Lal Ded (Lalla)#Lal
A figure from the books
#Lal
Lal Ded (Lalla) · c. 1320–1392
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Mystic poetry — the vākh, the four-line spoken verse of Kashmiri; Kashmir Śaiva yoga carried out of Sanskrit into the mother tongue.
“A woman walked out of a cruel house with nothing, wandered a valley that was changing religions around her, and left behind verses so true that two faiths have spent six hundred years claiming her — and the Kashmiri language still speaks in her sentences.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“She took the most sophisticated philosophy India had built — the Śaivism of Abhinavagupta's Kashmir — and spoke it in short, sharp verses in the language of farmers and boatmen; six centuries on, Hindus and Muslims both claim her, because her verses refuse both labels.”
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