1899.] 
THE KAS'MIR CHRONICLES. 
39 
If the advantages thus accorded to us are duly weighed there 
seems every reason to congratulate ourselves on the fact that the 
earliest and fullest record of Kasmir history that has come down to us 
was written by a scholar of Kalliana’s type. Whatever the short¬ 
comings of his work from a historical point of view may be, we may 
well claim for him the merit that he has provided us with a sound and 
ample basis for the study of the historical geography of his country. 
22. Another point still remains to be considered here in connection 
with Kalhana’s Chronicle, viz., to what extent 
can we accept the Sanskrit forms found in his 
text as the genuine local names of the period. 
This question deserves attention, because the popular language actually 
spoken in Kasmir in Kalhana’s time and for many centuries earlier, 
was not Sanskrit but undoubtedly an Apabhramsa dialect derived from 
it, which has gradually developed into the modern Kasmiri. 
Notwithstanding this circumstance I think that Kalhana’s local 
Sanskrit form of 
local names. 
names can on the whole safely be taken as the genuine designations of 
the localities, i.e ., those originally given to them. My grounds for this 
belief are the following. 
We have ample evidence to show that Sanskrit was the official and 
sole literary language of the country, not only in Kalhana’s own time 
but also in those earlier periods from which the records used by 
him may have dated. This official use of Sanskrit we know to have 
continued in Kasmir even into Muhammadan times. It assures us at 
once that the vast majority of village and town names must from the 
beginning have been given in Sanskrit. A detailed examination of 
Kalhana’s local names will easily demonstrate, on the one hand that 
these names are of genuinely Sanskrit formation, and on the other, 
that their modern Kasmiri representatives are derived from them by a 
regular process of phonetic conversion. We look in vain among this 
class of old local names for any which would show a foreign, i.e., non- 
Aryan origin and might be suspected of having only subsequently been 
pressed into a Sanskritic garb. 
As Sanskrit was used as the language of all official records for 
many centuries previous to Kalhana’s time, the Sanskrit names origin¬ 
ally intended for the great mass of inhabited places could be preserved, 
in official documents anjdiow, without any difficulty or break of tradi¬ 
tion. And from such documents most of Kalhana’s notices of places 
were undoubtedly derived, directly or indirectly. 
Only in rare cases can we suppose that the original form of a local 
name of this kind had been lost sight of, and that accordingly the Chro¬ 
nicler, or his authority, had to fall back on the expedient of sanskriti- 
