One Of The
Thirty Kingdoms Subdued By The Mongols Was "The Kingdom Of Fo (Buddha)
Called Kishimi.
It lies to the N.W. of India.
There are to be seen the
men who are counted the successors of Shakia; their ancient and venerable
air recalls the countenance of Bodi-dharma as one sees it in pictures.
They abstain from wine, and content themselves with a gill of rice for
their daily food, and are occupied only in reciting the prayers and
litanies of Fo." (Rem. N. Mel. Asiat. I. 179.) Abu'l Fazl says that on
his third visit with Akbar to Kashmir he discovered some old men of the
religion of Buddha, but none of them were literati. The Rishis, of
whom he speaks with high commendation as abstaining from meat and from
female society, as charitable and unfettered by traditions, were perhaps a
modified remnant of the Buddhist Eremites. Colonel Newall, in a paper on
the Rishis of Kashmir, traces them to a number of Shiah Sayads, who fled
to Kashmir in the time of Timur. But evidently the genus was of much
earlier date, long preceding the introduction of Islam. (Vie et V. de H.
T. p. 390; Lassen, III. 709; Ayeen Akb. II. 147, III. 151; J. A. S.
B. XXXIX. pt. i. 265.)
We see from the Dabistan that in the 17th century Kashmir continued to
be a great resort of Magian mystics and sages of various sects, professing
great abstinence and credited with preternatural powers.
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