Kashmir, described by Sir Francis Younghusband, painted by Major E. Molyneux

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

CHAPTER IX

THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR

A country of such striking natural beauty must, surely, at some period of its history have produced a refined and noble people? Amid these glorious mountains, breathing their free and bracing air, and brightened by the constant sunshine, there must have sprung a strong virile and yet æsthetic race? The beautiful Greece, with its purple hills and varied contour, its dancing seas and clear blue sky, produced the graceful Greeks. But Kashmir is more beautiful than Greece. It has the same blue sky and brilliant sunshine, but its purple hills are on a far grander scale, and if it has no sea, it has lake and river, and the still more impressive snowy mountains. It has, too, greater variety of natural scenery, of field and forest, of rugged mountain and open valley. And to me who have seen both countries, Kashmir seems much the more likely to impress a race by its natural beauty. Has it ever made any such impression?

The shawls for which the country is noted are some indication that its inhabitants have a sense of form and colour, and some delicacy and refinement. But a great people would have produced something more impressive than shawls. Are there no remains of buildings, roads, aqueducts, canals, statues, or any other such mark by which a people leaves its impress on a country? And is there any literature or history?

RUINS OF TEMPLES, WANGAT, SIND VALLEY

All over the Kashmir valley there are remains of temples remarkable for their almost Egyptian solidity, simplicity, and durability, as well as for what Cunningham describes as the graceful elegance of their outlines, the massive boldness of their parts, and the happy propriety of their outlines. The ancient Kashmirian architecture, with its noble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments, and its elegant trefoiled arches, is, he thinks, entitled to be classed as a distinct style; and we may take it as implying the existence of just such a people as this mountain country might be expected to produce. Three miles beyond Uri, on the road into Kashmir, are the ruins of a temple of extremely pleasing execution. Near Buniar, just beyond Rampur, is another right on the road. At Patan, 13 miles before reaching Srinagar, are two more ruined temples of massive construction. Two and a half miles southward of Shadipur, the present junction of the Sind River with the Jhelum, are the remains of a town, the extent and nature of which show conclusively that it must once have been a large and important centre. On the summit of the hill, rising above the European quarter in Srinagar, is a dome-shaped temple erroneously known as the Takht-i-Suliman. At Pandrathan, three miles from Srinagar, is a graceful little temple and the remains of a statue of Buddha, and of a column of immense strength and size. At Pampur and Avantipur, on the road to Islamabad at Payech, on the southern side of the valley, where there is the best preserved specimen temple, and at many other places in the main valley, and in the Sind and Lidar valleys, there are remains of temples of much the same style. But it is at Martand that there is the finest, and as it is not only typical of Kashmir architecture at its best, but is built on the most sublime site occupied by any building in the world,—finer far than the site of the Parthenon, or of the Taj, or of St. Peters, or of the Escurial,—we may take it as the representative, or rather the culmination of all the rest, and by it we must judge the people of Kashmir at their best.

On a perfectly open and even plain, gently sloping away from a background of snowy mountains, looking directly out on the entire length both of the smiling Kashmir valley and of the snowy ranges which bound it—so situated, in fact, as to be encircled by, yet not overwhelmed by, snowy mountains—stand the ruins of a temple second only to the Egyptians in massiveness and strength, and to the Greek in elegance and grace. It is built of immense rectilinear blocks of limestone, betokening strength and durability. Its outline and its detail are bold, simple, and impressive. And any over-weighing sense of massiveness is relieved by the elegance of the surrounding colonnade of graceful Greek-like pillars. It is but a ruin now, but yet, with the other ruins so numerous in the valley, and so similar in their main characteristics, it denotes the former presence in Kashmir of a people worthy of study. No one without an eye for natural beauty would have chosen that special site for the construction of a temple, and no one with an inclination to the ephemeral and transient would have built it on so massive and enduring a scale. We cannot, for instance, imagine present-day Kashmiris building anything so noble, so simple, so true, and so enduring. The people that built the ancient temples of Kashmir must have been religious, for the remains are all of temples or of sacred emblems, and not of palaces, commercial offices, or hotels; they must have held, at least, one large idea to have built on so enduring a scale, and they must have been men of strong and simple tastes, averse to the paltry and the florid. What was their history? Were they a purely indigenous race? Were they foreigners and conquerors settled in the land, or were they a native race, much influenced from outside, and with sufficient pliability to assimilate that influence and turn it to profitable use for their own ends?