128 THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR
through the gorge three miles below Baramula. The constricted passage gets blocked with boulders, and both Suyyaand our present engineers saw that this obstruction must be removed. But while Major de Lotbiniére 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 dis- astrous 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 expeditions, in the historian’s words, “to revive the tradition of the conquest of the world.” The practical result does not appear to”
