HISTORY OF CASHMIR. 51 



multuous affray having taken place in his capital, between the follow- 

 ers of different deities : the exact nature of it does not satisfactorily ap- 

 pear from the imperfect condition of the manuscripts, but there seems 

 to have been a conflict between a number of Bengali pilgrims, who had 

 come with their prince to Cashmir to visit a temple of Saraswati, and the 

 people of the city : the former had made an image of Parihdsa Hari, j nd bro- 

 ken one of Rama Sivdmi, and to punish the latter act the citizens assailed 

 them : the Bengalis appear to have had the advantage, as the desolated 

 temple of Rama Sivdmi continued to bear witness to their success, and the 

 world was filled with the fame of the exploit : the author of the Wakiat-i- 

 Cashmir calls the king of Gaur, Gosala, without however assigning any 

 authority for the appellation.* 



The death of Lalitaditya was worthy of his active reign : he resolved to 

 explore the uttermost limits of Uttara Guru, the regions inhabited by the fol- 

 lowers of Cuver a, and equally inaccessible to the steps of man, and the rays 

 of the sun :| he accordingly marched northwards, crossing the mountains in- 

 habited by the Ddmaras, whom he describes in a letter to his ministers as a 

 fierce intractable race, lurking in caves and fortified passes, possessed of con- 

 siderable wealth, and equally devoid of government or religion : in the same 

 dispatch he announces the probability of his not returning, for, he observes, 



* The same work speaks of it as a hostile incursion of the Bengalis, and Narain Cul has the same, 

 ascribing that event to the design of revenging the death of their king, who had been invited publicly, 

 and privately put to death by Lalitaditya, one of whose faults, he says, was that of disregarding 

 oaths and agreements : a not uncommon failing in princes of Lalita-ditya's ambition. Bedia-ad-din 

 agrees with the latter author. Ihere may possibly be some connection between this transaction and 

 what is recorded in the Saneara Digvijaya of the reformer Sancara AchArya, who, it is said, visit- 

 ed Cashmir, and in despite of strenuous opposition, seated himself on the throne dedicated to the Mos 

 Learned, in the temple of Saraswatu The place corresponds, so probably does the date : names only 

 may have been changed. 



+ This Hindu Cimmeria is of course the land of fable,but as far as it may be supposed to have a real 

 prototype Uttara Curu seems to imply the northern portion of Russian and Chinese Tartary. The name 

 however appears to have been known nearer home, and to have been applied to the North Eastern por- 

 tion of the Himdla mountains. Ptolemy places in that position a nation called theOttorocoroe amongst 

 mountains of the same name, and Ammianus Marcellinus calls the same mountain Opurocarra. It is not 

 impossible however that they intend the northern part of Asam called Uttaracora, Ullaracola or Ut- 

 iaracul. Lalita'ditya probably perished amongst (he chasms and snows of the Himalaya. 



G2 



