CHAPTER XLIII.

THE UPPER JHELAM.

KASHMIR BOATS

PÁNDRATHAN

HUNTING

DOGS BIJBEHARA ANALYSIS OF ITS POPULATION -POPULATION OF KASHMIR FISH ISLAMABAD -CROCUS PLANTS-JEHÁNGÍR'S HUMOUR— A KHIVA HORSE - BHÚMJÚ CAVES GENERAL CUNNINGHAM'S

DUTY.

THERE are several very beautiful or striking places about the sources of the Jhelam which no visitor to Kashmír should omit to see. Islamabad can be reached in two days by boat, if the river is not in flood; and the mat awning of the boats lets down close to the gunwale, so as to form a comfortable closed apartment for night. In late autumn, at least, the waters of the valley are so warm, as compared with the evening and night air, that towards afternoon an extraordinary amount of steam begins to rise from them. But the air is exceedingly dry notwithstanding the immense amount of water in the valley, and the frequent showers of rain which fall; and there is very little wind in Kashmir, which is an immense comfort, especially for dwellers in tents.

At Pándrathan, not far up the Jhelam from Srinagar, we came upon the site of an ancient capital of the

Kashmir valley, and on a very ruinous old temple situated in the middle of a tank, or rather pond. The name of this place affords an excellent example of the present state of our knowledge of Kashmír antiquities; Dr Ince, Captain Bates, and Lieut. Cole, following General Cunningham, deriving it from Puranadhisthana, or "the old chief city"—while Dr Elmslie, adopting its Kashmír sound Pandrenton, derives it from Darendun and his five sons the famous Pandús. Hügel, again, made the mistake of calling it a Búdhist temple, though it is clearly Hindú, and associated with the Naga or snake worship. The water round this temple makes an examination of the interior difficult; but Captain Bates says that the roof is covered with sculpture of such purely classic design, that any uninitiated person who saw it on paper would at once take it for a sketch from a Greek or Roman original. This suggests actual Greek influence; and Cunningham says, in connection with the fluted columns, porches, and pediments of Mártand," I feel convinced myself that several of the Kashmírían forms, and many of the details, were borrowed from the temples of the Kabulian Greeks, while the arrangements of the interior and the relative proportions of the different parts were of Hindú origin." It is not improbable, however, that these Kashmir ruins may have belonged to an earlier age, and have had an influence upon Greek architecture instead of having been influenced by it; but, be that as it may, this beautiful little temple, with its profusion of decoration, and grey with antiquity, stands alone, a curious remnant of a lost city and a bygone age-the city, according to tradition, having been burned by king Abhimanu in the tenth century of the Christian era.

Camping for the night some way above this, and on the opposite side of the river, I saw some magnificent hunting-dogs of the Maharaja, which bounded on their chains, and could hardly be held by their keepers on the appearance of an unaccustomed figure. They were longer and higher than Tibetan mastiffs, and had some resemblance in hair and shape to Newfoundlands, but were mostly of a brown and yellow colour. The men in charge said these dogs were used for hunting down large game, especially leopards and wolves, and they were certainly formidable creatures; but the ordinary dogs of Kashmír are very poor animals, even excluding the pariahs. Bates says that the wild dog exists in some parts of this country, as Lár and Maru Wardwan, hunts in packs, and, when pressed by hunger, will destroy children, and even grown persons.

At Bijbehara, immediately above which the Jhelam begins to narrow considerably, there is one of those numerous and exquisitely picturesque-looking Kashmir bridges, resting on large square supports formed of logs of wood laid transversely, with trees. growing out of them and overshadowing the bridge itself. This town has 400 houses; and the following analysis, given by Captain Bates, of the inhabitants of these houses, affords a very fair idea of the occupations of a Kashmir town or large village: Mohammedan zemindars or proprietors, 80 houses; Mohammedan shopkeepers, 65; Hindú shopkeepers, 15; Brahmans, 8; pundits, 20; goldsmiths, 10; bakers, 5; washermen, 5; cloth-weavers, 9; blacksmiths, 5; carpenters, 4; toy-makers, 1; surgeons (query phlebotomists), 2; physicians, 3; leather-workers, 5; milk-sellers, 7; cow-keepers, 2; fishermen, 10; fishsellers, 7; butchers, 8; musicians, 2; carpet-makers,

2; blanket-makers, 3; Syud (descendant of the prophet), 1; Múllas (Mohammedan clergymen), 12; Pir Zadas (saints!), 40; Fakírs, 20. It will thus be seen that about a fourth of the 400 houses are occupied by the socalled ministers of religion; and that the landed gentry are almost all Mohammedan, though the people of that religion complain of their diminished position under the present Hindú (Sikh) Raj in Kashmír. For these 400 houses there are 10 mosques, besides 8 smaller shrines, and several Hindú temples, yet the Kashmírís are far from being a religious people as compared with the races of India generally. Let us consider how an English village of 4000 or 6000 people would flourish if it were burdened in this way by a fourth of its population being ministers of religion, and in great part ruffians without family ties.

It is a very rough and uncertain calculation which sets down the population of Kashmír at half a million. The whole population of the dominions of the Maharaja is said to be a million and a half, but that includes Jamú, which is much more populous than the valley. Captain Bates says that the estimate of the Maharaja's Government, founded on a partial census taken in 1869, gave only 475,000; but that is better than the population of the year 1835, when oppression, pestilence, and famine had reduced it so low as 200,000. It is, however, not for want of producing that the population is small; for, according to the same authority, "it is said that every woman has, at an average, ten to fourteen children." I do not quite understand this kind of average; but it seems to mean that, on an average, every woman has twelve children. That shows a prodigious fecundity, and is the more remarkable when we

learn that the proportion of men to women is as three to one. This disproportion is produced by the infamous export of young girls to which I have already alluded; and it is impossible that such a traffic could be carried on without the connivance of the Government, or, at least, of a very large number of the Government officials. Dr Elmslie's estimate of the population of Kashmír, including the surrounding countries and the inhabitants of the mountains, was 402,700-of these 75,000 being Hindús, 312,700 being Súní Mohammedans, and 15,000 Shías. His estimate of the population of Srinagar was 127,000; but the census of the Government in 1869, gave 135,000 for that city.

At night our boatmen used to catch fish by holding a light over the water in shallow places and transfixing the fish with short spears. So plentiful are these creatures, that between two and three dozen were caught in about half an hour, and many of them above a pound weight. I cannot say much of them, however, as articles of diet. The flesh was insipid and soft as putty, and they were as full of bones as a serpent. Vigne acutely observed that the common Himálayan trout varies so much in colour and appearance, according to its age, season, and feeding-ground, that the Kashmírís have no difficulty in making out that there are several species of it instead of one. Bates mentions eleven kinds of fish as existent in the waters of Kashmír; but, with one exception, all the fish I had the fortune to see seemed of one species, and were the same in appearance as those which abound in prodigious quantities in the sacred tanks and the ponds in the gardens of the Mogul emperors. The exception was a large fish, of which my servants partook on our way to the Wúlar Lake,