Narratives
The Gulab Pash of Kashmir
Vessels of Shared Memory
There are objects that live silently within the walls of a home, and then there are those that carry the memory of a whole people. The Rosewater sprinklers locally known as Gulab Pash in Kashmir belong to the latter, their essence woven into the cultural memory of Kashmir. At first glance, they are exquisite vessels of engraved metal, distinguished by elaborate forms, pierced heads and excellently worked surfaces. But to look at them only as decorative antiques is to miss what makes them truly extraordinary. They are vessels of reminiscence whose significance lies in the social life that once surrounded them. They carried fragrance into moments of celebration and ceremony, making them objects through which hospitality, devotion and social etiquette once found a tangible form.
The tradition of Gulab-arq, or rosewater, has deep roots in Kashmir. For centuries it was prepared by hand, and used at places of worship, weddings, gatherings and even as an ingredient in food and beverages. The beautifully crafted Gulab Pash to dispense the arq could appear at very different moments in the life of Kashmiri community. What made them particularly important in context of Kashmir is that their use wasn’t confined to a unique occasion or a single belief system. They were part of a broader Kashmiri culture, shared across communities and detached from any idea of socio-economic status and religious belief. Several historic accounts record their routine use in shrines, mosques, imambargahs, gurdwaras temples as well as monasteries. They didn’t explain the rituals but quietly accompanied them. The scent lingered in the air, on clothing, and perhaps most importantly, in the memory of those who experienced it.
At weddings, Gulab Pash were traditionally among the items associated with the bride's ceremonial belongings and the sprinkling of rosewater over the arriving barat was considered an important gesture of honour and welcome among both Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits. For Kashmiri Pandits, they formed part of ceremonial practices. During Shivratri, rosewater was used in the ritual bathing of the Shiva lingam, while Kashmiri Pandit traditions also placed rosewater among the auspicious objects of Navreh. Among Shia Muslims, Gulab Pash acquired another evocative setting during Muharram. It was used to sprinkle Gulab arq over mourners during processions and gatherings (majalis). The addition of fragrance created another layer of memory to a procession already filled with the sound of the marsiya, and the movement of the crowd. The same fragrance could accompany solemnity and celebration, mourning and welcome.
Hence Gulab Pash should be understood as intangible cultural heritage as much as material heritage. They deserve to be remembered not merely as antique vessels, but as witnesses to a shared Kashmiri way of rejoicing and remembering in which the same fragrance accompanied joy, mourning, hospitality and ceremony across communities. Their elegant forms speak of a tradition in which every day ritual objects were also expected to possess beauty. Their exquisite ornamentation unveils an association with handicrafts where objects used in important moments were themselves made worthy of those moments.
Today, the tragedy is not only that the Gulab Pash themselves are disappearing but also the culture that gave them meaning is fading. Their silver, copper or brass bodies can survive in collections, but the knowledge of when to bring them out, and what they signalled cannot be preserved simply by displaying them. That knowledge lives in practice, memory and transmission. What risks disappearing are not the vessels, but the gesture, and with it, a small but beautiful part of Kashmir's collective memory. Traditional handmade rosewater production today is endangered, with the last surviving Srinagar distillery in Khanqah struggling against industrial production and declining demand. There is also a necessary change in etiquette. Today, it feels intrusive to sprinkle rosewater on someone without consent. One might damage the delicate fabrics or stain the glasses. What was once understood as a gesture of blessing or welcome cannot simply be imposed on everyone today.
The saddest fate of a cultural object is that it survives after its meaning has died. These sprinklers have carried something invisible and transformed it into an act of culture. One day, we may possess beautiful Gulab Pash in collections, carefully kept and displayed, while no one will remember why they were made, whom they were meant to welcome, or what their fragrance once meant.
There are objects that live silently within the walls of a home, and then…
The Dying Serpent
Tracing the Nāga in the Decorative Arts of Kashmir
The serpent known as Nag in Koshur language is among the most intriguing, and today one of the least understood, motifs in the traditional arts of Kashmir. It can be almost invisible; a curling line among foliage, the suggestion of a head emerging from a handle, a sinuous form disappearing into chased metal, and yet, once noticed, it begins to appear everywhere. In the 18th and 19th century objects especially, it can be seen not merely as a marginal ornament but as a prominent element of the object itself inhabiting the boundary between ornament, function and symbolism. In the old metalware of Kashmir, in carved walnut wood, in shawls, in jewellery and in the names of the plcaes, the serpent seems to have survived by repeatedly changing its language. Its recurrence across different materials suggests that the serpent lies deep in the cultural history, belonging to a much older visual vocabulary than the surviving objects in various collections might initially imply.
The serpent is far older than the surviving corpus of Kashmiri decorative arts, and its history cannot be reduced to a single point of origin. Serpent imagery occurs across the ancient cultures of South and Central Asia. In Kashmir, the Nāga was not simply a snake. It was a supernatural being associated with springs, lakes, water and the fertility of the landscape. The Nīlamata Purāṇa, generally placed by scholars around the 6th – 7th centuries CE, devotes considerable attention to Nāgas and to the ritual geography of Kashmir.[1] Its world is one in which springs have personalities and landscapes have guardians. The local Nāga is to be worshipped, the abodes of Nāgas are pilgrimage destinations, the rhythm of ritual life is intertwined with water and season.[2] Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī, composed in the 12th century, preserves this older world. Nāgas appear in its accounts as powers embedded in the landscape and as beings capable of influencing kings, weather and human fortune.[3] Even the geographical names like Anantnag, Verinag and Sheshnag that remain familiar today, retain the vocabulary of this older sacred landscape. Verinag, for instance, was associated with Nīla Nāga, the serpent deity of the spring that feeds the Vitasta now known as Jhelum.[4]
The serpent therefore began in Kashmir as something considerably more profound than a decorative pattern. When Buddhism entered the Valley, it interacted with the older Nāga traditions followed by Hinduism which followed a similar trend. A Buddhist account preserved in the Mahāvaṃsa describes the missionary Majjhantika encountering Aravala, the Nāga king of Kashmir, during the introduction of Buddhism into the region [5]. This account demonstrates that the association between Kashmir and Nāga traditions was already sufficiently established to enter Buddhist historical memory, centuries before the Nīlamata Purāṇa. The archaeological and artistic record provides firmer evidence for the early medieval period. An exceptionally important example is an eighth-century Kashmiri brass sculpture of Vajrasattva, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the base of the mountain on which the deity sits are a nāga and nāginī, emerging from the waters and raising their hands in veneration [6] demonstrating the presence of serpent imagery in an actual Kashmiri metal object by the eighth century.
Later, from 14th century onwards, Persian and Central Asian influences became increasingly powerful, particularly under rulers such as Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin in the15th century. Crafts including wood carving, papier-mâché, metalwork and other specialised arts were developed through the movement of craftsmen and techniques between Kashmir, Central Asia and Persia.[7][8] While it is tempting to assume that Islam prohibited the old imagery and that the serpent therefore ought to have disappeared, the Islamic aniconism was strongest in religious contexts, and figural imagery continued to flourish in the secular arts of many Islamic societies. Animals, birds and fantastic creatures appear throughout Islamic metalwork, textiles, ceramics and manuscripts.[9] The serpent could thus lose its status as an object of explicit worship while retaining its value as ornament, memory and visual form. The Nāga did not necessarily have to remain a deity in order to remain a shape. The sacred became decorative without entirely losing the memory of what it once represented. Kashmiri craftsmen became extraordinarily adept at precisely this kind of translation.
Walnut carving retained an extensive repertoire of animal and bird motifs, including the snake, alongside floral and vegetal designs.[10] In Kashmiri shawl traditions, Marder, described as a snake-like form, still survives as a named motif.[11] Metalware provides perhaps the most striking evidence with objects where the serpent is neither a temple image nor an illustration from a mythological narrative. It has become architecture in miniature: a functional structural element transformed into a creature. This may be the serpent's greatest achievement in Kashmiri art. It survived not by remaining unchanged, but by becoming ambiguous. That ambiguity also explains why the motif could be found across different craft traditions.
Yet today, the recognisable serpent is increasingly difficult to find in Kashmir's living craft traditions. Its disappearance should not necessarily be attributed to a sudden religious prohibition. The more convincing explanation is gradual aesthetic and economic change. The serpent, with its complicated and layered history, has become less necessary to the commercial image of Kashmir where Chinar leaves, paisleys, arabesques and calligraphy are easier to recognise as “Kashmiri” and easier to sell.
The disappearance of the serpent from contemporary Kashmiri design represents more than the loss of a decorative shape. It represents the thinning of a visual memory. The serpent is not merely an exotic decorative curiosity, but evidence that Kashmiri culture has never been a sequence of clean breaks. Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Persian, Central Asian, Mughal, Sikh, Dogra and colonial encounters did not simply replace one visual culture with another. They overlapped, negotiated and transformed one another. A serpent once associated with the waters of a sacred landscape became a creature in a craftsman's vocabulary; the creature became ornament; ornament became structure; structure became heritage. The serpent may have survived centuries of political and religious transformation precisely because craftsmen kept giving it new meanings. Its disappearance today may therefore represent something more profound than the loss of a motif. It may mark the loss of one of the subtle visual languages through which Kashmir remembered that its past was never singular.
To revive it would be to acknowledge that the Kashmiri craftsman inherited a visual world considerably richer than the limited repertoire through which Kashmiri handicrafts are often represented today. The serpent once moved effortlessly from stone to metal, from manuscript to papier-mâché, from vessel to jewellery. Its return need not signify a return to an ancient cult. It could instead signify something more valuable: a return to memory.
References
[1] Mahesh Sharma, “Puranic Texts from Kashmir: Vitasta and River Ceremonials in the Nilamata Purana,” South Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2008. The Nīlamata Purāṇa is an important source for the sacred geography and ritual culture of early Kashmir.
[2] Nīlamata Purāṇa, especially passages concerning Nāga worship and pilgrimage to Nāga abodes. The text prescribes ritual observances associated with local Nāgas and their sacred places.
[3] Kalhaṇa, Rājataraṅgiṇī, trans. M. A. Stein. The chronicle repeatedly refers to Nāgas and their role in Kashmir's sacred and political landscape.
[4] “The historical and spiritual significance of Verinag spring,” Kashmir Reader, 23 March 2024. The article discusses the identification of Verinag with Nīla Nāga and its place in Kashmiri sacred geography.
[5] Mahāvaṃsa, especially the account of Majjhantika and the Nāga king Aravala in Kashmir. See also the discussion of the tradition in Pooja Prashar, “Naga Worship in Ancient Kashmir,” International Journal of Research, 5.4 (2018). Pen2Print Journals +1
[6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Bodhisattva Vajrasattva, India, Kashmir, 8th century, brass with silver inlay, accession no. 2015.500.4.6. The sculpture depicts a Nāga and Nāginī emerging from the mountain waters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
[7] D. N. Saraf, Arts and Crafts, Jammu and Kashmir: Land, People, Culture, Abhinav Publications, 1987. This remains one of the major general studies of Kashmiri decorative and craft traditions.
[8] Jaya Jaitly and Kamal Sahai, eds., Crafts of Kashmir, Jammu & Ladakh, Abbeville Press, 1990; see especially J. L. Bhan, “Metalware, Pottery and Stonework.”
[9] Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Figural Representation in Islamic Art.” The museum notes the distinction between restrictions in religious art and the extensive use of figural imagery in secular Islamic art.
[10] Government of India, “Kashmir Walnut Wood Carving”; the documented repertoire includes animal motifs, explicitly including the snake.
[11] Gaatha, “Pashmina Shawls Srinagar.” The documented Kashmiri shawl vocabulary includes Marder, described as “snake like forms.”
The serpent known as Nag in Koshur language is among the most intriguing, and…