(On literature of Ladakh)
Ms.Rigzin Chodon have a penchant for Books on Ladakh. No not on the flashy magazines on Ladakh to lure domestic and international tourist , but the one which she feels every Ladakhi must read , to see how the literature of ladakh evolved , in a way how we evolved !
There are books written in English, German, French,
Urdu, Bodyig and many more languages. I am going to take a closer look at the
literature of Ladakh. We all know that Ladakh had a background of the Silk
Route Trade. Ladakh was the hotspot where traders would meet, exchange goods; rest
and hire ponies, overseers and potters for their journey either towards Kashgar,
Yarkhand or towards Mongolia, Tibet, and Afghanistan. So along the trade route
while important trading transactions took place the route actually played a vital
role in integrating the kind of people that we are today, reflecting our
glorious past as a meeting ground for various people. We have historians who
say that Ladakhis are a blend of the Mons, the Dards, the Aryans and the
Tibetans. If you look properly at our background, we can actually see that the
Ladakhis from Nubra are different; while people from Changthang are similar to
Tibetans. Ladakhis from Sham and the Hanu-Pas have Aryan features. Our identity
can be shaped from how distinct we are even when we all call ourselves
‘Ladakhis’. We are a confluence of many races.
The first written source that I came across was
Alexander Cunningham’s book ‘Ladak’ written in 1854. It was written in English and covers almost
all aspects on the region of Ladakh. We have many other authors who wrote on
Ladakh from the beginning of the nineteenth century. What I’m pointing out is that
we had the German Missionaries and the British officials who employed people to
survey and write chronicles on Ladakh. Since they saw a different and a unique
culture in our region many more eager and enthusiastic lot got drawn towards
Ladakh and from the 19th century onwards we have actually got a very good collection of
books on Ladakh.That is just the contribution
from the European side, the kind of books that are written by the westerners, the
explorers and the adventurers.
Apart from that when we look at the religious
aspects, we can see that we have lots of books on Tibetan Buddhism, we also have
books related to Islam but I have really not looked into either of them in
detail so I won’t discuss it right now.
Ladakh
also has archeological evidences to prove our historic pedigree, even now if
you look carefully in your villages I’m sure you will be able to find one or
two instances where signs on the rocks somewhere or some petrogylphs can be seen
which is actually a marker of our past. I saw shapes of stupas carved into two
boulders near the main road towards my village. After talking to the elders of
my village, I found out that there was a particular trader who used to come and
trade in and around my village (Kairy, Changthang, 110 kilometers away from Leh).
I got to know from my elders that he came from Kashagar side (present People’s
Republic of China). In order to communicate while trading they made use of
‘pidgins’ which can be defined as, ‘artificial language used for trade between
speakers of different languages.
So I would like to request each and every
individual to make it a point to get a copy of any books on Ladakh and read it
and encourage others to read a book on Ladakh and see it for yourselves how we
are depicted in those books. The kind of literature that is evolving on Ladakh
is in its nascent stage, but I can see that we can contribute in our own
special ways through magazines, novels, poems, articles etc. and develop a
genre of literature in the English language, using English language as a medium
to put across what some of us have not been able to do in our regional language
i.e. Ladakhi/Bodyig.
Thank You.
Ms.Rigzin Chodon is doing her Mphil (Centre for English studies) from JNU Delhi can reach her on rigzone316@gmail.com and for more information join her facebook group page with the name ‘Books on Ladakh and More’ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/180162595427470/)
