The Historical Legend Of Lal Der By Baba Dawud Mishkati

Like most of the great personalities that history has bestowed us with Lal Ded’s life and being have become a legend and have lived on as a legend. The historical person that Lal Ded was is difficult to locate because through her works and philosophy she transcended the temporal and the historical. She aspired for universal truth, the ultimate knowledge of being and existing, she surrendered her entire life to the exploration of essence of the universe, then how can she remain pinned down to a specific time and place. Over years she became an image, a representative of what she stood for, what she fought for. There have been times when at certain

This document is considered to be composed in A.D. 1654 , almost two centuries after her supposed historical presence. The text which means The Secrets of the Pious contains the documentation of the lives of great saints of the time. The Sanskrit chronicles of the time do not mention Lal Ded’s name at all. The reasons for the absence of her name from historical documents or the chronicles could be aplenty. One of the reasons might be the fact that she was a woman, the gender bias was evidently prevalent during the times. Being a married woman she was said to have roamed around naked shedding off with her clothes not merely the sense of worldly shame and guilt but also all her identities which connected her to this world of material beliefs and yearnings. But she nevertheless transgressed the boundary of decency, and this along with her radical philosophy which ridiculed and provided a critical evaluation of the ritualistic aspects of both Hindu and Islamic religion must have made it difficult for the people of the times to accept and comprehend her. She might have also come in direct conflict with the authorities and guardians of institutionlised

The birth place is usually considered to be Sempor in Kashmir or Pandrenthan . There is considerable debate on the year or approximate period of her birth. Though all the critics agree she belonged to 14th century. Abdul Wahab Shayiq, the composer of a chronicle of Kashmir in Persian language allocates Lal Ded’s birth year as A.D. 1334-35; on the other hand the chronicler Pir Gulam Hasan believes her to be born in A.D. 1300-01. It is one of the foremost scholars on Lal Ded, Pandit Anand Kaul who along with P.N.K. Bamzai who differ from all chroniclers. They claim that Lal Ded was born in the middle of the 14th century. It is very interesting however to note that no empirical evidence have been provided by any chronicler to support their claim. Most of the scholars today tend to follow one or the other