40 HISTORY OF CASHMIR. 



return he determined to found a city which should be the capital of his king- 

 ■ dom, and he accordingly constructed the city of Srinagar* on the banks of 



the Vitasta, and embellished it with many palaces and temples ; he also threw 

 a bridge across the river. His being the founder of this city is confirmed by 

 the Mohammedan writers, although, as one of them observes, it has under- 

 gone many vicissitudes since the period of its foundation. Pravaka Sena 

 reigned 63 years. 



a.b The successors of this prince were his son Yudhisht'hir, who reigned thirty- 



186-499 l ■ , J 



nine years and three months, and his son Narendraditya, or Lacshmana,! who 

 ruled thirteen years ; he was succeeded by his younger brother, to whose 

 reign the extravagant period of 300 years is assigned ; an extravagance 

 237—545 the more remarkable, as it is without a parallel in our author's chronology,^ 

 and which must therefore have been suggested, eiiher by a necessity for 

 filling up some dark chasm in the annals of Cashmir, or to compensate for 

 an error in the dates of the preceding monarehs, who may have been placed 

 two or three centuries too soon : both causes may perhaps have united for this 

 extraordinary departure from those bounds of possibility, which in all other 

 reigns have been preserved, i 



The length of Ranaditya's reign is not the only marvel attached to that 

 prince ; he had been in fact, in his former life, a man of dissipated habits, 

 but at last, by his devotion to Bhramaravdsim, a form of Durga, obtained, 

 as a reward, his resuscitation in a royal race, and the goddess herself as a 

 -consort, incarnate as Ranarambha, the daughter ofRATisENA, king of Chola.^ 



* " The city, which in the ancient annals of India was known by the name of Serinaghar, 

 but now by that of the province at large, extends about three miles on each side of the river 

 jelum, over which are four or five wooden bridges." — Forster ii. 9. 



f Jewdishter. Lekhmen. Zebadut. — Abulf'azl. 



X Unlike the early periods of the Persian Chronicles, in which such a term is far from uncom- 

 mon. 



§ The traditions of the South intimate occasional connexions of a like character between the 

 Chola and Cashmir princes. One of the former entitled in one account Sasi Sechara and ia 

 another, Rdjadi Raja Chola was married, it is said, to a daughter of the King of Cashmir. 



