Verinag

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Verinag is a place so beautiful that a Mughal emperor wished to be buried there. Jahangir, who ruled the Mughal Empire in the early 17th century, had visited this spring twice as a prince. He never forgot what he had seen. His wife Nur Jahan ultimately overruled that dying wish. That a man who commanded a vast empire chose this valley spring as his desired resting place is worth pondering. The spring sits approximately 78 kilometres south-east of Srinagar, in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. It never dries up and it never overflows. For travelers arriving by road from Jammu, Verinag is the first sight of the Kashmir Valley. That position earned it the name 'gateway of Kashmir.' Two stone slabs set into the walls of the spring still carry Persian prose recording who built it and when.

• 2. The Eternal Spring

  ›

  At 1,851 metres above sea level, the spring at Verinag issues from a high scarp of a mountain spur. Pine trees and evergreen plants cover the hill above it. Before the Mughals arrived, this was an unremarkable pond. Water seeped from different points across an irregular depression and spread into a little marsh. When Jahangir described the spring in his memoirs, he reported ordering a stone-weighted cord lowered into the water. Measured in gaz, the cord revealed the depth to be not much more than once and a half the height of a man. The result surprised him: local tradition had long called the spring unfathomable. The water runs crystal blue, and large fish swim through it in numbers. The spring is the primary source of the Jhelum River, known in the Kashmiri language as 'vyeth'. The Jhelum flows through the entire valley of Kashmir before entering Pakistan-administered territory. From the spring's pool, the water travels down a 300-yard canal to the Bihat River below.

• 3. Jahangir's Vision

  ›

  In 1620 AD, stone carvers brought from Iran arrived at Verinag to transform the spring. The corresponding date, 1029 Hijri, is inscribed on a slab set into the southern wall. Jahangir had made the journey to Verinag twice during his father Akbar's lifetime, traveling 20 kos from the city of Kashmir each time. When he became emperor, he ordered the shapeless marsh enclosed in an octagonal tank of sculptured stones. His aim was to gather all the water in one place. He also laid out a garden beside the natural spring, on ground that had held pre-Islamic religious significance. The southern wall's Persian inscription identifies Jahangir as 'the king of seven kingdoms, the administrator of justice, the father of victory.' It closes with a wish: 'May the mansion last for ever together with the spring Vernag!' Seven years later, his son Shah Jahan would return to Verinag.

• 4. Shah Jahan's Touch

  ›

  In 1037 Hijri, Haidar arrived at Verinag by order of Shah Jahan to build the cascade and aqueduct. The western wall of the spring holds a stone slab recording this work. Shah Jahan directed cascades and aqueducts to run in straight lines through and around the garden. He also built hot and cold baths to the east of the garden, just outside its boundary. Little of those baths survives today. The western wall's inscription declares: 'This aqueduct reminds one of the aqueduct of paradise.' It adds that 'by this cascade Kashmir attained glory.' A Shiva shivling stands in the very first arch on the left at the spring's entrance. Its presence points to a devotion at these waters that long predated any Mughal stonework.

• 5. Sacred Ground

  ›

  'Virah' in Sanskrit means to go back, and 'nag' means a water spring. Tradition holds that the goddess Vitasta, who embodies the Jhelum River, came to this spring and had to withdraw. She found the god Shiva already present and turned back. She rose instead from Vithavatur (Vitastatra), a spring roughly a mile to the north-west. The spring is also called Nilakunda, meaning the spring of Nila. Ancient tradition places Nilanaga at the head of all Naga spring-deities of Kashmir, and the Verinag spring is considered his residence.

  The Nilamata Purana, an early Sanskrit text, places Verinag within a founding myth of Kashmir. According to that text, the valley was once a lake called Satisara, the lake of Parvati. Near this spring, Lord Vishnu is said to have placed the first point of the plough that drained Satisara. Lord Shiva's trident, according to the same tradition, brought the goddess Parvati from the netherworld into being as the river Vitasta. A temple inside the garden holds idols of Hindu goddesses.

  Some two kilometres away, springs collectively known as Sapta Rishi meet at a place called Sangam, where people bathe on festival days. Each year, on the thirteenth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, a fair marks the birth of the Jhelum River. Kalhaṇa, writing in the 12th century CE, preserved the spring's ancient name Nilakunda in his Sanskrit chronicle Rajatarangini. That text connects the spring's reputation to the rulers of Kashmir long before any Mughal arrived.

• 6. The Persian Blueprint

  ›

  The garden beside the spring measures 460 metres by 110 metres, rectangular in shape. It runs a few degrees off a south-north axis, descending a hillside from spring to river. Its design follows the tradition of the Persian Charbagh, a form whose name translates as four gardens. The Charbagh takes its inspiration from the Quranic description of heaven, which names four rivers: wine, honey, milk, and water. In a classical Charbagh, the water source sits at the center of a square garden. Four radiating streams then divide the space into equal quarters.

  A canal 305 metres long by 3.65 metres wide carries water from the spring to the Jhelum River at the garden's northern end. The water source sits at the top of the hillside, not the center. This shifted the double symmetry of the Persian original to a single central water axis. The other streams of the classical form survive only as the east-west canal that crosses the main canal at the garden's southern end. Entrances to the garden lie at both ends of this east-west canal. A colonnade of 24 arches surrounds the octagonal pool, and visitors approach it along a walkway from those entrances. The pool's water is clear and filled with carp, a detail that has not changed since the colonnade was built around it.