Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  Sannyas A life of renunciation, a state of homelessness.

  Sanyasi A Hindu wanderer or ascetic.

  Sati The old Hindu practice of widow burning, now illegal (lit. “a good woman”).

  Saz A lute-like stringed instrument popular in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

  Shaheed A Muslim martyr.

  Shakta The denomination of Hinduism that concentrates on the worship of Shakti, or the Devi: the female principle of the Divine Mother.

  Shakti The personification of the creative power and energy of the divine feminine.

  Shamiana An Indian marquee, or the screen formed around the perimeter of a tented area.

  Shastra An ancient Hindu and Buddhist treatise or text; the word in Sanskrit means “rules.”

  Shirk Heresy, polytheism or idolatry.

  Siddi The Afro-Indians who settled on the coast of Sindh and Gujarat and usually engaged in fishing and coastal trading and sailing.

  Sindhoor A red powder (vermilion) which is traditionally applied at the beginning of or completely along the parting-line of a woman’s hair. Similar to kumkum.

  Sloka A stanza in a Sanskrit poem.

  Svetambara One of the two great sects of the Jain faith. The Sventambaran Jain monks do not go naked like the “Sky Clad” Digambara Jains.

  Tablighi Jamaat A missionary group of the Islamic reform movement, with theological beliefs similar to the Deobandis and Wahhabis, and with a particular emphasis on textual and ritual rectitude and orthodoxy.

  Talib A student—hence Taliban, the student army that emerged from the madrasas.

  Tanti An amulet of knotted chord (in Rajasthan).

  Tantra An esoteric form of Hinduism and Buddhism aiming at gaining access to the energy of the Godhead, then concentrating and internalising that power in the body of the devotee. In Hindu Tantra Shakti is usually the main deity worshipped, and the universe is regarded as the result of the divine play of Shakti and Shiva. Tantrics defy convention and reverse most of the strictures and taboos of orthodox religiosity.

  Tapasya Ascetic penance, self-testing and deprivation; voluntary austerity.

  Ta’wiz A Sufi charm or amulet, usually containing verses from the Quran.

  Thakur A gentleman landowner or squire.

  Thali A tray or large plate.

  Thangka A Buddhist painted or embroidered prayer banner, usually hung in a monastery or a family altar, and occasionally carried by monks in ceremonial processions.

  Thevaram Lit. “Garland of God”—a multi-volume collection of Tamil devotional Shaivite hymns and poetry.

  Theyyam The possession dance of northern Kerala. A theyyam performer is called a theyyamkkaran.

  Thottam Ritualistic songs appropriate for the theyyam dance of northern Kerala.

  Thukpa Tibetan noodle soup.

  Tilak The sacred mark on the centre of a Hindu forehead.

  Tirthankara Lit. “Ford-maker.” The Jains believe these heroic ascetic figures, also known as Jinas or “liberators,” have shown the way to Nirvana, making a spiritual ford through the rivers of suffering, and across the wild oceans of existence and rebirth, so as to create a crossing place between samsara—the illusory physical world—and liberation.

  Toddy Keralan and Goan firewater, brewed from fermented coconut juice.

  Upanishads The collection of Hindu scriptures, dating from 1000 BC to the medieval period, which form the core teachings of Vedanta.

  ’Urs Annual festival held in Sufi shrines to commemorate the death of a saint.

  Vaishnavite A follower of the Hindu god Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally Rama or Krishna.

  Vajra A short metal weapon symbolising a thunderbolt and representing spiritual power in Buddhist art.

  Vedanta A group of ancient Hindu philosophical traditions concerned with the self-realisation by which one can understand the ultimate nature of reality.

  Vibhuti The white ash powder smeared on the body of Shiva; and hence also his devotees among the sadhus.

  Vimana The pyramid-shaped tower of Tamil temples.

  Wahhabi A member of the reformed and puritanical form of Islam, first propagated by Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Medina in the eighteenth century, which aimed to strip Islam of all non-Muslim accretions, most notably idolatry and the cult of saints. Wahhabism is now the state religion in Saudi Arabia. Saudi oil wealth has been used to propagate its missionary activity, through which Wahhabism has developed considerable influence in the Islamic world through the funding of newspapers, television stations, printing presses, madrasas and mosques.

  Yakshi Female Hindu fertility nymphs, often associated with sacred trees and pools. In Kerala they are believed to be malevolent and to have the appetites and proclivities associated with vampires in Europe.

  Yantra A symbol or geometric figure, in paint or coloured sand. They are used in various mystical traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism to balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts. Tantrics believe that the act of wearing, depicting, enacting or concentrating on a yantra is held to have spiritual, astrological or magical benefits.

  Yatra A pilgrimage.

  Yatri Traveller or pilgrim.

  Zamindar Landholder.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  1. THE NUN’S TALE

  Colette Caillat and Ravi Kumar, The Jain Cosmology, New York, 1981

  Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey, The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society, Cambridge, 1991

  Ananda Coomaraswamy, Jaina Art, New Delhi, 1994

  John E. Cort, Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India, Oxford, 2001

  ———, “The Rite of Veneration of Jina Images,” in Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (ed.), Religions of India in Practice, Princeton, 1995

  ———, Singing the Glory of Asceticism: Devotion of Asceticism in Jainism, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2002, Vol. 70, No. 4

  Paul Dundas, The Jains, London, 1992

  Phyllis Granoff, The Clever Adultress and Other Stories: A Treasury of Jain Literature, Ontario, 1990

  ———, The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories, New Delhi, 1998

  Hemacandra (trans. R.C.C. Fynes), The Lives of the Jain Elders, New Delhi, 1998

  Padmanabh S. Jaini, Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women, New Delhi, 1991

  ———, The Jaina Path of Purification, Berkeley, 1979

  James Laidlaw, Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy and Society Among the Jains, Oxford 1995

  Pratapaditya Pal, The Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India, Los Angeles, 1994

  Aidan Rankin, The Jain Path, Winchester, 2006

  Jina Ratna (trans. R.C.C. Fynes), The Epitome of Queen Lilavati, New York, 2005

  U.P. Shah and M.A. Dhaky, Aspects of Jaina Art and Architecture, Ahmedabad, 1975

  2. THE DANCER OF KANNUR

  T.V. Chandran, Ritual as Ideology: Text and Context in Theyyam, New Delhi, 2006

  J.R. Freeman, “Purity and Violence: Sacred Power in the Theyyam Worship of Malabar,” unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991

  Mayuri Koga, “The Politics of Ritual and Art in Kerala: Controversies Concerning the Staging of Theyyam,” Journal of the Japanese Association of South Asian Studies, 15 2003

  K.K.N. Kurup, The Cult of Theyyam and Hero Worship in Kerala, Calicut, 2000

  Dilip M. Menon, “The Moral Community of the Teyyattam: Popular Culture in Late Colonial Malabar,” Studies in History, 1993, 9:187

  Frederick M. Smith, The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilisation, New York, 2006

  3. THE DAUGHTERS OF YELLAMMA

  Daud Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India, Cambridge, 2004

  ———, “War, Servitude and the Imperial Household: A Study of Palace Women in the Chola Period,” in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, Slavery and South Asian History, Indiana, 2006r />
  Kali Prasad Goswami, Devadasi, New Delhi, 2000

  R.K. Gupta, Changing Status of Devadasis in India, New Delhi, 2007

  Kay K. Jordan, From Sacred Servant to Profane Prostitute: A History of the Changing Legal Status of the Devadasis, New Delhi, 2003

  Saskia C. Kersenboom, Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India, New Delhi, 1987

  John O’Neil, Treena Orchard, R.C. Swarankar, James F. Blanchard, Kaveri Gurav and Stephen Moses, “Dhanda, Dharma and Disease: Traditional Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Rural India,” in Social Science and Medicine 59, 2004

  ———, “Understanding the Social and Cultural Contexts of Female Sex Workers in Karnataka, India: Implications for the Prevention of HIV Infection,” in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2005; 191 (suppl. 1): S.139–46

  Treena Rae Orchard, “Girl, Woman, Lover, Mother: Towards a New Understanding of Child Prostitution Among Young Devadasis in Rural Karnataka, India,” in Social Science and Medicine 64, 2007

  Leslie C. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters, New York, 2000

  Shashi Panjrath and O.P. Ralhan, Devadasi System in India, Faridabad, 2000

  A.K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, When God Is a Customer: Telegu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others, California, 1994

  4. THE SINGER OF EPICS

  Rustom Bharucha, Rajasthan: An Oral History—Conversations with Komal Kothari, New Delhi, 2003

  Vidya Dehejia, “India’s Visual Narratives: The Dominance of Space Over Time,” in Giles Tillotson (ed.), Paradigms of Indian Architecture: Space and Time in Representation and Design, London, 1998

  Graham Dwyer, The Divine and the Demonic: Supernatural Affliction and Its Treatment in North India, London, 2003

  Alf Hiltebeitel, Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics, Chicago, 1999

  O.P. Joshi, Painted Folklore & Folklore Painters of India, New Delhi, 1976

  Sudhir Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and Its Healing Traditions, Oxford, 1982

  Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, Harvard, 2000

  Victor H. Mair, Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis, Hawaii, 1988

  Aditya Malik with Hukmaram Bhopa and Motaram Gujar (eds.), Sri Devnarayan Katha: An Oral Narrative of Mewar, New Delhi, 2003

  Joseph Charles Miller, “The Twenty-four Brothers of Lord Devnarayan: The Story and Performance of a Folk Epic of Rajasthan, India,” unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994

  Daniel Neuman and Shubha Chaudhuri with Komal Kothari, Bard, Ballad and Boundaries: An Ethnographic Atlas of Music Traditions in West Rajasthan, Calcutta, 2006

  Kavita Singh, “The God Who Looks Away: Phad Paintings of Rajasthan,” in Harsha V. Dehejia, Gods Beyond Temples, New Delhi, 2006

  ———, “To Show, To see, To Tell, To Know: Patuas, Bhopas and Their Audiences,” in Jyotindra Jain, Insights into the Narrative Tradition in Indian Art, Bombay, 1998

  John D. Smith, The Epic of Pabuji—A Study, Transcription and Translation, Cambridge, 1991

  ———, The Epic of Pabuji, New Delhi, 2005

  Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Casting Kings: Bards and Modernity, Oxford, 2006

  Ernst Van de Wetering, “Fighting a Tiger: Stability and Flexibility in the Style of Pabuji Pars,” South Asian Studies 8, 1992

  5. THE RED FAIRY

  Alice Albinia, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, London, 2008

  D.H. Bhutani, The Melody and Philosophy of Shah Latif, New Delhi, 1991

  Motilal Jotwani, Sufis of Sindh, New Delhi, 1986

  Amena Khamisani (trans.), The Risalo of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Bhitshah, 2003

  Shah Abdul Latif (trans. Anju Makhija and Hari Dilgir), Seeking the Beloved, New Delhi, 2005

  Peter Mayne, Saints of Sindh, London, 1956

  Roland and Sabrina Michaud, Derviches du Hind et du Sind, Paris, 1991

  Annemarie Schimmel, Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth Century Muslim India, Leiden, 1976

  6. THE MONK’S TALE

  John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows, New York, 1986

  Noel Barber, From the Land of Lost Content: The Dalai Lama’s Flight from Tibet, London, 1969

  John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana (trans. and ed.), The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha, Oxford, 1987

  Mary Craig, Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet, New York, 1999

  HH Dalai Lama, My Land, My People: Memoirs, New Delhi 1977

  Kunga Samten Dewatshang, Flight at the Cuckoo’s Behest: The Life and Times of a Tibetan Freedom Fighter, New Delhi, 1977

  Mikel Dunham, Buddha’s Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet, London, 2004

  Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, Vol. 1, 1913–1951, The Demise of a Lamaist State, Berkeley, 1989

  Palden Gyatso, Fire Under Snow: Testimony of a Tibetan Prisoner, London, 1997

  Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet, London, 1952

  Pico Iyer, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, New York, 2008

  Donald S. Lopez (ed.), Buddhist Scriptures, London, 2004

  Ani Pachen with Adelaide Donnelley, Sorrow Mountain: The Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun, New York, 2002

  Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947, New York, 1999

  Keutsang Trulku Jampel Yeshe, Memoirs of Keutsang Lama: Life in Tibet After the Chinese “Liberation,” New Delhi, 2001

  7. THE MAKER OF IDOLS

  Crispin Branfoot, Gods on the Move: Architecture and Ritual in the South Indian Temple, London, 2007

  Richard H. Davis, Lives of Indian Images, Princeton, 1977

  Vidya Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas, New York, 1990

  ———, Chola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India, London, 2006

  ———, “Patron, Artist and Temple,” in Royal Patrons and Great Temple Art, Bombay, 1998

  ———_, Slaves of the Lord: The Path of the Tamil Saints, Delhi, 1998

  ———, The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India, Washington, 2002

  Diana L. Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, Columbia, 1998

  ———, “India’s Tirthas: ‘Crossings’ in Sacred Geography,” History of Religions 20, No. 4, 1981

  C.J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India, Princeton, 1992

  ———, Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South Indian Temple, Cambridge, 1984

  John Guy, Indian Temple Sculpture, London, 2007

  James Heitzman, Gifts of Power: Lordship in an Early Indian State, Oxford, 1977

  Thomas E. Levy, Masters of Fire: Hereditary Bronze Casters of South India, Bochum, 2008

  James McConnachie, The Book of Love: In Search of the Kama Sutra, London, 2007

  A.K. Ramanujan, The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, Ontario, 1975

  David Dean Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition, Princeton, 1980

  Michael Wood, The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey, London, 1995

  8. THE LADY TWILIGHT

  Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, London, 1965

  N.N. Bhattacharyya, The Indian Mother Goddess, Delhi, 1999

  Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Shakta Tantrism, Chicago, 1990

  June McDaniel, Making Virtuous Daughters and Wives: An Introduction to Women’s Brata Rituals in Bengali Folk Religion, New York, 2003

  ———, Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal, Oxford, 2004

  Vidya Dehejia, Devi: The Great Goddess, Washington, 1999

  ———, Yogini Cult and Temples: A Tantric Tradition, New Delhi, 1986

  Edward C. Dimock Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon: Ero
tic Mysticism in the Vaisnava-sahajiya Cult in Bengal, Chicago, 1966

  Sanjukta Gupta, Dirk Jan Hoens and Teun Goudriann, Hindu Tantrism, Leiden, 1979

  Madhu Khanna, Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity, London, 1981

  David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses—Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition, Berkeley, 1998

  ———, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas, New Delhi, 1998

  Ajit Mookerjee and Madhu Khanna, The Tantric Way: Art, Science, Ritual, London, 1977

  Debashis Mukherjee, Tarapith, Calcutta, 2000

  Philip Rawson, Art of Tantra, London, 1973

  Ramprasad Sen (trans. Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely), Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair, Arizona, 1999

  D.C. Sirkar, The Sakta Pithas, Delhi, 1973

  David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts, Chicago, 2003

  ———, Tantra in Practice, Princeton, 2000

  9. THE SONG OF THE BLIND MINSTREL

  Pranab Bandyopadhyay, Bauls of Bengal, Calcutta, 1989

  Bhaskar Bhattacharyya, The Path of the Mystic Lover: Baul Songs of Passion and Ecstasy, Rochester, 1993

  Deben Bhattacharyya, The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal, New York, 1969

  Charles H. Capwell, “The Esoteric Belief of the Bauls of Bengal,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXIII, No. 2, February 1974

  Rajeshwari Datta, “The Religious Aspect of the Baul Songs of Bengal,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, May 1978

  June McDaniel, The Madness of the Saints, Chicago, 1989

  Jeanne Openshaw, Seeking Bauls of Bengal, Cambridge, 2004

  R.M. Sarkar, Bauls of Bengal: In Quest of a Man of the Heart, New Delhi, 1990

  Mimlu Sen, Baulsphere: My Travels with the Wandering Bards of Bengal, New Delhi, 2009

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He is the author of five books of history and travel, including the highly acclaimed best seller City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His previous book, White Mughals, garnered a range of prizes, including the prestigious Wolfson Prize for History in 2003 and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize. It was also shortlisted for the PEN History Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A stage version by Christopher Hampton has been co-commissioned by the National Theatre and the Tamasha Theatre Company.