The
character is a modification of the Panjab Nagari.
NOTE 2. - The Kashmirian conjurers had made a great impression on Marco,
who had seen them at the Court of the Great Kaan, and he recurs in a later
chapter to their weather sorceries and other enchantments, when we shall
make some remarks. Meanwhile let us cite a passage from Bernier, already
quoted by M. Pauthier. When crossing the Pir Panjal (the mountain crossed
on entering Kashmir from Lahore) with the camp of Aurangzib, he met with
"an old Hermit who had dwelt upon the summit of the Pass since the days of
Jehangir, and whose religion nobody knew, although it was said that he
could work miracles, and used at his pleasure to produce extraordinary
thunderstorms, as well as hail, snow, rain, and wind. There was something
wild in his countenance, and in his long, spreading, and tangled hoary
beard. He asked alms fiercely, allowing the travellers to drink from
earthen cups that he had set out upon a great stone, but signing to them
to go quickly by without stopping. He scolded those who made a noise,
'for,' said he to me (after I had entered his cave and smoothed him down
with a half rupee which I put in his hand with all humility), 'noise here
raises furious storms. Aurangzib has done well in taking my advice and
prohibiting it. Shah Jehan always did the like. But Jehangir once chose to
laugh at what I said, and made his drums and trumpets sound; the
consequence was he nearly lost his life.'" (Bernier, Amst. ed. 1699, II.
290.) A successor of this hermit was found on the same spot by P. Desideri
in 1713, and another by Vigne in 1837.
NOTE 3. - Though the earliest entrance of Buddhism into Tibet was from
India Proper, yet Kashmir twice in the history of Tibetan Buddhism played
a most important part. It was in Kashmir that was gathered, under the
patronage of the great King Kanishka, soon after our era, the Fourth
Buddhistic Council, which marks the point of separation between Northern
and Southern Buddhism. Numerous missionaries went forth from Kashmir to
spread the doctrine in Tibet and in Central Asia. Many of the Pandits who
laboured at the translation of the sacred books into Tibetan were
Kashmiris, and it was even in Kashmir that several of the translations
were made. But these were not the only circumstances that made Kashmir a
holy land to the Northern Buddhists. In the end of the 9th century the
religion was extirpated in Tibet by the Julian of the Lamas, the great
persecutor Langdarma, and when it was restored, a century later, it was
from Kashmir in particular that fresh missionaries were procured to
reinstruct the people in the forgotten Law. (See Koeppen, II. 12-13, 78;
J. As. ser. VI. tom. vi. 540.)
"The spread of Buddhism to Kashmir is an event of extraordinary importance
in the history of that religion.
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