KANGRA, a town and district of British India, in the Jullundur division of the Punjab. The town, sometimes called Nagarkot, is situated 2409 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1901), 4746. The Katoch rajas had a stronghold here, with a fort and rich temples. Mahmud of Ghazni took the fort in 1009 and from one of the temples carried off a vast treasure. In 1360 Kangra was again plundered, by Feroz Shah. The temple of Devi Bajreshri was one of the oldest and wealthiest in northern India. It was destroyed, together with the fort and the town, by an earthquake on the 4th of April 1905, when 1339 lives were lost in this place alone, and about 20,000 elsewhere. In 1855 the headquarters of the district were removed to the sanitarium of Dharmsala.
The district of Kangra extends from the Jullundur Doab far into the southern ranges of the Himalaya. Besides some Rajput states, annexed after the Sikh wars, it includes Lahul, Spiti and Kulu, which are essentially Tibetan. The Beas is the only important river. Area, 9978 sq. m., of which Kangra proper has only 2725. Pop. (1901), 768,124; average density 77 persons per sq. m., but with only one person per sq. m. in Spiti. Tea cultivation was introduced into Kangra about 1850. The Palampur fair, established by government with a view to fostering commerce with central Asia, attracts a small concourse of Yarkandi merchants. The Lahulis carry on an enterprising trade with Ladakh and countries beyond the frontier, by means of pack sheep and goats. Rice, tea, potatoes, opium, spices, wool and honey are the chief exports.
See Kangra District Gazetteer (Lahore, 1906).
KANISHKA, king of Kabul, Kashmir, and north-western India in the 2nd century A.D., was a Tatar of the Kushan tribe, one of the five into which the Yue-chi Tatars were divided. His dominions extended as far down into India as Madurā, and probably as far to the north-west as Bokhāra. Private inscriptions found in the Punjab and Sind, in the Yusufzai district and at Madurā, and referred by European scholars to his reign, are dated in the years five to twenty-eight of an unknown era. It is the references by Chinese historians to the Yue-chi tribes before their incursion into India, together with conclusions drawn from the history of art and literature in his reign, that render the date given the most probable. Kanishka’s predecessors on the throne were Pagans; but shortly after his accession he professed himself, probably from political reasons, a Buddhist. He spent vast sums in the construction of Buddhist monuments; and under his auspices the fourth Buddhist council, the council of Jālandhara (Jullunder) was convened under the presidency of Vasumitra. At this council three treatises, commentaries on the Canon, one on each of the three baskets into which it is divided, were composed. King Kanishka had these treatises, when completed and revised by Aśvaghosha, written out on copper plates, and enclosed the latter in stone boxes, which he placed in a memorial mound. For some centuries afterwards these works survived in India; but they exist now only in Chinese translations or adaptations. We are not told in what language they were written. It was probably Sanskrit (not Pali, the language of the Canon)—just as in Europe we have works of exegetical commentary composed, in Latin, on the basis of the Testament and Septuagint in Greek. This change of the language used as a medium of literary intercourse was partly the cause, partly the effect, of a complete revulsion in the intellectual life of India. The reign of Kanishka was certainly the turning-point in this remarkable change. It has been suggested with great plausibility, that the wide extent of his domains facilitated the incursion into India of Western modes of thought; and thus led in the first place to the corruption and gradual decline of Buddhism, and secondly to the gradual rise of Hinduism. Only the publication of the books written at the time will enable us to say whether this hypothesis—for at present it is nothing more—is really a sufficient explanation of the very important results of his reign. In any case it was a migration of nomad hordes in Central Asia that led, in Europe, to the downfall of the Roman civilization; and then, through the conversion of the invaders, to medieval conditions of life and thought. It was the very same migration of nomad hordes that led, in India, to the downfall of the Buddhist civilization; and subsequently, after the conversion of the Saka and Tatar invaders, to medieval Hinduism. As India was nearer to the starting-point of the migration, its results were felt there somewhat sooner.
Authorities.—Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India (Oxford, 1908); “The Kushan Period of Indian History,” in J.R.A.S. (1903); M. Boyer, “L’Époque de Kaniska,” in Journal Asiatique (1900); T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang (London, 1904, 1905); J. Takakusu, “The Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma Books,” in Jour. of the Pali Text Soc. (1905), esp. pp. 118-130; Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (London, 1903), ch. xvi., “Kanishka.”
(T. W. R. D.)
KANKAKEE, a city and the county-seat of Kankakee county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, on the Kankakee river, 56 m S. of Chicago. Pop. (1900), 13,595, of whom 3346 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 13,986. Kankakee is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Illinois Central, and the Chicago, Indiana & Southern (controlled by the New York Central) railways. It is the seat of the Eastern Hospital for the Insane (1879) a state institution; St Joseph’s Seminary (Roman Catholic) and a Conservatory of Music. At Bourbonnais Grove, 3 m. N. of Kankakee is St Viateur’s College (founded 1868), a well-known Roman Catholic divinity school, and Notre Dame Academy, another Catholic institution. The city has a public library and four large parks; in Court House Square there is a monument erected by popular subscription in honour of the soldiers from Kankakee county who died in the Civil War. There are rock quarries here, and the city manufactures sewing machines, musical instruments, especially pianos, foundry and machine shop products, agricultural implements and furniture. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $2,089,143, an increase of 222% since 1900. Kankakee is also a shipping point for agricultural products. It was first settled in 1832; was platted as the town of Bourbonnais in 1853, when Kankakee county was first organized; was chartered as the city of Kankakee in 1855, and was re-chartered in 1892.