla. (
Hoskote: 2011: x)
Simon de Beavoir in her book The Second Sex (1949) has famously asserted “One is
not born but rather becomes a woman”. This statement implicitly and explicitly refers to the
suppression of woman: her association to her gender roles. Women have been the victim of the
sexual-textual politics so has been Lal Ded ages before VirginiaWoolf could imagine the plight
of ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ in her famous essay, “A Room of One’s Own”. Lal Ded suffered
humiliation. People would call her names. Many people thought she was insane. Also she had
a frustrating married life that she could not endure long. She has met a severe discrimination
at the hands of the historian of the subsequent centuries too, and this list includes Jonaraja,
Srivara,Prajyabhatta, Shuka, Haider Malik Chadura, Tahir and Hasanbin Ali Kashmiri. For
instance, Ranjit Hoskote makes it clear in the introduction of hisbook, I, Lalla: The Poems of
Lal Ded: Although Kashmiri historians produced numerous records oftheir country’s recent
past between the fifteenth andseventeenth centuries—this roster includes Jonaraja,
Srivara,Prajyabhatta, Shuka, Haider Malik Chadura, Tahir and Hasanbin Ali Kashmiri—none
of them mentions Lalla.” (Hoskote:2011: xv)
There is famous legend associated with Lal Ded:
Once a shop keeper, a cloth dealer, admonished a group of street urchins (who called
Lal names and thought her mad) and drove them away. Thereupon, Lal Ded asked him to give
her a long piece of cloth which he did. She cut it into two equal lengths and placed each length
on either of her shoulders and went her way tying knots on one of them when people bowed to
her, and on the other when they showed disrespect to her. In the evening, she came back to the
cloth dealer and asked him to weigh the two lengths of cloth. They weighed the same,
irrespective of the number of knots in either of them. Lal Ded smiled and said:
Their barking means nothing to me.
Even if they came with soul-flowers to offer,
I couldn’t care less. Untouched, I move on.
Lal Ded’s total poetry became a means for her praise to God, the lord. Every single
verse of hers may reflect a deep sense of devotion towards the Creator. Not only her deeds but
every word that she uttered becomes the worship of the lord. Her tongue became a rosary that
kept on moving every second in praise of the God. Her whole being did not stop for a minute
to drink from the well of knowledge to know that Being. Her life was an endeavour of learning.
She thought that her every experience became a devotion to the lord and all these endeavours
led her to illumine her path and become one with Nature. She says:
“Whatever work I did become worship of the lord
Whatever word I uttered became mantra
Illumining my path to parma saiva”
In her deep seated devotion of the Lord she became a rebel and revolutionary. Her
poetry, the famous Vakhs vehemently reject the ritualistic practices of idol worship, animal
sacrifice and fasting for any kind of ostentation. For her this whole universe is the supreme
creation of the absolute Creator and none else has a hand in this work of the supreme lord. Her
verse ‘the idol is but stone/the temple is but stone/from top to bottom/all is but stone/whom
will you worship, all is but stone’ are echoed in twentieth century by Tagore in his prose
renderings of the noble prize winning Gitanjali: ‘Leave this chanting and singing and telling
of beads! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard groundand where the path-maker is
breaking stones. What harm is there if thy clothes becometattered and stained? /Meet him and
stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.’
Her vakhs are a dominant voice of her pursuit and experience of self also. She denies
any ritualistic practices of fasting. According to her fasting and any ceremonial rites do not
reveal any right action. Neither do bodily comforts emit it also. She voices,
‘O fool, right action does not lie
In fasting and other ceremonial rites
O fool right action does not lie
In providing for bodily comfort and ease
In contemplation of the self alone
Is right action and right council for you’
Her body is also the site for her self-refinement. Through her body she believed she
could have cosmic and physical and physical experiences. She also longs for the perpetual
experience of the Divine. Her pursuit has been to experience the external world as well. Richard
Lannoy, a cultural theoristand historian showcases the combination of Indic philosophy and
the spiritual practices of themystics and philosophers. He rightly opinions:
Each successive school of philosophy, each mystic, sage, orsaint, sought by one means or
another to appropriate theexternal world to the mind-brain. He enhanced, expanded, intensified,
and deepened his sensory awareness of colours,sounds, and textures until they were
transformed into vibrationscontinuous with his own consciousness. In this state ofenhanced
consciousness induced by special techniques ofconcentration, the inside and the outside, the
subject and theobject, the self and the world, did not remain separate entitybut fused in a single
process. (Lannoy: 1971: 273-74)
Lalla Ded is a household name in Kashmir. Her Vakhs are reverberated by every
Kashmiri. She has been a profound influence on many Kashmiri poets. Some of the famous are
Parmanand (1791-1879), Shamas Faqir (1843-1904), Krishna Joo Razdan (1851-1926) and
others. There has been a vide spread debate about her Shaivite and Sofi tastes. Muslims
consider her a Sofi poet and Hindus think she was Shaivite. But Lalla is a prototype of both.
She is a Sofi as well as a Shaivite. She has been of profound influence to the famous Kashmiri
religious reformer, poet of Shruks (witty statements) and founder of Sufism Sheikh Nur-ud-din
Wali, the Alamdar-i Kashmir. There is a famous legend of Lalla related with the sheikh: when
the Sheik was born he did not suck from his mother’s breast, however, when Lalla came by she
asked to the infant, “yanna zenna manchaawuk chana kath chuk manchan”, you were not
shamed to be born, why are you then shy of sucking from the breast of your mother, hence, the
infant Sheikh started to drink from the breast.
IJELLH Volume 6, Issue 12, December 2018 647
Reference
De Beauvoir, Simon. 1949. The Second Sex. United Kingdom. Penguin.
Hoskote, Ranjit. 2011. I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. New Delhi. Penguin Books.
Lannoy, Richard. 1971. The Speaking Tree: A study of Indian Culture and Society. Oxford.
Oxford University Press.
Pathak, A. N. 2008.Comparative Indian English Literature. Kanpur: Bhaskar Publications.
Rafiqui, Abdul Qayoom. 1997. Sufism in Kashmir (Fourteenth to the Sixteenth century).
Sydney: Australia Goodword Media.
Smith, Paul. 2016. Three Great Sufi Poets of Kashmir: Lalla Ded, Nund Rishi, Ghani Kashmiri:
Selected Poems. New Humanity Books, Book Heaven.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1910. Gitanjali. New Delhi. Penguin Books.
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