Lies, chameleons, kashmir and amarnath yatra

Over last many days, Sajjad Lone has been parroting some urban legands on all TV channels.... Some of these are also repeatedly and accepted blindly by many people across different media channels as well.

One of the weirdest lie leaders from Kashmir are repeatedly parroting over media is that the Amarnath cave was discovered by a Kashmiri muslim 130-140 years ago and that the yatra has existed only for last 130-140 years ago.

Now what do you call this - ignorance or political propaganda? This is an urban legend being repeated so often that people have started believing this as the truth. Yes, Buta Malik's family having been part of caretakers and having had rights to the proceed from donations/collections at the shrine is a fact. But the genesis of that is not that Buta Malik discovered the cave.

The historic references to the existance of the holy cave and the traditional yatra go back many centuries. (Source: Wikipedia)

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. The original name of the tirtha, as given in the ancient textsis 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).

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.

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”.

Francois Bernier, a French physician, accompanied Emperor Aurangzeb during his visit to Kashmir in 1663. In his book “Travels in the Mughal Empire”, he writes an account of 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 editor of the second edition of the English translation of the book, Vincient A. Smith, writes in his introduction: “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, 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 claims that the Amarnath Yatra drew pilgrims from the whole of India in his time and was undertaken with great enthusiasm.

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”.

Amarnath is deeply enshrined in Kashmiri folklore, such as the story of Soda Wony.

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 PurnimaFull Moon in the Hindu Month of Ashadha) and ends on Shravana Purnima (day of the full moon in the Hindu month of Shravana).