Introduction

THE stories and songs in the following pages were recited to Sir Auren Stein in June and July, 1896, at Mohand Marg, in Kashmir, by Hatim Tilawon, of Panzil, in the Sind Valley, a cultivator and professional story-teller. They were taken down at his dictation by Sir Aurel Stein himself, and, simultaneously, by Pandit Govinda Kaula, and were read again by Sir Aurel with Hatim in August, 1912. Sir Aurel Stein wrote the text phonetically in the Roman character, as he heard it, and Govinda Kaula recorded it in the Nagar character, not phonetically, but spelling the words in the manner customary among Kashmiri Pandits of Srinagar. While there are necessarily considerable differences in the representation of Hatim's words, the two texts are in verbatim agreement. Only in very rare instances are unimportant words found in one omitted in the other. To the copy made by him from Hatim's dictation Govinda Kaula added an interlinear, word for word, translation into Sanskrit, and, from this, he subsequently made a fair copy of the greater part of the text with a translation into idiomatic Sanskrit.

All these materials were handed over to me by Sir Aurel Stein in November, 1910, and a perusal of them at once showed their great importance. They were a first-hand record of a collection of folklore taken straight from the mouth of one to whom they had been handed down with verbal accuracy from generation to generation of professional Rawis or reciters, and, in addition, they formed an invaluable example of a little-known language recorded in two ways, viz.: (1) as it sounded to an experienced scholar, and (2) as it was written down in the literary style of spelling. Moreover, Hatim’s language was not the literary language of Kashmiri Pandits, but was in a village dialect, and Sir Aurel Stein's phonetic record of the patois, placed alongside of the standard spelling of Kashmiri Pandits gives what is perhaps the only opportunity in existence.

Hatim's Tales