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.
The temple is reported to be about 5,000 years old] and was mentioned in ancient Hindu texts. The exact manner of discovery of the cave is not known.
The Amarnath Yatra, according to Hindu belief, begins on Ashadha Purnima (day of the Full Moon in the Hindu Month of Ashadha) and ends on Shravana Purnima (day of the full moon in the Hindu month of Shravana).
POSTED BY................
POSTED BY.................VIPUL KOUL .EDITED BY.......................ASHOK KOUL
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