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

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

The next great landmark in Kashmir history is the reign of the king Kanishka, the Indo-Scythian ruler of upper India. He reigned about 40 a.d., when the Romans were conquering Britain and Buddhism was just beginning to spread to China. He was of Turki descent, and was part of that wave of Scythian immigration which for two or three hundred years came pouring down from Central Asia. And he was renowned throughout the Buddhist world as the pious Buddhist king, who held in Kashmir the famous Third Great Council of the Church which drew up the Northern Canon or "Greater Vehicle of the Law." In his time, too, there lived at a site which is still traceable at Harwan, nestling under the higher mountains at the entrance of one of the attractive side-valleys of Kashmir, and overlooking the placid waters of the Dal Lake, a famous Bodhisattva, Nagarjuna, who from this peaceful retreat exercised a spiritual lordship over the land.

Buddhism was, in fact, at the zenith of its power in Kashmir. But a reaction against it was soon to follow, and from this time onward the orthodox Brahministic Hinduism, from which Buddhism was a revolt, reasserted itself, and Buddhism steadily waned. When the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang visited Kashmir, about a.d. 631, he said, "This kingdom is not much given to the faith, and the temples of the heretics are their sole thought."

Passing now over a period of six centuries, the only authentically recorded event in which is the reign, a.d. 515, of Mihirakula, the "White Hun," a persecutor of the Buddhist faith, "a man of violent acts and resembling Death," whose approach the people knew "by noticing the vultures, crows, and other birds which were flying ahead eager to feed on those who were to be slain," and who succeeded to a kingdom which extended to Kabul and Central India, we come to the reign of the most famous king in Kashmir history, and the first really indigenous ruler of note—Lalitaditya. And of his reign we must take especial notice as Kashmir was then at its best.

Whether Lalitaditya was a pure Kashmiri it is impossible to discover. His grandfather, the founder of the dynasty to which he belonged, was a man of humble origin—whether Kashmiri or foreign the historian does not relate—who was connected by marriage with the preceding ruling family. His mother was the mistress of a merchant settled in Srinagar. The dynasty which his grandfather succeeded was foreign, and it is impossible, therefore, to say how much foreign blood Lalitaditya had in his veins; but his family had at any rate been settled in Kashmir for a couple of generations, and Kashmir was not in his time the mere appanage of a greater kingdom, but was a distinct and isolated kingdom in itself. From this time for many centuries onwards, till the time of Akbar, the tide of conquest and political influence was to turn, and instead of more advanced and masterful races from the direction of India spreading their influence over Kashmir, it was from Kashmir that conquerors were to go forth to extend their sway over neighbouring districts in the Punjab.

Lalitaditya's reign extended from about 699 to 736. He was therefore a contemporary of Charlemagne, and preceded our own King Alfred by more than a century. Mohamed was already dead a hundred years, but his religion had not yet spread to India. The Kashmiri historians speak of Lalitaditya's "conquering the world," and mix up much fable with fact. But what certainly is true is that he asserted his authority over the hilly tracts of the northern Punjab, that he attacked and reduced the King of Kanauj to submission, that he conquered the Tibetans, successfully invaded Badakhshan in Central Asia, and sent embassies to Peking.

Though, then, he was not the "universal 'monarch' that the historian described him, and did not move round the earth like the sun," or "putting his foot on the islands as if they were stepping-stones, move quickly and without difficulty over the ocean," he is yet the most conspicuous figure in Kashmir history, and raised his country to a pitch of glory it had never reached before or attained to since. It was he who erected the temple at Martand; and the ruins of the city Parihasapura, near the present Shadipur, are an even fuller testimony to his greatness. These, therefore, we must regard as the most reliable indication we have of the degree of culture and civilisation to which Kashmir attained in its most palmy day twelve hundred years ago.

Lalitaditya's rule was followed by a succession of short and weak reigns, but his grandson was almost as great a hero of popular legend as himself. He too, "full of ambition, collected an army and set out for the conquest of the world." He reached the Ganges and defeated the King of Kanauj, but had to return to Kashmir to subdue a usurper to his throne. He encouraged scholars and poets and founded cities. After him followed, first, "an indolent and profligate prince"; then a child in the hands of uncles, who as soon as he grew up destroyed him and put another child on the throne. He indeed maintained his position on the throne for 37 years, but only on account of the rivalries of the uncles, and as a mere puppet king, and was eventually deposed by the victorious faction to make place for yet another puppet king, who again was killed by a treacherous relative. So the record goes on till we come to the reign of Avantivarman, 855-883, and this appears to have brought a period of consolidation for the country, which must have greatly suffered economically as well as politically from the internal troubles during the preceding reigns. There is no indication of the reassertion of Kashmir sovereignty abroad, but there is ample proof of the internal recovery of the country, and the town of Avantipura, named after the king, has survived to the present day. It lies one march above Srinagar, and the ruins of the ancient buildings, though not equal in size to Lalitaditya's structures, yet rank, says Stein, among the most imposing monuments of ancient Kashmir architecture, and sufficiently attest the resources of the builder.

This reign was, too, remarkable for the execution of an engineering scheme to prevent floods and drain the valley, a precisely similar idea to that on which Major de Lotbinière is working under the direction of the present Maharaja. The Kashmiri engineer Suyya, after whom is named the present town of Sopur, saw more than a thousand years ago what modern engineers have also observed, that floods in the valley are due to the waters of the Jhelum not being able to get through the gorge three miles below Baramula with sufficient rapidity. The constricted passage gets blocked with boulders, and both Suyya and our present engineers saw that this obstruction must be removed. But while Major de Lotbinière imported electrically-worked dredgers from America and a dredging engineer from Canada, Suyya adopted a much simpler method: he threw money into the river where the obstruction lay. His contemporaries, as perhaps we also would have, looked upon him as a madman. But there was method in his madness, for the report had no sooner got about that there was money at the bottom of the river than men dashed in to find it, and rooted up all the obstructing boulders in their search. So at least says the legend. In any case the obstruction was removed by Suyya, and the result was the regulation of the course of the river, a large increase of land available for cultivation, and increased protection against disastrous floods. May the modern Suyya be equally successful!

The successor of Avantivarman, after defeating a cousin and other rivals to the throne, started on a round of foreign expedition, in the historian's words, "to revive the tradition of the conquest of the world." The practical result does not appear to have been much more than an invasion of Hazara, an attack on Kangra and the subjugation of what is now the town of Gujrat in the Punjab, since remarkable as the spot where we finally overthrew the power of the Sikhs. But the record is of interest, as showing that the conquering tendency was still from Kashmir outwards, and not from the Punjab into Kashmir.

But this was the last outward effort, and from this reign onward the record is one long succession of struggles between the rulers and usurping uncles, cousins, brothers, ministers, nobles, and soldiers. The immediate successor was a child whose regent mother was under the influence of her paramour the Minister. After two years he was murdered by the Minister. Another boy succeeded who only lived ten days. Then the regent mother herself ruled for a couple of years, but a military faction overruled her councils, and by open rebellion obtained the throne for a nominee of their own, and the land became oppressed by exactions of the soldiery backed by unscrupulous ministers. The Queen was captured and executed, and a disastrous flood and terrible famine increased the general misery. After two years' reign the soldiers' nominee was deposed and a child put in his place. Then there was a fresh revolution and still another nominee, who, as he could not pay a sufficient bribe to the soldiery, was deposed and the crown sold to the Minister.