1899.] 
THE KAS'MIR CHRONICLES. 
43 
Persian Tarlkhs. 
24. It is convenient to refer here briefly to the Persian Tariklis 
of Kasmir which to some extent may be looked 
upon as continuing the works of Kalhana and 
his Pandit successors. Unfortunately they furnish no material assistance 
for the study of the old topography of the country. 
All these works give in their initial portion an account of the 
Hindu dynasties which pretends to be translated from the Raja- 
tarangini. Yet the abstract so given is in each case very brief and 
chiefly devoted to a reproduction of the legendary and anecdotal parts 
of Kalhana’s narrative. We thus look in vain in these abstracts for 
the modern equivalents of those local names, the identification of which 
is attended with any difficulty. 
In illustration of this it may be mentioned that even the Tarikh 
of Haidar Malik Cadura (TsadV), 1 which is the earliest work of this 
class accessible to me and the fullest in its account of the Hindu period, 
compresses the narrative of Jayasimha’s reign, filling about two thousand 
verses in the Rajatarangini, into two quarto pages. Of the localities 
mentioned in the original account of this reign not a single one is 
indicated by the Muhammadan Chronicler. 
The later works which all belong to the 18th or the present 
century, are still more reticent on the Hindu period and seem to have 
largely copied Haidar Malik’s abstract. Taking into account the endless 
corruptions to which local names written in Persian characters are 
exposed, it will be readily understood why reference to these texts 
on points of topographical interest yields only in the rarest cases some 
tangible result. 
25. It is a fortunate circumstance that several of the older Kasmir 
poets whose works have been preserved for us, 
have had the good sense to let us know some¬ 
thing about their own persons and homes. The topographical details 
which can be gleaned from these authors, though comparatively few in 
number, are yet of distinct value. They enable us to check by independ¬ 
ent evidence Kalhana’s local nomenclature, and in some instances 
acquaint us with localities of which we find no notice in the Chronicles. 
The first and most helpful of these Kasmirian authors is the well- 
known polyhistor Ksemendra. His works, composed in the second and 
third quarter of the 11th century, form important landmarks in various 
fields of Indian literature. Ksemendra seems to have felt a genuine 
Kasmir poets. 
1 Written a.h. 1027, i.e., a.d. 1617, in the twelfth year of Jahangir’s reign. 
Haidar Malik takes his epithet Cadura, recte Tsad^r, from the Kasmir village of that 
name situated in the Nagam Pargana, some 10 miles south of S'rlnagar, close to the 
village of Yah^tdr. 
