KASHMIR. 287 



duced by natural or artificial causes whether due to 

 Fate or to a short-sighted desire for land the disap- 

 pearance of the lake and the desiccation of the valley, 

 which tradition assigns to the year 266 B.C., must 

 have wrought a great change in. their circumstances, 

 associated as it was with the increase of the warlike 

 mountain-tribes around. Gradually the valley-plain 

 would afford a more fertile and easily worked soil 

 than the slopes of the mountains, which were soon 

 forsaken for it. The primitive serpent-worship and 

 the natural Vedic religion would be affected by the 

 evil Brahminism of the plains of India; and this, 

 again, had to struggle against the rising influence of 

 Biidhism, which is unfavourable to warlike qualities. 

 Tartar chiefs began to dispute the kingdom with 

 Hindu dynasties ; fierce mountaineers in the Hindu 

 Kiish would greedily listen to rumours about the 

 terrestrial paradise ; and there would be the com- 

 mencement of that state of hopeless vassalage which 

 has condemned the Kashmiri to centuries of misery, 

 and developed in his character its falsity and feeble- 

 ness. Nothing more definite can be discerned of that 

 early period except that the Kashmiris were a brave 

 and warlike people ; and that, even then, its women 

 were famous for their beauty, as illustrated by the 

 legend of the two angels Harat and Marat, who were 

 sent on earth by God to reform men by their example, 

 but were ensnared by the beauty of a fair Kashmiri. 

 Other countries are not without stories of the kind ; 



