Who are they that wreaths of flowers bring?
What are the flowers that at the feet they lay?
Water that they on the image fling?
What the spell that Shankar’s self shall sway?
Who are they that wreaths of flowers bring?
What are the flowers that at the feet they lay?
Water that they on the image fling?
What the spell that Shankar’s self shall sway?
He that knows the place to be a shrine—
Unto himself and the self a home—
Hears the unobstructed sound divine,
Growing ever to the vibrant Om
When thy vain imaginings are fled,
Why put thy faith in spells that come and go?
Why to worship others be thou led,
When thine own self for the self dost know?
(From The Word of Lalla by Richard Carnac Temple)
Lalleshwari or Lal Ded (1335-1385) is Kashmir’s most celebrated saint poet. Lalla’s poems are known popularly as Vakh or Vakyani (words). Analysts have tried to find influences of the Kashmiri contemporary philosophy known as Trika as well as Advaita, Shaiva Pashupata, Shakta, Buddhism as well as Sufism in her Vakhs. However she remains an experiential mystic figure who ridiculed rituals, idolatory, piligrimages, belief in past lives and so on and walked out of her tortuous married life even discarding her clothes. She roamed Kashmir then onwards unencumbered even by clothes. She is a much loved and respected figure by Kashmiris of all communities. In many ways her life and work are reminiscent of another intense Bhakti poet Akka Mahadevi from 12th century Veerashaiva Vachanakara movement of Karnataka.