Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/316

 272 ARCHITECTURE IN THE HIMALAYAS. BOOK II. The earliest references to the religious beliefs of Kashmir connect them with the worship of Nagas or serpent deities, supposed to preside over springs, lakes, and rivers ; hence they correspond closely with the classical Naiads or Potameids. Numerous temples were erected to them at all the more famous springs, and to these the earliest and more popular pilgrimages were made, and continue to be even till the present time. Even the Muhammadan Kashmirians pay superstitious and hardly obscure reverence to them ; the " ziarats " or shrines of their Pirs or saints are largely fixed at the old sacred spots, and sometimes they seem to have been the native shrines appropriated by the ruling caste. 1 The Naga divinities were accepted by the Buddhists and worked into the mythology of the Mahayana school. Until the 6th century Buddhism was probably the predominant religion of the country. Mihirakula, a White Hun whose coins indicate that he was a Saiva acquired the sovereignty about A.D. 530, and was a bitter persecutor of the Buddhists, at the same time fostering the Brahmanical cult. When Hiuen Tsiang visited the country in the /th century, Buddhism seems to have considerably revived. The kings of the Karkota and Utpala dynasties were tolerant, and, as we learn, built Buddhist viharas as well as Hindu temples, and U-k'ong, who reached Kashmir in A.D. 759 probably in the reign of Lalitaditya-Muktapida speaks of the Buddhist establishments as being numerous and very flourishing. 2 By the I4th century, however, the Hindu rulers had become weak and effete, and a military adventurer from the south murdered Kota Rani, the widow of the last sovereign, A.D. 1339, and usurped the legal power as Shah Mir. The immigration of foreigners that followed rapidly led the way, under the new Moslim dynasty, to the general conversion of the people to the Musalman religion, and by the end of the century this had become an accomplished fact. As Muhammadanism rose in power the old temples were either destroyed, as under the iconoclastic zeal of Sikandar Shah, 1393 to 1416, or they were neglected and fell to ruin; after that we have only the tomb of Zainu-l-'Abidm and the temple on the Takht-i-Sulaiman that can be classed as examples of the style, though the latter can hardly even claim a title to that affiliation. 1 It seems not improbable that the Ziarat of Pir Haji Muhammad Sahib at .Snnagar, may represent the Rana- swamin temple of Ranaditya, erected in the 6th century ; the Bumazu temple also is now regarded as the Ziarat of Kaba Bamadin Sahib. ' Rajatarangin!,' bk. Hi., vv. 453-454, note, and bk. vi., vv. 177, 178, note. 2 We read of the iconoclast Harsha (1089-1101) sparing two colossal images of Buddha : one in .Srinagar, and the other at Parihasapur probably that established by Lalitaditya in the 8th century. ' Rajatarangini,' bk. vii.. vv. 1097, sq., and bk. iv., vv. 200.