More than a century and quarter ago, the Hungarian born naturalized British citizen and explorer cum archaeologist of the Central Asian fame, Aurel Stein, first arrived in Kashmir in 1888.
At the time, hardly did he know that
Kashmir would become his ‘adopted home’ for the rest of his life. However, it
was only in the summer of 1895 that Stein first spotted Mohand Marg, an alpine
meadow hidden in the mountains, north of Srinagar about 15 miles along the road
to Leh.
Stein fell in love with the Marg instantly, making
the place his true home. His own work and response to Nature epitomized in his
beloved Mohand Marg. It is here that he completed the Rajatarangini and wrote
all his Reports on explorations in Central Asia.
In fact, all the three expeditions (1900-1901;
1906-1908 and 1913-1916) Stein made to Central Asia, he always started from
Mohand Marg and there he returned, every time after completing the expedition.
Notwithstanding the captivating charms Mohand Marg
held for Aurel Stein during his lifetime, and the importance it gained as one
of the most scenic spots in Kashmir, the place, paradoxically, fell into
oblivion after his death in Kabul in 1943. Sadly enough, even the Stein
Memorial Stone there stood defaced and vandalized.
However, the situation changed dramatically in 2017
when, at the suggestion of the present writer, Yasin Zargar of the Indus
Discoveries, London, reinstalled a new tri-faced memorial stone with engraved
epithet in English, Urdu and Sanskrit. Currently, the Indus Discoveries is also
spearheading efforts to conduct international tourists on Stein’s trail in
Kashmir and organize camps to Mohand Marg.
While the products of Aurel Stein’s literary and
scholarly work, Rajatarangini and his three Reports on Expeditions to Central
Asia, were completed at Mohand Marg before they were sent out into the wide
world of learning and scholarship, there was something equally significant that
went out from Mohand Marg, perhaps more popular, to spread across the globe at
his behest.
These products were the wild flowers that grew in
the meadow. Stein arranged the export of their seeds to send to his friends and
public institutions in Europe and America. Fortunately, these seeds took
favourably to the new alien soils.
At present, they flourish as rare exotic wild
flowers of exceptional appeal and variety, in some of the most important public
and private gardens of Europe and America. But the story of spreading the
‘Kashmir gold’ across the globe has remained untold and unknown so far. It is
through these columns the present writer, after a painstaking research into rare
sources he has had access to, now announces the circumstances of their export
and provenance.
Fascinated by the pine-scented air which he termed
as ‘the avalanche perfume’ and the beauty of these flowers on the mountain
slopes of his meadow in shades of deep yellow and dark blue with sparing of whites,
Stein felt that the sight surpassed that of any beautiful carpet one could see.
From the Marg, he often sent bunches of flowers to
his friends nearby Srinagar or in Europe. Among the recipients of these
friendly marks included his most cherished Kashmiri scholar friends, Nityanand
Shastri, and Mukand Ram Shastri – who
were his coworkers on the Rajatarangini. Some can still be found between the
pages of his letters where they were left by Nityanand Shastri.
Among the earliest European friends who received the
seeds of Marg flowers were Stein’s English friends, Fred Andrews and Percy
Strafford Allen. Thus, the first sprouting of Marg flowers in Europe, blossomed
in the lawns of Battersea Polytechnic, London and Corpus Christie College,
Oxford, where his two friends worked and also, sometime, lived.
Throughout his life Stein made several visits to
England. The Allen House, at 22 Manor Place, Oxford, was his home. The house of
the Allens’ had a large garden which the couple tended with care and love. Very
naturally, the Marg flowers blossomed there as well.
In fact, sending the seeds of the Marg flowers to
his benefactors goes back to Stein’s naturalization as the British citizen in
1904 that later followed with his knighthood in a solemn ceremony held in
Srinagar in 1912. As a mark of his faithful allegiance to the Empire, Stein
gifted the seeds of these natural marvels to the British royalty as well. Not
long after, the seeds of the rarest and beautiful varieties of the Marg flowers
reached the royal house in England. Fortunately, the seeds found the English
soil fertile to thrive within the fortress precincts of the Balmoral and
Windsor Castles.
Not alone the Marg flowers have found new home in
England, they have also found the American soil equally favourable to grow.
Having completed a successful short lecture tour at Harvard University in
December 1929 and January 1930, Aurel Stein had the fullest support of the Vice
President of the Harvard-Yenching Trust, Carl Tilden Keller. He had encountered
his friendship some years ago in England through the kind courtesy of a common
friend, travel writer - Ella Sykes during a tea-party given at her London club
in 1924.
Stein reciprocated the courtesy by gifting the seeds
of the Marg flowers to Carl Keller, whose wife, Marian Keller loved gardening. The
Keller couple maintained a home garden at 80 Federal Street in Boston. After
having received the seeds of the beautiful Marg flowers, Marian Keller gifted
some to their close family friend in America who maintained a “very beautiful
garden of tremendous extent”. That year (1930) sometime during the summer, the Kellers
visited their friend who thanked them for the beautiful gifts. There, the
Keller couple found several of Meconopsis Baileyii also called the Himalayan
poppy in full bloom. The Kellers also saw a few of them their friends had put
on exhibition at the Chestnut Hill Flower Show. For this the owners were proud
beyond words. However, the ones planted
by Marian in her home were still to sprout even as she was tending them with
“unceasing attention”.
To beat the scorching summer heat of Boston, the
Keller couple, sometime in early 1931, decided to move temporarily to Cohasset,
a small town in Norfolk County in Massachusetts to spend the summers. As an avid
lover of flowers and not to miss the charm of those beautiful wild flowers of
the Marg, Marian Keller carried them to her transit residence and planted them
in various appropriate places in her new garden. She “watched them with maternal interest and
anxiety” to blossom and thrive.
Kellers’ fell in love with these marvels of Mohand
Marg so much, that they often reminded Stein to send them a fresh supply of
seeds every summer. It was an unfailing habit with Stein that he always camped
at Mohand Marg in the summers, if he were to be in Kashmir. In August 1935,
Stein was camping at Mohand Marg, when he sent a letter to the Kellers describing
the charms of his camping ground and assuring his promise to send them seeds. In
this letter dated August 10, 1935 Stein addressed to Carl Keller writing: “I am
feeling very glad for the peace and the freedom on “my” alp. How I wish you and
Mrs. Keller could see just now the wonderful display of its alpine flowers.
They carpet the ground round my tent to a height of 2-3 feet so densely that
even my narrow path is hidden by them. I am trying to get the seeds this time
collected more systematically than in former years. The trouble is that the
flowers get submerged in their luxuriance before the seeds are quite ripe. Of
course, Cohasset will have its full share”.
As cold began to grip the Marg, Stein decided to
descend to warmer Srinagar. He left Mohand Marg on September 30, 1935 after an
early snowfall but not before having collected the flower seeds more systematically.
By October 13, he was camped at Nagin Bagh on the Dal Lake and from there on
October 21 he sent to Marian Keller a tin-box post-parcel containing limited
quantities of 26 varieties of seeds. Stein expressed the hope: “May some of them
take to New England”.
The seeds arrived in America some time about the end
of November, where Marian Keller was delighted to receive them. This time, she
took help of several friends, who were more experienced gardeners, to ensure
they grow properly. Although the Kellers’ felt guilty to have caused Stein spend
much time collecting seeds that otherwise, in their opinion, could have been
dedicated by him to much more fruitful work. However, this time “after deep and
careful thought” they decided to distribute the seeds. In their endeavour, it
was not a proper kind of appreciation of Stein’s thoughtfulness “to have the
seeds tried again other than by those who were intensely interested in such
matters”.
Hence, in order to ensure that these exotic seeds
went to the most deserving people and proper quarters, they sought the advice
and guidance of Professor Barbour, the Director of the Harvard University
Museum. On his advice, Carl Tilden Keller sent the packages of all the seeds to
T.H. Everett of the New York Botanical Garden. Everett further divided these
seeds into four sets. One he kept for use at the New York Botanical Garden. One
set of the seeds was sent to Mrs. Arthur Lyman of Waltham, who had a “great
reputation as a propagator of strange plants”. The third set of seeds was sent
to Harvard Botanical Garden, and of course, the “last lot went to Paul V.
Donavan, gardener to the Kellers at Cohasset”. While the Kellers’ hoped that something
strange and lovely will come out from their germination, in anticipation they
even gave new taxonomic names for them. Fancifully, for one they reserved the
name “Cynoglossum Steinii” and for another they chose “Adonis Steinii”!
By the middle of June 1936, the New York Botanical
Garden reported quite good success with the germination of the seeds. However,
the two other gardens did not report on the status of their efforts. A week
earlier, there was a meeting of the horticulturists and florists in New York
that deliberated, among other things, on the experiments connected with the
sowing of the Marg- flower seeds. Carl Keller attended this meeting and sat
next to Dr. Moore, the head of the St. Louis Botanical Garden. At the meeting
Dr. Moore frothed in rage for having been excluded among the recipients of the
Marg seeds. Of these developments, Carl Keller informed Stein who was at the
time in England and staying there with his friend Percy Strafford Allen in
Oxford.
In a letter dated June 24, 1936 Keller wrote to
Stein from Boston: “So you see, your
kindly efforts in our behalf have brought joy to several and pain to another”. Taking
a serious note of Dr. Moore’s concern in the matter and making amends for his
lapse, Carl Keller found out some more of seeds and sent them on to Dr. Moore.
Although so well known and acknowledged that Aurel
Stein was the first among the Europeans to understand the ethos of Kashmir’s
culture and recognize the value of its contribution to the history of world
culture. This new story, narrated for
the first time in the preceding passages, however, must also credit this great
European Savant of also having physically decorated the western soil with the ‘green
gold of Kashmir’.
If many private lawns, public gardens and royal
estates in the West attract the awe and admiration of people who visit them to
appreciate and enjoy their colourful floral blossoms, some credit is due to
Aurel Stein also. Today, if there is a bit of Kashmir’s actual and real ‘natural’
beauty that one can see thriving and flourishing in some corners and patches of
the earth’s soil in the Western Hemisphere, the singular credit goes to Aurel
Stein.
For not only Aurel Stein has brought the cultural
and literary glory of Kashmir to the attention of the West, he has also
physically embellished the western soil with the natural charms of Kashmir.
Perhaps Kashmir has had no greater ambassador in the contemporary times than
Sir Aurel Stein.
(The author is a Gurugram based Stein
scholar and researcher.)
(Feedback at: surindar.n.pandita@gmail.com)
