Sketches from Kashmiri Ramayan in Persian Script, 1940s

Sketches from Kashmiri Ramayan in Persian Script, 1940s

written by Vinayak Razdan

Guest post by Man Mohan Munshi Ji. Notice the headgear of Ravan (Is that Ravan?). With a note at the end from me about various versions of Kashmiri Ramayan.
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Sketches drawn by R.C.Wantoo a forgotten Kashmiri Pandit artist for a Kashmiri Ramayan in Persian script published in early 1940s by Ali Mohmad Tajar Kutab (Bookseller), Habba Kadal, Srinagar. Unfortunately the front page of the said Ramayan is missing and as such I cannot give the name of its author.


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Note on Kashmiri Ramayan.


Persian was the official language of Kashmir right from 1372 to 1889.

Yet the fact remains that during the Mugal period, the Persian Ramayana came to Kashmir also. Of these Mulla Masithi’s masterpiece written during the time of Jahangir appears to have been widely read, as is borne out not only by the extensive dispersal of the manuscripts of the work in Kashmir, but also by the parallels and affinities found in the Masthi Ramayana and the Kashmiri Ramayana, particularly the Prakas-Ramayana .The Persian Ramayana, however, is not the main source of the Kashmiri Ramayana written in the forties of the ninteenth century and after, the latest one written as late as 1940 AD 

[...]

The first kashmiri Ramayana entitled Shankara Ramayana was transcribed from Sharada into Devanagari in 1843 AD by Shankar Kanth (Nath) in the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh.Prakash Ramayan by Prakash Ram Kurygami came in 1846 A.D was most widely copied out and is the only Kashmiri Ramayana that has been printed in all the three scripts, Roman, Devnagri and Persian.The third Kashmiri Ramayana, the Visnu Pratapa Ramayana, was finished by Vishu Kaul in 1913. This was followed by the Sarma Ramayana by Nilakantha Sharma (1919-1926 A.D.) modeled on Tulsidasa’s masterpiece.The fifth was written by Tarachand in 1927 AD and the sixth by Amar Nath in 1940 AD.[ Seventh one was by Anand Ram. And the one used by George A. Grierson was Sriramuvataracarit by Divakar Prakasha Bhatta]

- The Ramayana tradition in Asia: papers presented at the International Seminar on the Ramayana Tradition in Asia, New Delhi, December 1975, Venkatarama Raghavan.

There as many as six versions of the Ramayana available in Kashmiri, but only one version has been published so far. The published version is Ramavatarcharit (1910) by Prakash Ram. […] Other versions of Ramayana are by Shankar Nath, Anand Ram, Visnu Koul, Amar Nath and Nilakanth Sharma. With Nilakanth Sharma, the tradition of epics based on Indian or national themes came to an end.