Page:The English Historical Review Volume 20.djvu/642

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634
CHINA AND THE ANCIENT CABUL VALLEY
Oct.

One of them, named Tao-lin, went the reverse way from Cashmere to Udyâna and Kapiça. None of them speak of Ki-pin, which had thus been split up into at least two large states, Cashmere and Kapiça. The name Cashmere had to be officially recognised, because the king was able to interfere in Chinese politics, whereas Kapiça was merely a haunt of peripatetic Chinese bonzes. The Chinese principle has been never to recognise new state names until the de facto ruler sues for fresh recognition.

From 900 to 960 China herself once more broke up, and, apart from minor Tartar and Chinese local rulers, a succession of ephemeral dynasties with a strong Turkish strain in their blood held sway over the imperial or central part of China. In 937 the Magadha-S'râvastî state (Bahar) sent a bonze; and in 940 the state of Kasyamit'o (probably intended for Kasyamilo or Kas'mira) sent another by sea with a Buddha's tooth; both these priests had the well-known Hindoo prefix S'ri, or 'lucky,' attached to their names.[1] In 960 the highly literary native dynasty of Sung for the third time reunited most of China; but the first emperor was conservative in his political ideas, and would have nothing to do with the foreign regions of the south-west (Yün Nan, Magadha, &c.) In 966, however, Chinese bonzes were sent to collect books in India, and they passed through Pu-lu-sha (Peshawur) and Kia-shih-mi-lo (Cashmere).

For three centuries nothing is heard of Cashmere; certain Hindoo bonzes described and the historians record Udyâna as belonging to North India, and they add that Gandhâra lay twelve days' journey further west, beyond which again lay Nâgarahâra, Lampâ, &c. (in the Cabul region). Fâ-hien (Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms) had many centuries before this travelled westwards from Peshawur to Nâgara (in the Jelalabad region). Hüan-tsang (630–5) had found Lampâ (or Lamghân) under the suzerainty of Kapiça. In 1221–2 Genghis Khan and his generals took Ghazni, Jelalabad, and Beruan (north of Cabul). It is not, however, until the time of Mangu Khan, when the Mongols were in process of assimilating both China and the west, that Cashmere is again specifically mentioned: in 1253 an expedition was sent against K'ê-shih-mi-r and Hên-tu-sz-tan. But a distinguished Cashmerian (K'ia-sya-mi-r) family, of the family name K'a-nai, had already heard of Genghis Khan's exploits (before 1227); two brothers of this family were well received by Ogdai Khan (1229–1246); Gayuk Khan (1246–1251) gave one of them a local charge, and Mangu made him military governor of Cashmere. The other, whose 'name' was Nama (i.e. probably Master of Namah, or 'instructor '), was given authority by Mangu over all the Buddhists and

  1. For the period 907–60 we refer to the old Wu-tai Shï (Tsin dynasty), published c. 975, ch. 76, p. 6; and for those 960–1126 and 1127–1279 to the Sung Shï, published c. 1350.