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

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

RUINED GATEWAY OF MARTAND

Fortunately one of their native historians has left us a record, and Dr. Stein's skill and industry in translating and annotating this record makes it possible to obtain a fairly clear idea of ancient Kashmir. From this and from the style of the ruins themselves, we gather that the main impulses came from outside rather than from within, from India and from Greece. And perhaps, if in place of their mountains, which tend to seclusion and cut a people off from the full effects of that important factor in the development of a race, easy intercourse and strenuous rivalry with other peoples, the Kashmirians had, like the Greeks, been in contact with the sea, with ready access to other peoples and other civilisations, they might have made a greater mark in the world's history. But they had this advantage, that the beauty of their country must always, as now, in itself have been an attraction to outsiders, and so from the very commencement of its authentic history we find strong outside influences at work in the country.

Thus among the first authentic facts we can safely lay hold of from among the misty and elusive statements of exuberant Oriental historians, is the fact that Asoka's sovereign power extended to Kashmir-Asoka, the contemporary of Hannibal, and the enthusiastic Buddhist ruler of India, whose kingdom extended from Bengal to the Deccan, to Afghanistan and to the Punjab, and the results of whose influence may be seen to this day in Kashmir, in the remains of Buddhist temples and statues, and in the ruins of cities founded by him 250 years before Christ, 200 years before the Romans landed in Britain, and 700 years before what is now known as England had yet been trodden by truly English feet.

RUINED TEMPLES OF AVANTIPUR

At this time Buddhism was the dominating religion in northern India, and perhaps received an additional impulse from the Greek kingdoms in the Punjab, planted by Alexander the Great as the result of his invasion in 327 b.c. Asoka had organised it on the basis of a state religion, he had spread the religion with immense enthusiasm, and in Kashmir he caused stupas and temples to be erected, and founded the original city of Srinagar, then situated on the site of the present village of Pandrathan, three miles above the existing capital. He had broken through the fetters of Brahminism and established a friendly intercourse with Greece and Egypt, and it is to this connection that the introduction of stone architecture and sculpture is due. The Punjab contains many examples of Græco-Buddhist art, and Kashmir history dawns at the time when Greek influence was most prominent in India.

The first great impulse which has left its mark on the ages came, then, not from within, but from without—not from within Kashmir, but from India, Greece, and Egypt. Little, indeed, now remains of that initial movement. The religion which was its mainspring has now not a single votary among the inhabitants of the valley. The city Asoka founded has long since disappeared. But the great record remains; and on a site beautiful even for Kashmir, where the river sweeps gracefully round to kiss the spur on which the city was built, and from whose sloping terraces the inhabitants could look out over the smiling fields, the purple hills, and snowy mountain summits of their lovely country, there still exist the remnants of the ancient glory as the last, but everlasting sign that once great men ruled the land.