20 
ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF KAS'MIR. 
[Extra No. 2, 
pilgrimages, however, of Chinese Buddhists to India continued during 
the next two centuries, and of one at least of these pilgrim parties it is 
recorded that it took the route throughKasmir. 1 But no detailed account 
bearing on Kasmir has yet come to light of these later pilgrimages. 
Section III.— Muhammadan notices. 
Kasmir closed to 
Arab geographers. 
12. After the Greeks and the Chinese the early Muhammadan 
writers are our next foreign informants regard¬ 
ing the historical geography of India. If with 
one very remarkable exception they have 
nothing to tell us of Kasmir topography, the explanation is not far to 
seek. The first rush of Arab invasion in the Indus Valley duriug the 
eighth century had carried the Muhammadan arms at times close enough 
to the confines of Kasmir. 2 No permanent conquest, however, had been 
effected even in the plains of the Northern Panjab. Protected in the 
West by the unbroken resistance of the S'ahis of Kabul and in the South 
by a belt of war-like Hindu hill-states, Kasmir had never been seriously 
threatened. Even when Islam at last after a long struggle victoriously 
over-spread the whole of Northern India, Kasmir behind its mountain 
ramparts remained safe for centuries longer. 
Conquest and trade were the factors which brought so large a part 
of the ancient world within the ken of the early Muhammadan travel¬ 
lers and geographers. Both failed them equally in the case of Kasmir. 
For a classical witness shows us that a system of seclusion,—ever easy 
to maintain in a country so well guarded by nature as Kasmir,—hermeti¬ 
cally sealed at that time the Valley to all foreigners without exception. 
Even the well-informed Al-Mas‘udi who had personally visited the 
Indus Valley, is unable to tell us more about Kasmir than that it is a 
kingdom with many towns and villages enclosed by very high and 
inaccessible mountains, through which leads a single passage closed by a 
gate. 3 The notices we find in the works of Al-Qazwini and Al-Idrisi 
are practically restricted to the same brief statement. The references 
in other geographical works are even more succinct and vague. 4 
1 Compare Yule, Cathay , p. lxxi., and Julien, Journal astat., 1847, p. 43. 
2 See Reinaud, Mdmoire sur VInde, pp. 195 sq.; Alberuni, India, i. p. 21. 
* See Al-Mas l udVs “ Meadows of Gold,” transl. Sprenger, I. p. 382. 
4 The silence of the early Muhammadan geographers as regards Kasmir was 
duly noticed by Ritter, Asia, ii. p. 1115.—For Al-Qazwir.T, see Gildemeister, 
De rebus Indicis, p 210 ; for Al-Tdrisi, Elliot, History of India, i. pp. 90. sq. 
For the notices of other Arab geographers, see Bibliotheca geographorum 
