by Lal Ded
Vidyāratna, Tārānātha, ed. 1917. Kulārnava Tantra. Part V, Tantrik Texts, ed. Arthur Avalon [Sir John Woodroffe]. London: Luzac.
Yoga
Baba, Bangali, trans. 1976. The Yogasūtra of Patañjali, with the commentary of Vyāsa. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Eliade, Mircea. 1969. Yoga:Immortality and freedom. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series 56. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
—. 1975. Patanjali and Yoga. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Schocken Books.
Smart, Ninian. 1996. Dimensions of the sacred: An anatomy of the world’s beliefs. London: Harper Collins.
Zimmer, Heinrich. Artistic form and Yoga in the sacred images of India. Trans. and eds. Gerald Chapple, James B. Lawson and Michael J. McKnight. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
III. Kashmiri History, Culture, and Society
Bamzai, P.N.K. 1994. Culture and political history of Kashmir. Vols. 1–3. New Delhi: M.D. Publications.
Dhar, Somnath. 1977. Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi: National Book Trust.
Goetz, Hermann. 1969. Studies in the history and art of Kashmir and the Indian Himalaya. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,.
Hasan, Mohibbul. 1959. Kashmir under the sultans. Calcutta: Iran Society.
Jonarāja. 2000. The Rājatarangini of Jonarāja.Trans. and ed. Jogesh Chunder Dutt. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House.
Kalhana. 1900. Rājatarangini: A chronicle of the kings of Kashmir. Trans. and Ed. Sir Marc Aurel Stein. London: Archibald Constable.
—. 1990. Rājatarangini. Trans. Ranjit Sitaram Pandit. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
M.L. Kapoor. 1971. A history of mediaeval Kashmir. Jammu: ARB Publications.
Khan, M. Ishaq. 2002. Kashmir’s transition to Islam: The role of Muslim Rishis. New Delhi: Manohar.
Knowles, Rev. J. Hinton. 2004. Kashmiri folk tales. Srinagar: Ali Mohammad and Sons. (Orig. pub. 1893.)
Madan, T.N. 1988. Non-renunciation: Themes and interpretations of Hindu cuiture. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
—. 1989. Family and kinship: A study of the Pandits of rural Kashmir. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
Pal, Pratapaditya, ed. 1989. Art and architecture of ancient Kashmir. Bombay: Marg Publications.
Rafiqi, Abdul Qaiyum. 1972. Sufism in Kashmir. Varanasi and New Delhi: Bharatiya Publishing House.
Ray, S.C. 1969. Early history and culture of Kashmir. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Sikand, Yoginder. 2003. Sacred spaces: Exploring traditions of shared faith in India. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Sufi, G.M.D. 1979. Islamic Culture in Kashmir. New Delhi: Light and Life Publishers.
Wani, Muhammad Ashraf. 2005. Islam in Kashmir (14th to 16th century). Srinagar: Oriental Publishing House.
—. 2007. The nature of mass Islamic conversion in Kashmir. Kashmir Affairs 2 (2): 13–21.
IV. Kashmiri Language and Literature
Grierson, Sir George Abraham. 1932. A dictionary of the Kashmiri language. Calcutta: The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.
—. 1969. The Pisaca languages of north-western India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. (Orig. pub. 1906.)
Handoo, Jawahar Lal. 1973. Kashmiri phonetic reader. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
Kachru, Braj B. 1969a. Kashmiri and other Dardic languages. In Current Trends in Linguistics 5, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok, 284–306. The Hague: Mounton.
—. 1969b. A reference grammar of Kashmiri. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
—. 1981. Kashmiri literature. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Koul, Omkar N. 1977. Linguistic studies in Kashmiri. New Delhi: Bahri Publications.
—. 1984. Modes of address in Kashmiri. In Aspects of Kashmiri Linguistics, eds. Omkar N. Koul and Peter Edwin Hook, 154–72. New Delhi: Bahri Publications.
Monier Williams, Sir Monier et al. 1920. A Sanskrit—English dictionary. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Ostler, Nicholas. 2005. Empires of the word: A language history of the world. London: Harper Perennial.
Palmer, E.H. 2002. A concise dictionary, together with a simplified grammar, of the Persian language. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. (Orig. pub. 1883.)
Platts, John T. 2006. A dictionary of Urdū, classical Hindī and English. New Delhi: Manohar.
V. Indian Religion, Philosophy and Culture
Anthologies
Alphonso-Karkala, John B., ed. 1971. An anthology of Indian literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Gerber, William, ed. 1977. The mind of India. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press.
Heehs, Peter, ed. 2002. Indian religions: The spiritual traditions of South Asia. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Buddhism
Bucknell, Roderick S. and Martin Stuart-Fox. 1986. The twilight language: Explorations in Buddhist meditation and symbolism. London: Curzon Press.
Conze, Edward, ed. 1959. Buddhist scriptures. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Easwaran, Eknath, trans. 1987. The Dhammapada. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Evans-Wentz, W.Y. and Lobzang Jivaka. 1962. The life of Milarepa. New Delhi: Rupa.
Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid, Franz-Karl Ehrhard and Michael S. Diener, eds. 1991. The Shambhala dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Trans. Michael H. Kohn. Boston: Shambhala.
Skilton, Andrew [Dharmacari Sthiramati]. 1994. A concise history of Buddhism. Birmingham: Windhorse.
Bhakti
Chitre, Dilip, trans. 1991. Tukaram: Says Tuka. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
—, trans. and ed. 1996. Śri Jñāneśvara’s Anubhavāmrut: The immortal experience of being. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Dharwadker, Vinay, trans. 2003. Kabir: The songs of the weaver. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Hess, Linda and Sukhdev Singh, trans. 1986. The Bijak of Kabir. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Ramanujan, A.K., trans. 1973. Speaking of Śiva. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Schomer, Karine. 1987. The Dōhā as a vehicle of Sant teachings. In The Sants: Studies in a devotional tradition of India, eds. Karine Schomer and W.H. McLeod, 61–90. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Sundaram, P.S., trans. 1996. The Azhwars: For the love of god. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Vaudeville, Charlotte, trans. 1993. A weaver called Kabir. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.
Classical Hinduism
Easwaran, Eknath, trans. 1986. The Bhagavad Gita. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press.
—, trans. 1996. The Upanishads. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Danielou, Alain. 1964. The myths and gods of India. Vermont: Inner Traditions International. (Orig. pub. 1964.)
Hiriyanna, M. 1996. Essentials of Indian philosophy. London: Diamond Books.
Sen, K.M. 1961. Hinduism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Zimmer, Heinrich. 1972. Myths and symbols in Indian art and civilisation. Ed. Joseph Campbell. Bollingen Series 6. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Islam, including Sufism
Attar, Farid ud-Din. 1984. The conference of the birds. Trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Burckhardt, Titus. 1995. Introduction to Sufism. Trans. D.M. Matheson. London: Harper Collins.
Dawood, N.J., trans. 2006. The Koran. London: Penguin Books.
Manjhan. 2000. Madhumālātī: An Indian Sufi romance. Trans. Aditya Behl and Simon Weightman. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Schimmel, Annemarie. 1975. Mystical dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
—. 1982. As through a veil: Mystical poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Shah, Idries. 1968. The way of the Sufi. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
—. 1971. The Sufis. Introduction by Robert Graves. NewYork: Random House. (Orig. pub. 1964.)
Religion and Culture: General
Campbell, Joseph. 2008. The hero with a thousand faces. Novato, CA: New World Library. (Orig. pub. 1968.)
Easwaran, Eknath. 1986. Meditation: Commonsense directions for an uncommon life. Harmondswort
h: Penguin.
Eliade, Mircea. 1965. The two and the one. Trans. J.M. Cohen. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press.
James, William. 1960. The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. London and Glasgow: Collins.
Lannoy, Richard. 1971. The speaking tree: A study of Indian culture and society. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
McEvilley, Thomas. 2008. The shape of ancient thought: Comparative studies in Greek and Indian philosophies. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. (Orig. pub. 2002.)
Pachori, Satya S. 1993. Sir William Jones: A reader. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
VI. Anthropology, Political History, Cultural Theory
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Assmann, Jan. 2006. Religion and cultural memory:Ten studies. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1991. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Cohn, Bernard S. 1988. An anthropologist among the historians and other essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1993. The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. London: Fontana Press.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents, Chandra and Raghuvir Hoskote, for more than I could ever put into words: my life as a writer began with their indulgent and unwavering faith that I would, in fact, be able to make such a life for myself. This book is dedicated to them.
I would also like to thank my wife, Nancy Adajania, for more than two decades of intense companionship and collaborative adventures; and in particular, for her encouragement of my Lalla project and her meticulous responses to this manuscript in its various avatars. This book is a journey we have made together.
Although this is my twentieth book to appear in print, it could very well have been my first. No mystery is intended: I began work on it in February 1991, shortly before putting together my first collection of poems, Zones of Assault, which was published later that year. Over these many years, I, Lalla has benefited considerably from the pressure exerted by a circle of friends who have charted its progress, and constantly summoned me back to it. Specifically, I wish to thank Shirin, Jehangir and Aafreed Sabavala, who embraced Lalla, asked searching questions, offered responses and periodically demanded results; and Mehlli and Cavas Gobhai, to whose chikoo orchard in Gholvad we have all retreated annually for New Year’s, on which occasions these translations have been read and tested out.
There is much that can never adequately be acknowledged. Having admitted this, I record my thanks to four brother writers and fellow pilgrims: Ilija Trojanow, for his passionate belief in the writerly life as a ceaseless experiment in consciousness, his infectious and life-affirming optimism and abundant generosity of spirit; Richard Lannoy, for his intellectual adventurousness and receptivity towards all that seems enigmatic and strange, and his refreshingly original approach to Indian culture and religious life; Jürgen Brôcan, for his love of the travelling text and the spirit of place, his sensitivity to the grammar of the invisible hovering above the page; and Axel Fussi, for conversations on Indic mysticism as a discovery procedure, and for a magical weekend in Ehrwald, where J. Krishnamurti experienced his key process of transformation.
*
My thanks are due to Daniel Weissbort, who directed the Iowa Translation Workshop, University of Iowa, Iowa City, where I first read from these translations and discussed them, in 1995; and to the Librarian and Staff of the University of Iowa Library, the Brown University Library, and the Asiatic Society of Bombay, for their invaluable help in sourcing texts and materials.
For their hospitality and collegiality, I would like to acknowledge my colleagues at five writing residencies which provided me with a most conducive combination of emotional repose and bracing intellectual exchange: in 1995, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (Clark Blaise, Daniel Weissbort, Peter and Mary Nazareth, Marc Nieson and Carolyn Brown); in 2003, Villa Waldberta, Munich (Verena Nolte, Karin Sommer, Eva Schuster, and Katrin Dirschwigl); in Spring 2010, Theater der Welt, Essen/Mülheim (Christine Peters, Frie Lysen and Max Philip Aschenbrenner) ; in Spring 2010 also, ‘The Promised City’, mobilised by the Goethe-Institut, Bombay and Warsaw, and the Polnisches Institut, Berlin (Marla Stukenberg, Martin Wälde, Tomasz Dabrowski and Jacek Glaszcz); and in Autumn 2010, BAK/basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (Maria Hlavajova, Cosmin Costinas, Arjan van Meeuwen, and Marlies van Hak).
My thanks are due, also, to Nissim Ezekiel, who chose some of these translations for the poetry page that he edited for The Independent (Bombay) in the early 1990s, as well as to Stefan Weidner, Editor, Art and Thought (Bonn), and Bina Sarkar Ellias, Editor, International Gallerie (Bombay), who have published earlier versions of some of these translations.
*
This project has drawn sustenance from the keen interest of Veer Munshi and Gargi Raina: friends from other branches of the Kashmiri diaspora, with whom I have often talked about the complex fate of our homeland. For illuminating and deeply moving conversations in Srinagar, I thank Shafi Shauq, poet, linguist and Head of the Department of Kashmiri, University of Kashmir.
I wish to record a lasting debt of gratitude, also, to my late cousin, Pandit Gurudutt Shukla, for initiating me long ago into an appreciation of the beauty and elegance of my Kashmir Śaiva heritage. He was snatched away too early for me to share fully in his various commitments to philosophy, Hindustani classical music and Sanskrit aesthetics; but he guided me towards the startling epiphany that the Vedanta of Śankara is not the only or the most productive world-view in the Hindu philosophical universe. That understanding informs the present book.
*
At Penguin, for their kindness, patience, generosity and friendship, which have survived my various delays and numerous missed deadlines, I thank Ravi Singh and R. Sivapriya. Ravi received this idea with his customary warmth and enthusiasm many years ago; as an evolving manuscript, it could not have been placed in more sensitive and meticulous hands than Sivapriya’s. I would also like to thank Bhavi Mehta for her exquisite cover design for the original hardcover edition of this book, based on the kong-poush, the saffron flower, which evokes both Lalla’s profound solitude as well as the gift of her poems, which have crossed great distances in space and time, to enter many hearts.
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