Kashmir Part 7

The Maharaja's preserves have for many years been under the management of that old and experienced sportsman and naturalist, Colonel Ward, to whose book, the _Sportsman's Guide to Kashmir and Ladak_, all those who want full information on shooting in Kashmir should refer.

And in addition to shooting, trout-fishing will soon be established as a further attraction to the sportsman.

Some years ago a number of keen fishermen banded together, and after some failure and much trouble, and with the a.s.sistance of the State authorities in Kashmir and of the Duke of Bedford in England, succeeded in introducing the ova of the English brown trout into the valley. Under the special charge of Mr. Frank Mitch.e.l.l a hatchery has been established at Harwan, nine miles out of Srinagar, just beyond the Shalimar garden, and at the outlet of the Dachigam--a perfect trout stream--the valley of which is preserved for the Maharaja's shooting.

From these stock ponds a trout weighing twelve and a half pounds was taken on Lord Minto's visit in 1908. The Dachigam stream itself is now well stocked, and affords some excellent fishing to those who have obtained His Highness' permission. In addition aged ova and yearling trout have been sent to other streams in Kashmir--to the Achibal, Beoru, w.a.n.gat, Vishu, Kishenganga at Badwan, the Liddar at Aru and Tannin, Marwar, Erin. Yearlings have also been let out in the Burzil stream, the Gorai (on the north side of the Tragbal Pa.s.s), in the Gangarbal Lake, and in the Punch River.

It has been proved satisfactorily that when the snow-water has run off, the biggest trout will take a fly put to them at the right moment, though when the snow-water is coming down there are few flies rising and the fish do not take. A constant enemy of the trout is the poacher. English trout are, unfortunately, becoming very popular among the Kashmirs, and it is difficult to protect the fishing. The biggest trout caught so far is a nine-pounder caught in the Dachigam stream when the trout have been let out some years. In the summer of 1908 a fish weighing two and a half pounds, which must have been one of the yearlings turned out in 1906, was caught in the Vishu stream. By both Major Wigram and Mr. Frank Mitch.e.l.l great attention is being paid to the development of trout-fishing.

Seeing the success which has attended the introduction of trout the Maharaja on the occasion of Lord Minto's visit ordered the importation of the ova of the huchon (_Salmo Hucho_), or so-called Danube salmon.

Mr. Frank Mitch.e.l.l in the spring of 1908 successfully introduced them, and about 2000 hatched out in the Harwan hatcheries. They will probably be put out in the rapids of the Jhelum River below Baramula, and as they run to some 26 lbs. in weight, and are known to be one of the most sporting as well as the largest of the Salmonidae, they should afford another welcome attraction for the sportsman in Kashmir.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PEOPLE

Kashmir is very generally renowned for the beauty of its women and the deftness and taste of its shawl-weavers. And this reputation is, I think, well deserved. Sir Walter Lawrence indeed says that he has seen thousands of women in the villages, and cannot remember, save one or two exceptions, ever seeing a really beautiful face. But whether it is that Sir Walter was unfortunate, or that he is particularly hard to please, or that villages are not the abodes of Kashmir beauties, certain it is that the visitor, with an ordinary standard of beauty, as he pa.s.ses along the river or the roads and streets, does see a great many more than one or two really beautiful women. He will often see strikingly handsome women, with clear-cut features, large dark eyes, well-marked eyebrows, and a general Jewish appearance. As to the deftness and taste of the weavers the shawls themselves are the best testimony.

The population of the whole Kashmir State is 2,905,578, and of the Kashmir Province 1,157,394. Of these 93 per cent of the Kashmir Province and 74 per cent of the whole State are Mohamedan, and the remainder chiefly Hindu. But the rulers are Hindus, and consequently the Mohamedans are as much in the shade as Hindus are in States ruled by Mohamedans. The ruling family is also alien, coming not from the valley itself, but from Jammu, on the far side of the mountain to the south.

The inhabitants were not, however, always Mohamedans. Originally they were Hindus. It was only in the fourteenth century that they were converted--mostly by force--to become Mohamedans. The present indigenous Hindus of the valley are generally known as Pundits, and Kashmir Pundits are well known over India for their acuteness and subtlety of mind, their intelligence and quick-wittedness. They prefer priestly, literary, and clerical occupation, but in the severe compet.i.tion of life many have been compelled to make more use of their hands than their brains, and have had to take up agriculture, and become cooks, bakers, confectioners, and tailors, and, indeed, to follow any trade except the following which, according to Lawrence, are barred to them--cobbler, potter, corn-frier, porter, boatman, carpenter, mason, or fruit-seller. It is hard for us occidentals to understand why the line should have been drawn at these apparently harmless occupations, but those of us who have lived in India know that the Hindu does fix his lines with extraordinary sharpness and rigidity, and a Kashmir Pundit would as much think of working as a boatman as an English gentleman would think of wearing a black tie at a formal dinner-party.

The Kashmir Pundits are essentially townspeople, and out of the total number about half live in the city of Srinagar. But they are also scattered spa.r.s.ely through the villages, where the visitor will easily distinguish them by the caste mark on the forehead. On the whole they have a cultured look about them and a superior bearing.

The Mohamedans, forming the large majority of the population, strictly speaking having no caste, are engaged in various occupations, and found in every grade of social life. And the Mohamedan gentleman of good position has something singularly attractive about him. He combines dignity with deference to a noteworthy degree, and between him and the European there is not that gulf of caste fixed which makes such a bar to intercourse with Hindus. Not that the Mohamedans of India have not absorbed to a certain degree the atmosphere of caste with which they are surrounded. They are not so entirely free in their customs and behaviour as their co-religionists in purely Mohamedan countries. When travelling in Turkestan I lived with Mohamedans, slept in their houses and tents, ate with them, and generally consorted with them with a freedom that Mohamedans in India would think prejudicial to some vague sense of caste which, theoretically, they are not supposed to have, but which in practice they have absorbed from the atmosphere of Hinduism which they breathe. The Mohamedan, even of Kashmir, is not quite so unrestricted as the Mohamedan of Central Asia. Still, he is a very attractive gentleman, and though not easily found, for nowadays he lives in some pride of seclusion, and in the pestering importunate merchant the visitor sees but a sorry representative of the cla.s.s, yet he is occasionally met with--grave, sedate, polite, and full of interesting conversation, and bearing with him a sense of former greatness when his religion was in the ascendant in the seats of power. These old-fashioned Mohamedan gentlemen have little or no English education, but they have a culture of their own; and among the mullas may be found men of great learning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF THE VILLAGE OF PAHLGAM, LIDAR VALLEY]

Other interesting types of Kashmir Mohamedans are found among the headmen of the picturesque little hamlets along the foot-hills. Here may be seen fine old patriarchal types, just as we picture to ourselves the Israelitish heroes of old. Some, indeed, say, though I must admit without much authority, that these Kashmiris are of the lost tribes of Israel. Only this year there died in the Punjab the founder of a curious sect, who maintained that he was both the Messiah of the Jews and the Mahdi of the Mohamedans; that Christ had never really died upon the Cross, but had been let down and had disappeared, as He had foretold, to seek that which was lost, by which He meant the lost tribes of Israel; and that He had come to Kashmir and was buried in Srinagar. It is a curious theory, and was worked out by this founder of the Quadiani sect in much detail. There resided in Kashmir some 1900 years ago a saint of the name of Yus Asaf, who preached in parables and used many of the same parables as Christ used, as, for instance, the parable of the sower. His tomb is in Srinagar, and the theory of this founder of the Quadiani sect is that Yus Asaf and Jesus are one and the same person.

When the people are in appearance of such a decided Jewish cast it is curious that such a theory should exist; and certainly, as I have said, there are real Biblical types to be seen everywhere in Kashmir, and especially among the upland villages. Here the Israelitish shepherd tending his flocks and herds may any day be seen.

Yet apart from this, the ordinary Kashmiri villager is not an attractive being. Like his house he is dirty, untidy, and slipshod, and both men and women wear the most unbecoming clothing, without either shape, grace, or colour. But the physique of both men and women is excellent. They are of medium height, but compared with the people of India of exceptional muscular strength. The men carry enormous loads. In the days before the cart-road was constructed, they might be seen carrying loads of apples sometimes up to and over 200 lbs. in weight; and the labour they do in the rice-fields is excessively severe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MOUNTAIN FARM-HOUSE]

Good as is their physique, the Kashmiris are, however, for some quite unaccountable reason lamentably lacking in personal courage. A Kashmiri soldier is almost a contradiction in terms. There is not such a thing. They will patiently endure and suffer, but they will not fight. And they are very careful of the truth. As an American once said to me, they set such value on the truth that they very seldom use it.

Their good points are, that they are intelligent and can turn their hands to most things. They are, says Lawrence, excellent cultivators when they are working for themselves. A Kashmiri can weave good woollen cloth, make first-rate baskets, build himself a house, make his own sandals, his own ropes, and a good bargain. He is kind to his wife and children, and divorce scandals or immorality among villagers are rarely heard of.

He is not a cheery individual, like many hillmen in the Himalayas, but he seems to be fond of singing; and dirty as he, his wife, his house and all that belongs to him is, he has one redeeming touch of the aesthetic--all round the village he plants his graves with iris and narcissus. The final conclusion one has, then, is that if only he would wash, if only he would dress his wife in some brighter and cleaner clothes, and if only he would make his house stand upright, then with the good points he already has, and with all Nature to back him, he would make Kashmir literally perfection.

The boatmen, who are the cla.s.s with whom visitors to Kashmir come most intimately into contact, are a separate tribe from the villagers. They are said to claim Noah as their ancestor, and certain it is that if they did not borrow the pattern of their boats from Noah's ark, Noah must have borrowed the pattern from them. They are known as Hanji or Manjis, and live permanently on their boats with their families complete. Some of these boats will carry between six and seven thousand pounds of grain. Others are light pa.s.senger boats. They all have their little cooking place on board, and a gigantic wooden pestle and mortar in which the women pound the rice. Both men and women have extremely fluent and sharp tongues, and have not so far earned the reputation for truthfulness. But they are quick-witted, and can turn their hands to most things, and make themselves useful in a variety of ways.

Besides carrying goods and pa.s.sengers among the numerous waterways of Kashmir, some gather the singhare (water nuts) on the Wular Lake, others work market gardens on the Dal Lake, others fish, and others dredge for driftwood in the rivers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BOATMAN AND HIS FAMILY]

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 n.o.ble 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 aesthetic 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, ca.n.a.ls, statues, or any other such mark by which a people leaves its impress on a country? And is there any literature or history?

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF TEMPLES, w.a.n.gAT, 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 ma.s.sive boldness of their parts, and the happy propriety of their outlines. The ancient Kashmirian architecture, with its n.o.ble fluted pillars, its vast colonnades, its lofty pediments, and its elegant trefoiled arches, is, he thinks, ent.i.tled to be cla.s.sed 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 ma.s.sive 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 ma.s.siveness 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 ma.s.siveness 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 ma.s.sive and enduring a scale. We cannot, for instance, imagine present-day Kashmiris building anything so n.o.ble, 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 a.s.similate that influence and turn it to profitable use for their own ends?

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Graeco-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.

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, rea.s.serted 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."

Pa.s.sing 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.