Kashmir

“ I commit myself to God's keeping; may He graciously spare me to be a help and comfort to that dear mother who has done so much on my account, and who now loves me as no earthly being can. May I be spared to labour for Christ in poor unhappy Kashmir! May God's rich blessing rest on my work. May He hear our prayers for the political and spiritual emancipation of that unhappy country. Oh that the spiritual darkness and tyranny and oppression which prevail in Kashmir were dispersed,–that God would raise Him up a people to praise Him there,–a people made free by the truth! ”

“ Akbar himself went twice into Kashmir. Those who have been fortunate enough to see the indescribable beauties of its lakes, its trees, its mountains, can imagine how it must have appealed to a man of his nature.
Sinde and Kandahâr followed Kashmir swiftly into the wide net of Moghul influence, and took their places quietly in the emperor's Dream of Empire. Kâbul followed in its turn. ”

“ This Kashmir is a veritable heaven on earth. Nowhere else in the world is such a country as this. Mountains and rivers, trees and plants, men and women, beasts and birds — all vie with one another for excellence. ”

“ The little Kashmiri boys, with their great eyes and long lashes, were charming creatures, fine products of an old race and an old civilization, purest Aryans of all these people; but the bearded Sikhs despise the Kashmiri only a little less than they despise the Bengali. The gentle, esthetic Kashmiri is not a fighting man, and there are thousands of pure and mixed Kashmir weavers and embroiderers long resident in Amritsar who still quail before the giant Sikhs. ”

“ One of the chiefest charms of Kashmir, and one which is apt to be overlooked, is the entirely unspoilt freshness of its scenery. No locust horde of personally-conducted “trippers” pollutes its ways and byways, nor has the khansamah of the dâk bungalow as yet felt constrained to add sauerkraut and German sausage to his bill of fare—for which Allah be praised!
The world is growing very small, and the globe-trotter rushes round it in eighty days. ”

“ Although the chief beauty of the valley of Kashmir is undoubtedly the magnificent girdle of snowy mountains by which it is surrounded, the orchards and gardens, which are still numerous in the neighbourhood of the capital, are charming spots, and the more so from the contrast which they present with the barrenness of the surrounding country, and the absolute ugliness of the swamps in the centre of the valley. ”

“ Yet numbers of Kashmiris do prefer India to their own lovely land, simply because in India every man can live and be his own master, whatever else he has to put up with. But few are the happy men who can get away. A few are allowed to go into India, if they leave their wives and families behind as a guarantee for their speedy return, but only a few. As I was leaving Kashmir, two or three of these shawl weavers smuggled themselves out of the country as my coolies. ”

“ Kashmir, loveliest spot on earth, I owe thee a deep debt of gratitude, I came to thee weak in body; thou hast restored my strength, I was poor in thought; thou hast filled my heart with good things, I was proud in conceit; thou hast shown me nature's grandeur and my own littleness. With a voiceless tongue thou hast spoken and my spirit has heard the unuttered words. Tales of the creation when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy; tales of man and his works perished in the endless roll of ages ”

“ The fair valley of Kashmir lay drowsing in the August sunshine—a strip of green and gold nestling amid a waste of rocky mountains. All around rose the great hills, bare and sun-scorched for the most part towards the west and south—at which point enters the main road from India—but to the east draped with heavy mantles of fir and towering pine; far away, a glittering rampart of eternal snow and ice, the great mass of the Himalayas barred the way to the north, its jagged peaks and saw-like ridges fretting the deep cloudless blue of the sky. ”

“ If you compare one of the men of Kashmir, in Northern India, with your best Caucasian type, you will find they closely resemble the one the other, evidently replicas of the same type. I choose the man of Kashmir especially, because he is fair of skin, owing to his living in a temperate clime, and because from the shutting in of his land from communication with other countries, due to the difficulty of reaching his fellows—owing to that the type has been kept purer there than probably anywhere else upon earth. ”

“ Man, among these enormous mountains, presents not less notably than inanimate Nature a singular compound of change and solidity, of the catastrophic and the secular. The little state of Kashmir, overrun from time immemorial, in peace or war, by hordes of many races and tongues, preserves a language and a physiognomy of its own. ”

“ We Visit Kashmir
“You are strong enough now to travel. I will accompany you to Kashmir,” Sri Yukteswar informed me two days after my miraculous recovery from Asiatic cholera.
That evening our party of six entrained for the north. Our first leisurely stop was at Simla, a queenly city resting on the throne of Himalayan hills. We strolled over the steep streets, admiring the magnificent views. ”

“ Knight found Kashmir the "safest land he had ever seen or heard of"—one of the few countries, indeed, in which it is possible for a lady to travel without escort in a perfectly unconventional way.
"Every summer English ladies wander about Kashmir alone, taking their caravans of native servants, baggage animals, and coolies, pitching their tents at night, and riding the stages in the same independent fashion as their brothers and husbands would." ”

“ Of our Indian forces the most likeable and attractive were the Kashmiris, whom the patriot Rajah of Kashmir has given to the India Government. Recruited from the mountains of Nepal—for the native of Kashmir is no soldier—they meet one everywhere with their eager smiling faces. In hospital they are always professing to a recovery from fever that their pallid faces and enlarged spleens belie, and they take not kindly to any suggestion of invaliding.
These battalions of Kashmir Rifles, the Baluchis and the King's African Rifles have done more dirty bush fighting than any troops in this campaign. ”

“ Westwards from this the boundary of Kashmir and Chinese Turkestan runs for 350 miles (omitting curves) through a desolate upland lying well to the north of the Muztagh-Karakoram range. Finally in the north-east corner of Kashmir the frontier impinges on the great Central Asian axis of the Kuenlun. From this point it turns southwards and separates Chinese Tibet from the salt Lingzi Thang plains and the Indus valley in Kashmir, and the eastern part of the native state of Bashahr, which physically form a portion of Tibet. ”

“ Ordinarily it maintains 8,500 horse. It is very difficult to enter Kashmir. The routes by Bhimbhar39 and Paklī are the best. Though that by Bhimbhar is the shorter, yet if one wishes to find spring in Kashmir, he is confined to the road by Paklī, for the other roads at this season are blocked with snow. If one were to take to praise Kashmir, whole books would have to be written. Accordingly a mere summary will be recorded.
Kashmir is a garden40 of eternal spring, or an iron fort to a palace of kings—a delightful flower-bed, and a heart-expanding heritage for dervishes. ”

“ The valley of Kashmir, properly so called, remains, as in the seventeenth century, the largest and the most beautiful bit of landscape-gardening in the world, a park thirty leagues by ten or twelve. Everything in it seems planned with supernatural ingenuity to delight the eye—fields, orchards, dwellings, rivers and lakes sprinkled with green and flowery islets and ploughed by boats of varied form and size navigated by hanjis (boatmen) whose intelligent countenances, sculpturesque figures and graceful costumes harmonize admirably with the enchanting scenery ”

“ The town of Kashmir is apparently of great extent, and seems very densely populated. Its length is much greater than its width, as it is hemmed in between the Jelam on the south and a lake on the north. The principal part of the town is on the north side of the Jelam, but a large suburb occupies the opposite bank, surrounding the Sher-Garhi, or fortified palace of the ruler of the country. The streets are in general so narrow, that there are but few through which an elephant can pass ”

“ Indeed, I have given strict orders that whatever we of the medical mission may either see or hear with respect to the government of this country, we are not to speak about the matter in our dealings with the natives. Of all things in Kashmir, truth is the scarcest, so that one has to be continually on his guard as to what he believes. In Kashmir, I only believe what I see, and sometimes hardly that. The Diwan's messenger, having heard my version of the affair, took his departure.
"29th May.–The Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Yeates of Moultan, and Captain Lewin of Amritsar, came to see our operations. ”

“ Informing those views you should remember that the Government of India has no desire to turn Kashmir into the semblance of a British district, or to place all administrative posts in the hands of Panjabi foreigners. The want of good native officials makes it necessary to import some trained men from the outside, but the men so imported should be kept as low as possible, and your object should be to form with their help a class of Kashmiri officials who will be capable hereafter of administering the State themselves. ”

“ It is true that in literature some few names hover doubtfully about the eighth century, and that round the outskirts of India, in Kashmir, Nepaul, Madras, Ceylon, we hear every now and again of events which arrest the attention for a moment. The reassertion of Chinese influence along the northern borderland, though brief, was noteworthy, and in Kashmir the names of several kings and one queen stand out from the general posse. ”

“ KASHMIR, or Cashmere, a native state of India, including much of the Himalayan mountain system to the north of the Punjab. It has been fabled in song for its beauty (e.g. in Moore’s Lalla Rookh) , and is the chief health resort for Europeans in India, while politically it is important as guarding one of the approaches to India on the north-west frontier. The proper name of the state is Jammu and Kashmir, and it comprises in all an estimated area of 80,900 sq. ”

“ The Hindus are mostly found in Jammu, and the Buddhists are confined to Ladakh. In Kashmir proper the few Hindus (60,682) are almost all Brahmans, known as Pundits. Superstition has made the Kashmiri timid; tyranny has made him a liar; while physical disasters have made him selfish and pessimistic. Up to recent times the cultivator lived under a system of begar, which entitled an official to take either labour or commodities free of payment from the villages. ”

“ Kashmir, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful and fertile valleys in the world, measuring more than one hundred miles in one direction and more than seventy in another, without any ridges or interruptions of any sort, and capable of maintaining a large population on one vast, unbroken, fertile plain. ”

“ But there are other things in Kashmir to please besides the scenery. The people are certainly a peculiarly fine race. The men strong and handsome, capable of carrying with ease a maund, or even more, for fifteen miles over steep difficult hills, with such sturdy limbs as contrast almost ridiculously with the long thin tight-trousered legs of the Sikh soldiery. They really are, too, a most ingenious and clever and tasteful people. ”

“ On all sides bands will be formed, who, the less they find within the boundaries of Kashmir, so much the more will they carry fire and sword among my people to repay themselves for what they have lost at home. And now I say, without circumlocution, and once for all, that I will not tolerate it. My kingdom and my people shall be respected; and if force is required, whatever trouble or treasure it may cost, I will again assemble my armies and march to the north to re-establish the peace that is necessary to the prosperity of my subjects. ”

“ When the harvest is ripe the peasant reaps it at his own good time, and not a soldier ever enters the villages.” In consequence of this improvement in their conditions of life and of the influx of wealth into the country brought by visitors, the Kashmiri grows every year in material prosperity and independence of character. The Kashmir women have a reputation for beauty which is not altogether deserved, but the children are always pretty.
The language spoken in Kashmir is akin to that of the Punjab, though marked by many peculiarities. ”

“ You agree with me, I am sure, that only Kashmir and perhaps one or two other places can be more beautiful than this.”
“Yes. I fully agree. Yet it misses something which permeates India in places far less beautiful. It lacks atmosphere. Just as the fallen leaves of a forest make up a rich soil in which all growth is luxuriant, so the dead ancientry of India makes earth and air rich with memory and tradition—and more. You can’t get it in these new countries.” ”

“ The province or country of Kashmir consists of an extensive plain, surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains. It is the valley of the river Behat, or Jelam, which is separated from that of the Chenab on the south, by rugged and often snowy ranges, and from the basin of the Indus on the north, by the main axis of the Western Himalaya, which, originating in the peaks of Kailas, separates the 278 basins of the Sutlej and the Chenab from that of the Indus. The mountains which surround the plain of Kashmir are very lofty. ”