KUNINDA: A journey home
The word Kuninda isn’t something we made up, although it might sound like we did. The word has an interesting origin but how we stumbled upon it or got to it is the story we wish to tell you today.
This story began with Kabir diving into the histories of the clans that make up our family, the clans our grandparents belonged to, the clans that made us. What ties, over generations, have we and the people we came from had to this land, to the mountains. And through that an understanding of the history of the land itself.
Kuninda was the ancient name for what is modern day Uttarakhand, bits of the north of Uttar Pradesh and a fair amount of eastern Himachal Pradesh. When we say ancient we mean ancient. 200 BCE type of ancient. Kuninda was a meritocracy, often referred to as the Republic of Kuninda in the accounts of Ptolemy and the lot. 200 years before the birth of Christ (just incase BCE didn’t give that part away), the fertile plains of the terai and the foothills of the Himalayas were home to a people who lived in reverence for and harmony with nature. The coins belonging to this era, found in Kashipur, Almora, Shimla and across the foothills, were made of silver. The imagery on the coins bears witness to the type of life they led and the things they held dear. Most of the coins excavated belong to the era of Amoghbhuti, the most famous of the Kunindas, the symbols on those coins depict, among other things, a deer with two cobra adorning its head, like antlers (coincidentally the state animal of Uttarakhand is the Alpine Musk Deer) and a tree-in-railing.
Now the tree-in-railling symbol is incredibly relevant here. It is representative of the tree of life, more specifically the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha meditated. The presence of this symbol in the coins shows the spread of Buddhism in the lands of the Kunindas and the importance of spirituality in their culture.
The idea of the tree-in-railing goes further into the importance of trees to civilisations and people across the world through history. The wish fulfilling, life sustaining and giving tree of life. In India, in different regions different trees hold that position in local cultures and religions. The Kalpavriksha as it is called. Trees of the fig family (peepal, bargad and paakhar) are important through out the sub continent, the coconut tree in the south, the parijat in the north, the mulberry (shehtoot) in the mountains, the mahua and so on,
For us at Kuninda it is the paakhar that holds this special place. Specifically this one paakhar which was planted three generations ago next to the house. A tree under which people have meditated for years. A tree that has soothed and calmed and healed our family and all who visit, for years. And a tree, that like its cousins the bargad and peepal, gives out oxygen at night.
in the old days sarais and areas where monthly markets were held, in the northern plains, pakhaars were found growing in large numbers. Back then there weren’t any hotels and bnbs. People slept under the shelter of trees and ofcourse trees that give oxygen at night would offer the best quality sleep. Moreover, the paakhar’s dense foliage and wide canopy would prot3ct those who slept under it from harsh weathe rconditions. Such spaces are found to this day in the outskirts of larger villages where such markets are held to this day.
And so, for us, when we set out on this journey of creating a brand and brand image and logo, we did not expect it to take us through such long meandering paths spanning centuries to bring us right back to the tree that we grew up under. On land that we call home.