name Kasyapa-pur was applied to the kingdom of Kashmir when it comprehended great part of the Punjab and extended beyond the Indus. In the 7th century Kashmir is said by the Chinese traveller Hsuan Tsang to have included Kabul and the Punjab, and the hill region of Gandhara, the country of the Gandarae of classical geography.
At an early date the Sanskrit name of the country became Kásmír. The earliest inhabitants, according to the Rajatarangini, were the people called Naga, a word which signifies “snake.” The history shows the prevalence in early times of tree and serpent worship, of which some sculptured stones found in Kashmir still retain the memorials. The town of Islamabad is called also by its ancient name Anant-nag (“eternal snake”). The source of the Jhelum is at Vir-nag (the powerful snake), &c. The other races mentioned as inhabiting this country and the neighbouring hills are Gandhari, Khasa and Daradae. The Khasa people are supposed to have given the name Kasmir. In the Mahabharata the Kasmira and Daradae are named together among the Kshattriya races of northern India. The question whether, in the immigration of the Aryans into India, Kashmir was taken on the way, or entered afterwards by that people after they had reached the Punjab from the north-west, appears to require an answer in favour of the latter view (see vol. ii. of Dr J. Muir’s Sanskrit Texts). The Aryan races of Kashmir and surrounding hills, which have at the present time separate geographical distribution, are given by Mr Drew as Kashmírí (mostly Mahommedan), in the Kashmir basin and a few scattered places outside; Dard (mostly Mahommedan) in Gilgit and hills north of Kashmir; Dogra (Hindu) in Jamma; Dogra (Mahommedan, called Chibāli) in Punch and hill country west of Kashmir; Pahāri or mountaineers (Hindu) in Kishtwar, east of Kashmir, and hills about the valley of the Chenab.
In the time of Asoka, about 245 B.C., one of the Indian Buddhist missions was sent to Kashmir and Gandhara. After his death Brahmanism revived. Then in the time of the three Kushan princes, Huvishḳa, Jushka and Kanishka, who ruled over Kashmir about the beginning of the Christian era, Buddhism was to a great extent restored, though for several centuries the two religions existed together in Kashmir, Hinduism predominating. Yet Kashmir, when Buddhism was gradually losing its hold, continued to send Buddhist teachers to other lands. In this Hindu-Buddhist period, and chiefly between the 5th and 10th centuries of the Christian era, were erected the Hindu temples in Kashmir. In the 6th and 7th centuries Kashmir was visited by some of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India. The country is called Shie-mi in the narrative of To Yeng and Sung Yun (578). One of the Chinese travellers of the next century was for a time an elephant-tamer to the king of Kashmir. Hsuan Tsang spent two years (631-633) in Kashmir (Kia-chí-mí-lo). He entered by Baramula and left by the Pir Panjal pass. He describes the hill-girt valley, and the abundance of flowers and fruits, and he mentions the tradition about the lake. He found in Kashmir many Buddhists as well as Hindus. In the following century the kings of Kashmir appear to have paid homage and tribute to China, though this is not alluded to in the Kashmir chronicle. Hindu kings continued to reign till about 1294, when Udiana Deva was put to death by his Mahommedan vizier, Amir Shah, who ascended the throne under the name of Shams-ud-din.
Of the Mahommedan rulers mentioned in the Sanskrit chronicles, one, who reigned about the close of the 14th century, has made his name prominent by his active opposition to the Hindu religion, and his destruction of temples. This was Sikandar, known as But-shikan, or the “idol-breaker.” It was in his time that India was invaded by Timur, to whom Sikandar made submission and paid tribute. The country fell into the hands of the Moguls in 1588. In the time of Alamgir it passed to Ahmad Shah Durani, on his third invasion of India (1756); and from that time it remained in the hands of Afghans till it was wrested from them by Ranjit Singh, the Sikh monarch of the Punjab, in 1819. Eight Hindu and Sikh governors under Ranjit Singh and his successors were followed by two Mahommedans similarly appointed, the second of whom, Shekh Imam-ud-din, was in charge when the battles of the first Sikh war 1846 brought about new relations between the British Government and the Sikhs.
Gulab Singh, a Dogra Rajput, had from a humble position been raised to high office by Ranjit Singh, who conferred on him the small principality of Jammu. On the final defeat of the Sikhs at Sobraon (February 1846), Gulab Singh was called to take a leading part in arranging conditions of peace. The treaty of Lahore (March 9, 1846) sets forth that, the British Government having demanded, in addition to a certain assignment of territory, a payment of a crore and a half of rupees (112 millions sterling), and the Sikh government being unable to pay the whole, the maharaja (Dhulip Singh) cedes, as equivalent for one crore, the hill country belonging to the Punjab between the Beas and the Indus, including Kashmir and Hazara. The governor-general, Sir Henry Hardinge, considered it expedient to make over Kashmir to the Jammu chief, securing his friendship while the British government was administering the Punjab on behalf of the young maharaja. Gulab Singh was well prepared to make up the payment in default of which Kashmir was ceded to the British; and so, in consideration of his services in restoring peace, his independent sovereignty of the country made over to him was recognized, and he was admitted to a separate treaty. Gulab Singh had already, after several extensions of territory east and west of Jammu, conquered Ladakh (a Buddhist country, and till then subject to Lhasa), and had then annexed Skardo, which was under independent Mahommedan rulers. He had thus by degrees half encircled Kashmir, and by this last addition his possessions attained nearly their present form and extent. Gulab Singh died in 1857, and was succeeded by his son, Ranbir Singh, who died in 1885. The next ruler, Maharaja Partab Singh, G.C.S.I. (b. 1850), immediately on his accession inaugurated the settlement reforms already described. His rule was remarkable for the reassertion of the Kashmir sovereignty over Gilgit (q.v.). Kashmir imperial service troops participated in the Black Mountain expedition of 1891, the Hunza Nagar operations of 1891, and the Tirah campaign of 1897–1898. The total revenue of the state is about £666,000.
See Drew, Jammu and Kashmir (1875); M. A. Stein, Kalhana’s Rajatarangini (1900); W. R. Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir (1895); Colonel A. Durand, The Making of a Frontier (1899); R. Lydekker, “The Geology of the Kashmir and Chamba Territories,” Records of the Geological Survey of India, vol. xxii. (1883); J. Duke, Kashmir Handbook (1903). (T. H. H.*)
KASHMIRI (properly Kāśmīrī), the name of the vernacular language spoken in the valley of Kashmir (properly Kaśmīr) and in the hills adjoining. In the Indian census of 1901 the number of speakers was returned at 1,007,957. By origin it is the most southern member of the Dard group of the Piśāca languages (see Indo-Aryan Languages). The other members of the group are Shīnā, spoken to its north in the country round Gilgit, and Kōhistānī, spoken in the hill country on both sides of the river Indus before it debouches on to the plains of India. The Piśāca languages also include Khōwār, the vernacular of Chitral, and the Kāfir group of speeches, of which the most important is the Bashgali of Kafiristan. Of all these forms of speech Kashmiri is the only one which possesses a literature, or indeed an alphabet. It is also the only one which has been dealt with in the census of India, and it is therefore impossible to give even approximate figures for the numbers of speakers of the others. The whole family occupies the three-sided tract of country between the Hindu-Kush and the north-western frontier of British India.
As explained in Indo-Aryan Languages, the Piśāca languages are Aryan, but are neither Iranian nor Indo-Aryan. They represent the speech of an independent Aryan migration over the Hindu-Kush directly into their present inhospitable seats, where they have developed a phonetic system of their own, while they have retained unchanged forms of extreme antiquity which have long passed out of current use both in Persia and in India. Their speakers appear to have left the main Aryan body after the great fission which resulted in the Indo-Aryan migration, but before all the typical peculiarities of Iranian speech had fully developed. They are thus representatives of a stage of
