Lal Ded

Fourteenth-century Kashmiri Shaiva mystic and poet, the most beloved spiritual figure of Kashmir. Born around 1320 to a Brahmin family in Pampore and married into another by twelve, she fled an unhappy marriage to wander the valley as a renunciate, naked and singing — and her short verse-sayings, called vakhs, became the founding texts of Kashmiri vernacular literature. Equally claimed by Hindus, Muslims, and Sufis, her teachings blend the radical non-dualism of Kashmir Shaivism with the ecstatic devotional fervor of the Bhakti movement. Her vakhs are still recited daily by ordinary Kashmiris, six centuries later.