What brings back precious memories to you? Smells, sights, sounds, kinesthetic sensations? The fragrance of Scheherazade perfume on an elevator? The glint of sunshine on jet black hair? The sound of a tinkling laugh that turns your head? The hard mace-like seeds of the Chinar crunching underfoot? The name Suffering Moses?
Yesterday I walked along the Embarcadero, the waterfront of San Diego Bay. It was a grand day, as usual, a light breeze wafted in from the waters, sea gulls cried and twice I was accosted by ‘Rickshaw wallahs’ who asked with Latvian accents if I wanted a ride. I walked under an arbor of Sycamore trees and kicked aside the mace-like seeds on the sidewalk. I sat on a bench for a moment and looked up at the grey trunks, the rough shedding bark, the leaves, almost hand-like in shape, clapping in the breeze from the bay. I was brought back to Bagh-i Naseem near Dal Lake in Kashmir.
Almost every year our family would travel from Taxila by car to Kashmir, the trunk crammed with so many possessions that the lid would not close and had to be tied down with rope, the car-top carrier stacked high with a large folded tent and sacks of food stuffs. Our destination was the Vale of Kashmir! We were in store for swimming in Dal Lake, buying flowers from the boat vendors in their shikaras that sold practically everything. Best of all, we would pitch our tent in ‘Naseem Bagh’ under a massive Chinar, first clearing the ball-like spiked seeds and grey bark away so the ground was smooth. Across from our tent was a Chinar that was massive. It was so old that part of the inside had decayed; fire had burned out some of the soft wood making a secret cave we could crawl into. Magic! There were two baby crows inside it which squawked and brought adult crows swooping over our heads.
“Thank Emperor Akbar,” my father said. Dad knew everything. Doctor Sahib, even on vacation had a book in his hands, this time it was Shalimar Gardens. We sat around a camping table and our cook Noab Din served us chapattis, a huge bowl of whipped cream from the milk of buffaloes, and Mixed Fruit jam. What a breakfast. My father talked, sort of lectured, as we filled the flat breads with cream and jam and ate until we were stuffed. “Shah Jehan laid out the gardens of Chashma Shahi, so named because of a mountain spring in that place that provides water to it.” We all smiled. “Tomorrow. But first a boat ride on Dal Lake in a shikara.”
What brings back precious memories to you? The sound of jackals calling across the valley? The sound of your mother humming as she works in the kitchen? For me it is the sound of a crackling camp fire on a dark cool night. We pile dry Chinar leaves on the flames and watch it flare up, leaving sparkler trails in the sky? The biting smell of smoke from burning leaves as the winds shifts toward us makes us run to the other side, rubbing our eyes.
On the small table next to me, one of four beautifully hand-crafted nesting tables sits my tea cup. The grain of the wood looks like a relief map, dark swirls and streaks, the surface as smooth as the day it was made in the furniture shop of Suffering Moses in Srinagar in 1939. Chinar wood!
I can still smell the smoke of the burning leaves of the campfire, still hear my dad’s lectures about this tree, this Kashmiri treasure. “There are stories about how the tree got its name in the first place. Jahangir traveled to Kashmir from Delhi, or maybe it was Lahore, all the way to Srinagar. In the autumn the leaves of the Booune tree turned red, just like maples in Michigan do. Well the emperor saw the red leaves in the distance and cried out, ‘Chin-nar’. That means blazing color. So the tree got its name.” My dad loved stories like this. But now I find that he had his facts all wrong, that is if you believe modern writers. The Persian name for the tree is Cinar or Chinar, and the Moghals knew this of course. If mature trees already existed when the Moghals ruled, how did they get there?
M.S. Wadoo writes in the Kashmir Observer a fine article entitled Booune. In it he mentions my father’s point of view. The Booune was introduced by Akbar in about 1586. “It is a historical fact that Akbar planted about 1200 plants of Booune near the sacred shrine of Hazratbal...” After that time the tree was called Cinar. Wadoo tell about the wonderful idea that Jehangir had; he was a truly shady character. He introduced the idea of planting Chinar trees on all four sides of a park (char chinar) which would grow to huge heights and thus provide shade to the stroller, the families who sit out on the grass and have picnics, the lovers, heaven forbid, who would stroll in the dark shade, perhaps even sneak into the hollow trunk of a huge tree for communication. It was a good idea because no matter how the ‘sun its course doth run’, there would be areas of shade making the park a pleasant place, and Jehangir loved pleasant faces and places.(Anarkali) And what was more pleasant than the shade of the trees in a garden filled with marigolds? So my father was correct. Thanks to the foresight of emperors the plane tree, the lovely Chinar is a feature in Kashmir that grows with its roots in history, but that is not the whole story. Pran Nath Wanchoo, writes, Chinar Tree, “Bouin” of Kashmir, Symbol of Goddess Bhawani, in Vitasta: A Kashmir Sabha, Kolkata Publication, 202, “The origin of the tree in Kashmir is by inference of the recorded evidence in literature deduced to be very ancient.”
Some of the existing trees in Kashmir are so huge that they predate the Moguls by some three hundred years. Akbar in his memoirs, yes, emperors had wonderful foresight and wrote things down, or had them written down by scribes, (Akbar Nama) that “34 guards took shelter in a hollow tree trunk of a Booune tree”, when it started raining. That is a large tree! Other evidence of massive trees which would predate the Moguls exists in Kashmir. So how and when did these trees get introduced into Kashmir?
First, it is very hard to plant the seeds of the tree and to get the seedlings to do well Kashmir climate. Second, many of the trees that exist were taken from live shoots that spring up from the roots. Such root stock, kept moist can be transported long distances and planted in far away sites. So who was the clever one who introduced this tree?
Now I really like Wadoo’s argument that it was probably because of the influence of Buddhism into this area during the period of Ashoka, the ruler of Magada (271-231 BC). The foundations for a city were laid by Ashoka called Puranadhisthena sponsoring 5000 monks so that it could become a center of learning. Huge shade trees were the missing feature, such as the Bodhi, so of course the Booune (his spelling) was introduced and planted as a tree that was large, would live long and would ‘replace’ the holy Bodhi. I will not go into the intricate horticultural steps necessary to grow seedlings which have a low germination rate, or how to prepare viable shoots for transportation, leave that part alone. Trees were probably introduced by Ashoka, perhaps as early as the first century before Christ. Not only that, the tree became a sacred tree, often adorned and respected. Remember, knowledge of the origin of the tree is by ‘inference.’
This all gets us back to Taxila. Why Taxila? Because of the early introduction of Buddhism to that part of the world, including what we now call Afghanistan. Remember the Bamiyan Buddhas and their destruction by the Taliban? When those massive statues were being carved in the stone face of the cliff, the Bouin (modern spelling) was already growing in Kashmir. Where did these seeds or saplings come from? Remember the Silk Road, the trade routes that went all the way from Asia Minor to China? People are funny, they like to plant exotic trees in far countries that remind them of home. Perhaps such saplings had high trade value, much like the Tulip bulbs in Holland and Europe that in the early years of introduction were worth their weight in gold! Traders carried them.
Of course my Dad was correct. Akbar did plant thousands of the trees, but remnants of much older trees have been found which would predate Akbar by centuries. So, my humble theory is that if it were not for Buddhism there would be no Bouin or Chinar in Kashmir.
Trees were in fashion back in Ashoka’s time. He was a darakht wallah, a tree dude. I think history records that he sent Bodhi saplings to the king of what was later called Ceylon or even later, Sri Lanka, when the religion was in its early stages there, and these were planted near the Temple of the Tooth. So of course, logically, he could have brought in the wonderful Chinar trees to the region that grow well in that climate, to Kashmir as a substitute for the Bodhi. Remember, he was a relic man as well and distributed these all over India. In my sojourns on the sub-continent, from the Peshawar to Sri Lanka, I have walked in his shadow, kicked seeds of Chinar, looked at the hand shaped leaves and have felt the influence of the sages around me in trees.
Science wins! Pran Nath Wanchoo, of New Delhi, the retired Dy. Director of Agriculture /Horticulture and author of “Horticulture in the Himalayas”, in his “Chinar Tree, Bouin of Kashmir-Symbol of Goddess Bhawani”, previously mentioned, makes a strong claim that a Chinar tree which had a girth of 31.85 meters at the ground level was found on the premises of a mosque. It was said that the tree was planted by Hazrat Syed Qasim Sahib in 1374 AD and that people considered it holy. Vitasta.org/2002/1.8. So there you have it. Or do you? Ashoka? Akbar? Hazrat Syed Qasim sahib? Symbol of Goddess Bhawani? We may never know for sure, but the Chinar has been in Kashmir as a near holy tree, from the first century until now. I have recently read that the grove of Chinar in Naseem Bagh where I played as a youth is dying out, that the leaves are turning brown, that many trees are already dead. Nature has its cycles and its reasons. Visit Kashmir and revel in the Char Chinar plantations in Shalimar Gardens, walk in the shade of history. Our sojourn in life is much like that of boats passing on Dal Lake in the sunset.
Beauty Spots-Til
Sunset caught mists rising from Dal Lake
Gold orange, nimbus Benarsi scarves
Fluttered on the shiny skin of water
Glass smooth, unwrinkled peach tone
Reflected back smiles of day’s messenger
Sinking slowly on the soft and yielding grey
Cushions; yawning, bidding sleep to come
Sunset caught the two Shikaras, drifting
Slowly through a fog of orange
Collision courses set, quietly they
Came and met, passed each other by
Wrinkling taught, lake skin in golden
Folds, touching deep clams and muscles
Which shudder and shimmer into waves
Sunset caught the crane, flying low
Wing tips touching black water skin
Raising gold beauty spots, til in pairs
Across the breast; sighing now
For sleep and quiet rest, the lady
Of the lake gently closes her dark eyes
Wisps of mist rise from Anarkali’s cheeks.
Adapted from Lalla and Lavina, Stories about Indian Women, Harold Bergsma, Authorhouse, 10/13/05
My tea cup rests on a small end table. The top is twenty four inches across. It is made of Chinar, hand carved in the shop of Suffering Moses in Srinagar over seventy years ago. That hunk of wood has not warped or cracked and has the original shine applied by polishers long before my birth. My dad liked old things. What a huge tree that must have come from; an unblemished piece of wood from a Chinar that was made from an ancient, huge, dried, seasoned log. I think my dad knew his history pretty well when he bought the table because all the artifacts in our home have a special story to tell. At night they tell each other stories of India and whisper of Bhawani.
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