1899.] POSITION AND CONFIGURATION OF KAS'MIR VALLEY. 
63 
Ks. mar , i.e. f Skr. matha 1 habitation,’ or a word mir, supposed to mean 
* mountain.’ * 
It was, perhaps, a belief that this whimsical etymology represented 
some local tradition, which induced even so great a scholar as Burnouf 
to risk the conjectural explanation of Kasmira as * Kasyapamira, i.e., 
4 the sea of Kasyapa.’ 8 There is neither linguistic nor any other 
evidence to support this conjecture. It would hence scarcely have been 
necessary to refer to it had it not on the authority of a great name 
found its way also into numerous works of a more general character. 1 2 3 
37 . Just as the name Kasmir has practically remained unchanged 
through the course of so many centuries, so 
Extent^ml^position a i so p ag territorial extent of the country 
which it designated. This has always been 
confined to the great valley drained by the headwaters of the Vitasta 
and to the inner slopes of the ring of mountains that surround it. 
The natural limits of the territory here indicated are so sharply 
marked that we have no difficulty in tracing them through all our 
historical records, whether indigenous or foreign. Hiuen Tsiang, 
Ou-k'ong and Alberunl’s accounts, as we have seen, show them clearly 
enough. Kalhana’s and his successors’ Chronicles prove still more in 
detail that the Kasmir of Kasmirian tradition never extended materi¬ 
ally beyond the summit-ridges of those great ranges which encircle and 
protect the Valley. 
A detailed description of the geographical position of Kasmir does 
not come within the scope of this paper. Nor is it needed since there is 
an abundant modern literature dealing with the various aspects of the 
geography of the country. For an accurate and comprehensive account 
I may refer to the corresponding portion of Mr. Drew’s work and to the 
graphic chapter which Mr. Lawrence devotes to the description of the 
Valley. 4 It will, however, be useful to allude here briefly to some of 
the characteristic features in the configuration of the country which 
have an important bearing on its ancient topography. 
Kasmir owes its historical unity and isolation to the same facts 
which give to its geographical position a distinct and in some respects 
1 The Ks. word mar < Skr. matha, is in common nse in the country as the 
designation of Sarais, shelter-huts on passes, etc. Mir might have been connected by 
Haidar Malik’s Pandit informants with the name of Mount Meru or with mira , 
meaning according to a Kosa parvataikadesa, see B. R., s. v. 
2 Compare his note in Humboldt, L'Asie centrale , i. p. 92. 
3 See, e.g., Lassen, Ind. Alt., i. p. 54 note ; McCrindle, Ancient India as des¬ 
cribed by Ptolemy, p. 108; V. de St. Martin, Mem. de V Acad, des Inscript., Sav. 
E’trang., v., ii. p. 83; Kiepert, Alte Geographie , 1878, p. 36. 
4* See F. Drew, The Jnmmoo and Kashmir Territories, 1875, Chapters viii.-x.; 
W. Lawrence, The Valley of Kasmir, 1895, pp, 12-39. 
