1848.] Essay on the Avian Order of Architecture. 243 



shilpina, ?OT fkf^f«r, or " architects," a term which could only have been 

 applied to them on account of their well known skill in building. Even 

 now the Kashmiris are the most expert handicraftsmen of the East ; 

 and it is not difficult to believe that the same people who at present 

 excel all other Orientals as weavers, as gun-smiths, and as calligraphers, 

 must once have been the most eminent of the Indian architects. 



6. Before entering upon any details of the Arian order of archi- 

 tecture, and upon the comparisons naturally suggested between it and 

 some of the classical orders, I will first describe the present state and 

 appearance of the principal buildings that still exist in Kashmir, all of 

 which were accurately measured by myself in November 1847. They 

 are entirely composed of a blue limestone, which is capable of taking 

 the highest polish, a property to which I mainly attribute the present 

 beautiful state of preservation of most of the Kashmirian buildings ; 

 not one of these temples has a name excepting that of Marttand, which 

 is called in the corrupt Kashmirian pronunciation, matan, but they are 

 all known by the general name of Pdndavon-hi-Iari, or " Pandus-hous- 

 es y " a title to which they have no claim whatever, unless indeed the state- 

 ment of Ptolemy can be considered of sufficient authority upon such 

 a subject. He says, (< circa autem Bidaspum Pandovorum regio" — - 

 The kingdom of the Pdndus is upon the Betasta (or Behat), that is, 

 it corresponded with Kashmir. This passage would seem to prove 

 that the Pandavas still inhabited Kashmir so late as the second cen- 

 tury of our era. Granting the correctness of this point, there may be 

 some truth in the universal attribution of the Kashmirian temples to 

 the race of Pandus, for some of these buildings date as high as the end 

 of the 5th century, and there are others that must undoubtedly be 

 much more ancient, perhaps even as old as the beginning of the Chris- 

 tian era. One of them dates from 220 B.C. 



7. Most of the Kashmirian temples are more or less injured, but 

 more particularly those at Wantipur, which are mere heaps of ruins. 

 Speaking of these temples, Trebeck* says, " It is scarcely possible to 

 imagine that the state of ruin to which they have been reduced has 

 been the work of time, or even of man, as their solidity is fully equal 

 to that of the most massive monuments of Egypt ; earthquakes must 

 have been the chief agents in their overthrow." I have quoted this 



* Travels, v. 2— p. 215. 



2 M 2 



