J899.] 
CHINESE RECORDS. 
15 
exactly in the position of the present Srinagar. There he was lodged in 
the convent known as the Jayendravihara which is named also in the 
Rajataraiigini. 1 A two years’ stay, though chiefly passed in the study of 
‘ the Sutras and S'astras’, must have enabled Hiuen Tsiang to acquaint 
himself thoroughly with the Yalley. 
His description of the kingdom Kia-shi-mi-lo shows clearly that 
the geographical application of the term Kasmlr must have been then, 
exactly as now, restricted to the great basin of the Yitasta and the 
side valleys drained by its tributaries above the Baramula defile. He 
notices that the country is enclosed on all sides by mountains which 
are very high. “ Although the mountains have passes through them, 
these are narrow and contracted.” These natural bulwarks protected 
the country from neighbouring states ‘ which had never succeeded in 
subduing it.’ Though the climate is cold and the snow plentiful, the 
soil is fertile and abounds with fruits and flowers. The inhabitants 
seem to have changed as little as the soil since Hiuen Tsiang’s days. It 
is still easy to recognize in them the people whom he describes as “ light 
and frivolous, and of a weak, pusillanimous disposition. The people 
are handsome in appearance, but they are given to cunning. They love 
learning and are well-instructed.” 
“ Since centuries learning had been held in great respect in this 
kingdom.” Hiuen Tsiang dwells with evident pleasure on the re¬ 
collection of the learned conferences he had with the Kasmlr doctors 
of the sacred law. 2 Kasmlr had in earlier times played a great part in 
the traditions of the Buddhist church. Hiuen Tsiang relates at length 
the legends how the Arhat Madhyantika had first spread the law of 
Buddha in the land ; how in the time of Asoka the five hundred Arhats 
had taken up their abode there ; and how finally under the great 
Kaniska, king of Gandhara, Kasmlr had been the scene of the universal 
Council which fixed and expounded the Sacred Canon. Yet he observes 
that in his own time the kingdom ns a whole was “ not much given 
to the faith, and that the temples of the heretics were their sole 
thought.” 3 
It is probably owing to this not very flourishing condition of con¬ 
temporary Buddhism that Hiuen Tsiang mentions only a comparatively 
small number of Viharas and Stupas in the Yalley. Among the Stupas 
there were four ascribed to Asoka. Beneath another Kaniska was 
believed to have deposited the canonical texts as fixed by his Council, 
engraved on sheets of copper. None of these structures have yet been 
1 Compare note iii. 355. 
* See Life, p. 71 sq. 
8 See Si-yio-ki , i. p. 158. 
