52 
ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF KAS'MIR. 
[Extra No. 2, 
As but very few of the priests have enough knowledge of Sanskrit 
to follow the text intelligently, these translations are more or less 
]earned by heart. Often as my manuscripts show, interlinear Kasmiri 
glosses are resorted to in order to assist the reader’s memory. 
These local priests known now in Kasmir as thdn a pat l (Skr. sthana- 
pati), are as a rule quite as ignorant and grasping as their confreres, 
the Pujaris, Bhojkis, etc., of India proper. They are held deservedly 
in very low estimation by the rest of the Brahman community. That 
their condition was more or less the same in earlier times too, though 
their influence and numbers may have been greater, can be safely con¬ 
cluded from more than one ironical allusion of Kalhana. 1 These are 
the people to whose keeping the Mahatmya texts have always been 
entrusted. Their peculiar position and calling explain, I think, most 
of the curious changes which the latter have undergone. 
Tenacious as local worship is, there is the evidence of concrete 
cases to show that not only the route of pilgrimage, but the very site of 
a Tlrtha has sometimes been changed in comparatively recent times. 
In proof of this it will suffice to refer to the detailed account I have 
given of the transfers that have taken place in the case of the ancient 
Tirthas of Bhedd and Sarada . 2 Minor modifications must naturally have 
been yet far more frequent. The visit of a principal Tirtha is regularly 
coupled with bathings, S'raddhas and other sacrificial functions at a 
series of other sacred spots. The choice of these subsidiary places of 
worship must from the beginning have depended on local considerations. 
As these changed in the course of time, variations in the pilgrimage 
route must have unavoidably followed. 
To bring the text of the Mahatmya into accord with these succes¬ 
sive changes was a task which devolved upon the local Purohitas. The 
texts we have discussed above bear, in fact, only too manifestly the traces 
of their handiwork. Sound knowledge of Sanskrit and literary culture 
are likely to have been always as foreign to this class of men as 
they are at present. When it became necessary for them to introduce 
the names of new localities into the text of the Mahatmya there was 
every risk of these names being shown not in their genuine old forms, 
but in hybrid adaptations of their modern Kasmiri equivalents. This 
risk naturally increased when Sanskrit ceased to be the official 
language of Kasmir, and the knowledge of the old local names was 
gradually lost even among those maintaining scholarly traditions in the 
country. 
1 Compare Rajat. ii. 132 note and v. 465 sqq .; vii. 13 sqq.-, viii. 709, 900 sqq-, 939. 
* Compare Notes A (Rajat. i. 35) and B (Rajat. i. 37). 
