266 Some Account of the Rishis or Hermits of Kashmir. [No. 4, 



Budhistie schism. The said tomb, however, is probably that of 

 some more modern recluse. 



Deeply imbued with the qufism of the age and country from 

 which they emigrated, these Sayyids and their followers seem to 

 have imported into Kashmir the doctrines of the ShVah sect, 

 and with them that tendency to mysticism and miracle making, 

 so characteristic of the sect : perhaps also shocked at the 

 tyranny and self-assertion of Timur Lang (Tamerlane), at 

 that time dominant in Central Asia, they may have sought 

 refuge in the regions of abstract thought as a solace for the 

 worldly repression under which they laboured. Be it observed that 

 the human mind has ever tended towards mysticism and solitude 

 at times when tyrants flourished, and in the present case, no doubt, 

 the wrath of Timur had been aroused against these Sayyids, who 

 perhaps may have attempted to usurp an independence of act 

 and speech displeasing to a barbarous oriental conqueror. 



Be this as it may, they and their disciples appear to have found 

 in Kashmir an apt soil in which to transplant their religious dogmas ; 

 and in the succeeding years the remarkable sect of which I am 

 about to attempt some short account arose from amidst them.* 



At page 6 of my " Sketch of the Muhammadan History of Kashmir" 

 published in the Society's Journal, September, 1854, I alluded to the 

 Historian Muhammad 'Azim as the chief authority for the chro- 

 nicles of this sect. They are also described in the pages of Firishtah 

 and Abul Fazl as a very respectable order in their time (A. D. 

 1600), some 2,000 in number, abstaining from luxury and sexual 

 intercourse, living on berries and the wild fruits of the mountains, 

 in the remote corners of which many of them had taken up their 

 abodes for purposes of meditation and seclusion. In some instan- 

 ces they had constructed shrines or zidrats, many of which remain 

 to this day, attesting in their traditions their founders' austerities 

 and virtues, and forming local schools of holy men or priests, whose 

 influence on the whole has been beneficial to the people, as pro- 

 mulgating the principles of humanity and moral virtues, as contra- 



* The Tnzuk i Jahangiri also contains many facts deserving of attention 

 regarding Kashmir hermits ; but I have not consulted it in drawing up this 

 paper. 



