29 HISTORY OF CASHMIR. 



whose expulsion the king obtained from Siva a pious and valiant son, as a 

 reward for the austerities he had practised, * 



Jaloca, the son and successor of Asoca, was a prince of great prowess : 

 he overcame the assertors of the Bauddha heresies, and quickly expelled 

 the Mlech'has from the country, thence named Ujjhita di'mb'a : he then 

 carried his victorious arms to foreign regions, and amongst others to the 

 North of Persia, which he subjugated in the reign of Darab,\ and then pro- 

 ceeding- in an opposite direction he subdued the country of Canouj. 



The conquest of Canyacubja by this prince, is connected with an event 

 not improbable in itself, and which possibly marks the introduction of the 

 Brahmanical creed, in its more perfect form, into this kingdom. Jaloca is 

 said to have adopted thence the distinction of casts, and the practices which 



* The faith of Asoca is a matter of very little moment, as the prince himself is possibly an 

 ideal personage : as however the comparative antiquity of the Bauddha and Brahmanical creeds 

 in Cashmir has been supposed to be affected by it, and the events subsequently recorded, it may 

 be adviseable to give the passages of the original, which shew that Asoca was a worshipper 

 of Siva : it is not improbable however, if we are to attach credit to any part of this portion of 

 the Cashmirian history, that he permitted heretical, possibly Bauddha doctrines, to be introduc- 

 ed into the kingdom during his reign from his Tartar neighbours. 



" Then the prince Asoca, the lover of truth, obtained the earth ; who sinning in subdued af- 

 fections, produced the Jina Sasana." This may mean possibly something very different from the 

 received idea, and may imply his neglect of affairs of state through excess of devotion, and his 

 consequently omitting to prevent the intrusion of a foreign power, rather than a foreign faith, 

 into the kingdom, the expulsion of which was the object of his son's birth. 



" The country being overspread with Mlech'has, the king for their expulsion obtained from 

 Bhutisa (Siva as the Lord of the elements) pleased with his Tapas, an excellent son." — Dr. 

 Buchanan has made a strange misquotation from Abulfazl; (A. 11. vi.165.) He calls Asoca 

 Haja Jennet, and says he established in his reign the Brahmany rites, instead of abolished them as 

 it occurs in the Ay in Acberi ; an error which justly drew down the angry censures of the Orien- 

 tal Critics in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1802, and the Asiatic Annual Register of the 

 same yearj the Mlectihas might have been Scythians or Tartars. See the observations on the 

 Tartar princes. 



f Bedia-ad-din. 



