FRAGRANCE OF IDEAS
On the last Sunday, 2nd March 2025, a booklet titled “Dev Vardutt Shaalan Kautasya-Gotra of Chrungoo family” was released in a well attended function at Jammu. The booklet is based upon a research-work conducted by this author for the last five to ten years. On the occasion, a Hawan was also organised before the release of the Booklet. The programme was attended by the members of the Clan and a number of prominent personalities of the Kashmir Pandit community. The publication also carries details of those men and women of the clan who attained public recognition in the past and present.
Prominent among the dignitaries who attended the function besides this author and others included S/Shri Virender Raina, Dr. Sushil Wattal, B.L.Saraf -Judge retired, Prof. H.L.Jalali, Kamal Bagati, Ashok Braroo, Motilal Malla, Sanjay Raina, Sudrilal Kaul, Ranjeet Gurkha, Vijay Qazi, Lalji Chrungoo, Ashok Chrungoo, Rajinder Chrungoo, Rajesh Chrungoo and Shiben Chrungoo. The release of the Booklet was followed by ‘Prasad-Vitran’ among the participants in the programme. The Hawan was conducted by Pt. Chainlal Shastri, an eminent Vedic scholar.
Speakers on the occasion welcomed the initiative and they also appreciated the team-work of the activists who made the publication of the book possible. Though it was not easy to gather information pertaining to the last three hundred years about a clan particularly when the community has been uprooted from its homeland for the last more than three decades. A lot of documentary and other evidence of history have been lost due to the ethnic cleansing of the displaced community from the Kashmir valley.
The Chrungoo clan (family) has its roots dating back to thousands of years and the Gotra of the family is derived from the name of its originator, Dev Vardutt Shaalan Kautsya, who was a Reshi of a great repute in Kashmir valley. The Reshi had his hermitage in a hilly area of Srinagar, Kashmir where he would live along with his wife known as Reshimata Kautasya. This hilly place is nowadays called Malyar in the Habbakadal area of Srinagar.
With the passage of time, the hermitage came to be known by the divinity of the dwellers and also by their good deeds and thus the hermitage got recognition among the people around as the centre of learning and doing humanitarian services for the needy and the helpless. The hermitage, slowly and steadily, got converted into a big and established Ashram and the pious man superintending its noble activities called Rishi Shalaan Kautasya acquired huge respect and reverence among the people living in and around the area. A large number of disciples from various parts of the valley and even from outside the valley of Kashmir, including the children of the Reshi, became a part of the Ashram for their learning pursuits in various fields of activity.
Once a group of Devtas, which was on its way to some particular destination in Devbhumi Kashmir, visited the Reshi’s Ashram and stayed there for the night. The Reshi and his whole establishment in the Ashram made sure that the Devas and their paraphernalia were provided the required protocol, reverence and hospitality during their stay in the Ashram. Devas were very pleased to see and observe all great things that the Ashram was involved in and particularly the research work going on in the Ashram regarding the Vedas, Upanishads, Shastras and other scriptures.
At the time of their departure from the Ashram, the Devas blessed the Reshi with their sacred boon and wished him success in all his noble pursuits. Thus, the Reshi came to be known as “Dev Vardutt Shalaan Kautasya” (Shalaan Kautasya who has been blessed with the boon by the Devas). He acquired a great name in the future course of time along with his consort Reshimata Kautasya, and people from far off places would visit their Ashram to get counselled on matters material, intellectual and spiritual. The humanitarian and philanthropic deeds of the Reshi couple added to their aura of work and name and thus brought relief and succour to the lives of a large number of people irrespective of their region, colour and caste. Their wings of lineage for the next generations also remained committed to the mission that their ‘Mool-Purusha’ or the ‘Gotra-Purusha’ was engaged in for the whole of his life.
The Kashmiri Pandits, actually, belong to over one hundred such different ‘Gotra-Purushas’ and as per the estimate of some learned people (including the authority like, Pt. Anand Kaul Bamzai), these Gotras might touch the figure of 200 due to inter-caste and inter-region marriages. However, during the last one thousand years, the Pandits across all Gotras acquired three main surnames as per their profession i.e. Bhat, Pandit and Razdan. All those who were engaged in scientific or medical knowledge and professions would be designated as ‘Bhat’ while as ‘Pandit’ would form the class of those whose education and occupation would be related to religion, philosophy and culture. ‘Razdan’ were the people who would be, by and large, associated with the “Rajdhani” centred occupations such as court, administration, commerce, trade, business and other fields of politics and economics. All other surnames like Kaul, Dhar, Kachru, Raina etc. were eventually ‘earned’ by the respective Kashmiri Pandit families as names and nicknames. The family name ‘Chrungoo’ is also such a surname among the Kashmiri Pandit community which has a history of its own. This particular history has also been given in this Booklet for the information and knowledge of all concerned.
The book records that as the time went ahead and thousands of years passed, the particular lineage of the Gotra named “Dev Vardutt Shalaan Kautasya” got recognition as “Razdan” in Mohalla Malyar of the Habbakadal area. It was during the tumultuous period of the Pathans of Kabul & Kandahar in the Kashmir valley that the Kashmiri Pandits underwent difficult times again after the rule of tyrannical Sultans, Chaks and Mughals. During this period one Chittamani was born in the family who grew up under the loving shade of the elders in the family and particularly under the affectionate guidance and care of his mother, Vatsala Devi. Her loving and versatile son, Chittamani Razdan, learnt Sanskrit, Persian, Court rules, economics and laws of arbitration and was eventually absorbed as a young officer in the Revenue department of the Pathan government in Kashmir under the able stewardship of a Kashmiri Pandit, great Birbal Dhar. During the regime of Sardar Azim Khan, Pathan Governor of Kashmir, Birbal Dhar was the District Revenue Collector of the central district of Kashmir along with Mirza Pandit Dhar and Sukh Ram Safaya who were in-charge of the other two districts in South and North of Kashmir valley.
The six-year rule of Azim Khan from 1812 to 1818 was a very difficult time in Kashmir. The revenue collection had fallen due to the continuous failure of crops throughout the valley of Kashmir. Pt. Birbal Dhar appointed his favourite, Chittamani Razdan as the Incharge officer at the Veer Toll-post near Chattabal, Srinagar. Veer was the best earning tollpost for the administration across the valley on the river Jehlum as all goods movements were navigated via Veer toll post. Usually, a portion of the grain would be taken as the octroi-toll fees by the administration but due to the acute crop failure in the valley, people found it very difficult to pay such taxes to the government. The general public and the businessmen appealed to the then government under the ruthless Pathans to reconsider the tax structure in view of the crop failure, but the Pathans didn’t pay any heed to their plea. This was also one of the contributing factors that led people to pray for change of the government in Kashmir and Birbal Dhar took a lead to do so when he went to the Darbar of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh in Lahore along with his son and impressed upon him to extend his rule to the Kashmir valley.
Administration ultimately decided to charge a minimum of a handful of grains from all taxpayers at the Octroi posts out of the grains that were taken through such posts. Chittamani Razdan, in his capacity as the Incharge officer of the Veer Octroi Post, keeping in view the difficulties of the people, devised a novel method to collect the namesake revenue and used his discretion by asking every taxpayer to pay only ‘a fistfull’ of grains as the tax at the toll-post instead of ‘a handful’ of grains. This was greatly welcomed by the people at large and this news broke like a wildfire. Fistful in typical Kashmiri language means “Chrong’ ( च़्रोंग ) and thus Chitamani Razdan was, with the passage of time, called as ‘Chitamani Razdan Chrong’. The nickname replaced the original surname, slowly and steadily, and thus the whole clan of Chitamani Razdan was called and known as “Chrong” which eventually changed to “Chrungoo” due to the phonetic adjustment in languages other than the Kashmiri language.
The Booklet consists of the Hindi version of the text as well. It also gives a life sketch of Mata Daya Devi Chrungoo (Daeded) who was a direct disciple of Swami Anand ji Maharaj of Jamnagri-Anantnag and who has a plethora of good deeds to her credit. The booklet also carries the family-tree of the Chrungoo clan which covers the lineage of the family for the last almost three hundred years. It becomes important in the current context for all concerned to take inspiration from this work done for the benefit of the future generations.
Recording of Gotra-based lineage is an important tool for documentation of history in the long run. This author makes an appeal to all in general to take an initiative at their own level taking cue from this project accomplished by him to document the lineage of their own families. This is recognised as recording history at a micro level that helps build documented history in future course of time.
(The author is a senior BJP & KP leader, Human rights defender, author & columnist and can be reached at [email protected])
