HISTORY OF THE AMARNATH
PILGRIMAGE
The separatists in Kashmir and their “secular”
supporters are trying to spread the myth that the Amaranth Yatra is of a recent
origin. They claim that it started only after a Muslim shepherd of Batakot, a
certain Buta Malik, originally”discovered” the Amarnath cave when he lost his
flock and found that it had strayed into the sacred spot some 150 years ago.
There is no documentary proof of this so-called discovery, the story having
probably been concocted to give credit to Muslims for having started the most
popular Hindu pilgrimage of Kashmir.
There is ample and conclusive historical
evidence, on the other hand, to prove that the holy cave and the ice lingam
were known to the people since very ancient times and have been continuously
and regularly visited by pilgrims not only from Kashmir but also from different
parts of India.
“While the earliest reference to Amarnath
can be seen in the Nilamata Purana (v.1324), a 6th century Sanskrit text which
depicts the religious and cultural life of early Kashmiris and gives Kashmir’s
own creation myth, the pilgrimage to the holy cave has been described with full
topographical details in the Bhringish Samhita and the Amarnatha Mahatmya, both
ancient texts said to have been composed even earlier.”
References to Amarnath, known have also been made
in historical chronicles like the Rajatarangini and its sequels and several
Western travellers’ accounts also leaving no doubt about the fact that the holy
cave has been known to people for centuries. The original name of the tirtha,
as given in the ancient texts, is of course Amareshwara, Amarnath being a name
given later to it.
Giving the legend of the
Naga Sushruvas, who in his fury burnt to ashes the kingdom of King Nara when he
tried to abduct his daughter already married to a Brahmin youth, and after the
carnage took his abode in the lake now known as Sheshnag (Kashmiri Sushramnag),
Kalahana writes:
“The lake of dazzling whiteness [resembling] a
sea of milk (Sheshnag), which he created [for himself as residence] on a far
off mountain, is to the present day seen by the people on the pilgrimage to
Amareshwara.”(Rajatarangini, Book I v. 267.Translation: M. A. Stein).
This makes it very clear that pilgrims continued
to visit the holy Amarnath cave in the 12th century, for Kalhana wrote his
chronicle in the years1148-49.
At another place in the Rajatarangini (Book II v.
138), Kalhana says that King Samdhimat Aryaraja (34 BCE-17CE) used to spend
“the most delightful Kashmir summer” in worshiping a linga formed of snow “in
the regions above the forests”. This too appears to be a reference to the ice
linga at Amarnath. There is yet another reference to Amareshwara or Amarnath in
the Rajatarangini (Book VII v.183). According to Kalhana, Queen Suryamati, the
wife of King Ananta (1028-1063), “granted under her husband’s name agraharas at
Amareshwara, and arranged for the consecration of trishulas, banalingas and
other [sacred emblems]“.
In his Chronicle of Kashmir, a sequel to
Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, Jonaraja relates that that Sultan Zainu’l-abidin
(1420-1470) paid a visit to the sacred tirtha of Amarnath while constructing a
canal on the left bank of the river Lidder (vv.1232-1234). The canal is now
known as Shah Kol.
In the Fourth Chronicle named Rajavalipataka,
which was begun by Prjayabhatta and completed by Shuka, there is a clear and
detailed reference to the pilgrimage to the sacred site (v.841,vv. 847-849).
According to it, in a reply to Akbar’s query about Kashmir Yusuf Khan, the
Mughal governor of Kashmir at that time, described among other things the
Amarnath Yatra in full detail. His description shows that the not only was the
pilgrimage in vogue in Akbar’s time – Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586 – but the
phenomenon of waxing and waning of the ice linga was also well known.
Amareshwar (Amarnath) was a famous pilgrimage
place in the time of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan also. In his eulogy of Shah
Jahan’s father-in-law Asif Khan, titled “Asaf Vilas”, the famous Sanskrit
scholar and aesthete Panditraj Jagannath makes clear mention of Amareshwara
(Amarnath) while describing the Mughal garden Nishat laid out by Asif Khan. The
King of gods Indra himself, he says, comes here to pay obeisance to Lord
Shiva”.
As we well know Francois Bernier, a French
physician accompanied Emperor Aurangzeb during his visit to Kashmir in 1663. In
his book “Travels in Mughal Empire” he writes while giving an account the
places he visited in Kashmir that he was “pursuing journey to a grotto full of
wonderful congelations, two days journey from Sangsafed” when he “received
intelligence that my Nawab felt very impatient and uneasy on account of my long
absence”. The “grotto” he refers to is obviously the Amarnath cave as the
editor of the second edition of the English translation of the book, Vincient
A. Smith makes clear in his introduction. He writes: “The grotto full of
wonderful congelations is the Amarnath cave, where blocks of ice, stalagmites
formed by dripping water from the roof are worshipped by many Hindus who resort
here as images of Shiva…..”
Another traveler, Vigne, in his book “Travels in
Kashmir, Ladakh and Iskardu” writes about the pilgrimage to the sacred spot in
detail, clearly mentioning that “the ceremony at the cave of Amarnath takes
place on the 15th of the Hindoo month of Sawan” and that “not only Hindoos of
every rank and caste can be seen collecting together and traveling up the
valley of Liddar towards the celebrated cave……” Vigne visited Kashmir after his
return from Ladakh in 1840-41 and published his book in 1842. His book makes it
very clear that the Amarnath Yatra drew pilgrims from the whole of India in his
time and was undertaken with great enthusiasm.
Again, the great Sikh Guru Arjan Dev is said to
have granted land in Amritsar for the ceremonial departure of Chari, the holy
mace of Lord Shiva which marks the beginning of the Yatra to the Holy Cave. In
1819, the year in which the Afghan rule came to an end in Kashmir, Pandit
Hardas Tiku “founded the Chhawni Anmarnath at Ram Bagh in Srinagar where the
Sadhus from the plains assembled and where he gave them free rations for the
journey, both ways from his own private resources”, as the noted Kashmiri
naturalist Pandit Samsar Chand Kaul has pointed out in his booklet titled “The
Mysterious cave of Amarnath”.
Not only this, Amarnath is deeply enshrined in
the Kashmiri folklore also as stories like that of Soda Wony clearly show. One
can, therefore, conclude without any doubt that the Amaranth Yatra has been going
on continuously for centuries along the traditional route of the Lidder valley
and not a century and a half affair. May be during the Afghan rule when
religious persecution of the Kashmiri Hindus was at its height and they were
not allowed to visit their places of worship the pilgrimage was discontinued
for about fifty or sixty years and during this period the flock of some
shepherd may have strayed into the holy cave, but that in no way makes it of a
recent origin or a show window of so-called Kashmiriat.
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ReplyDeletenepal
ReplyDeletenice and rare pictures , thank you so much
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