Mahmud Gami

In 1877, after sketching the royalty of the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, while on his way back, at Thanna Mandi, a place near Rajouri, in the afternoon of 13 June, V. C. Prinsep (1838-1904) met a traveling Kashmiri bard, a singing fakir, who regaled him with Kashmiri songs for hours while they walked. Prinsep made some notes, and later got two of the songs translated.

In his book ‘Imperial India; an artist’s journals’ (1879), V. C. Prinsep writes:

He was a filthy object, the dirtiest of the dirty; but he had the soul of a poet, and as he played his poor four-stringed instrument, he threw his head on one side, and bent over his guitar, much as first-rate performers do at home. He was grateful too, for when I left at 5 a.m., I found him waiting, and he played to me along a couple of miles of road, with his dirty legs keeping time to the twang of his music, and his nose well in the air neither would he leave until I gave hookham or permission.

My good friend Major Henderson [C.S.I., who was political officer in Kashmir, and an excellent linguist.] has sent me translations of two of this poet’s songs. One appears to be well known as the love-song of Mohammed Gami, a Kashmir poet.

[...]

I should like to have imported my poet as he appeared to me in his rags and filth; yet is his love-song much like such as are sung in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. The second song is another love-song, and the name of the poet is not known.^[6]

As is turns out, the second song is from work called "Sheikh Sana’n", a version of which among others was put to Kashmiri verses by Mahmud Gami.

In August 2022, the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, and the union territory's department of tourism, together with the district administration of Anantnag and Mahmud Gami Working Committee, organised a cultural program in Gami's memory at Mahmud Gami park, in Dooru.^[7]

• Kashmiri literature
• Rasul Mir