Kashmiri Marsiyas

It’s worthwhile to remember that due to the communal or more precisely-the collective mode of recitation, Kashmiri marsiya were far more adaptable to the change in language and as such some of the older and archaic words were continuously rooted out as and when their usage in common speech became outdated. Thus we find that even in case of marsiya written only a century back- the current “in vogue” form with the audience involves a subtle deviation from the written form-dictated mostly by the spirit of the audience and the zakirs modifications. Hence one usually finds a certain “modernity of form and diction” in some of the older, medieval marsiya that could otherwise indicate a more recent date for these works. The periodic adaptations that many of the marsiyas have gone through have over the years helped in bridging the gap between the written and spoken language. This has resulted in bringing the verses of the poet nearer to the time -period and language of the audience, a unique feature of the Kashmiri marsiya.