OUTWITTING THE WATER DEMONS OF KASHMIR 



499 



The chaste Rajputnees were trained 

 from childhood to choose death rather 

 than fall into the hands of conquerors; 

 so that wholesale self-destruction and 

 immolation of women was by no means 

 uncommon during" the period of the Mo- 

 hammedan invasion. 



For nearly a hundred years the spot 

 where the awful holocaust took place was 

 shunned. To the Hindus it was sacred, 

 and after the iron door rusted and fell 

 away, the Mohammedans who ventured 

 near declared they were menaced by a 

 demon woman with a two-edged sword. 



Tod, when he was the British official 

 at Udaipur, spoke of having once stood 

 before the open entrance to the rock- 

 hewn vaults under the king's palace. He 

 confessed that "mephitic vapors and ven- 

 omous reptiles did not invite inspection, 



even if official situation had permitted 

 such slights to prejudice." 



The opening has long since been sealed, 

 and is never shown to strangers unless 

 they ask to see it. Golden sunlight now 

 streams over the crumbling steps, and 

 hundreds of peacocks strut about, com- 

 plaining mournfully and roosting at 

 night in the empty palace casements. 



A pair of bronze gates, two alabaster 

 elephants, and the great kettle-drums that 

 used to lead the Chitor kings to battle, 

 were carried off by Emperor Akbar and 

 may be seen in the old Mogul palace at 

 Agra. 



To this day, "By the sack of Chitor" 

 is the sacred oath of the Rajputs of Raj- 

 putana, while the citadel "sits an unveiled 

 widow with face of sorrow, gazing over 

 Mewar." 



OUTWITTING THE WATER DEMONS OF 



KASHMIR 



By Maurice Pratt Dunlap 



With Photographs from the Author 



PICTURE a lake of the clearest 

 water nestling in a green valley and 

 mirroring snow-capped mountains 

 that tower above it to a height of 4,000 

 feet. -You stand in a grove of chenar 

 trees in a garden planned long ago by 

 Mohammedan princes. 



Across the water comes a fleet of boats 

 rowed by dark-skinned men wearing 

 bright turbans, who deftly cleave the sur- 

 face with heart-shaped oars. They are 

 evidently interested in certain objects in 

 the water, and presently you see scores 

 of swimmers making for the beach. 

 They come ashore. There are nearly a 

 hundred of them, and their firm, tawny, 

 well-oiled bodies glisten in the early 

 morning sunlight, as they sink exhausted 

 on the grass after a three-mile swim 

 across the lake. 



Who are these people? They are 

 young men of Kashmir, that queer nook 

 of a kingdom to the north of British 

 India, shut in from all the world by the 

 Himalayas. They are young men from 



good Mohammedan and Hindu families, 

 who were taught for centuries that swim- 

 ming was an ungentlemanly art. Their 

 elders for generations, in twisted oriental 

 logic, argued thus : 



"Aristocratic children should not learn 

 to swim, for if they learn they will often 

 go into the water. If they often go into 

 the water, they run a greater risk of being 

 drowned than those that keep out of the 

 water, because they cannot swim. There- 

 fore they must not learn to swim." 



Why, then, do these young men now 

 swim and enjoy it? Why do they every 

 year save many of their superstitious 

 countrymen from drowning in this land 

 of lakes and rivers? 



THE ARRIVAL OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER 



Over twenty years ago a young Eng- 

 lishman, Dr. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, as- 

 sumed control of the Church Mission 

 School of Kashmir, in Srinagar, which 

 was attended by some 200 young men, 

 many of whom went merely to learn 



