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 AVANTIVARMAN 127

record goes on till we come to the reign of Avantivarman, 855-883, and this appears to have brought a period of consolidation for the country, which must have greatly suffered economically as well as politically from the internal troubles during the preceding reigns. There is no indication of the reassertion of Kashmir sovereignty abroad, but there is ample proof of the internal recovery of the country, and the town of Avantipura, named after the king, has survived to the present day. It lies one march above Srinagar, and the ruins of the ancient buildings, though not equal in size to Lalitaditya’s structures, yet rank, says Stein, among the most imposing monuments of ancient Kashmir architecture, and sufficiently attest the resources of the builder.

This reign was, tgo, remarkable for the execution of an engineering scheme to prevent floods ahd drain the valley, a precisely similar idea to that on which Major de Lotbiniére worked out under the direction of the present Maharaja. The Kashmiri engineer Suyya, after whom is named the present town of Sopur, saw more than a thousand years ago what modern engineers have also observed, that floods in the valley are due to the waters of the “Jhelum not being able to get with sufficient rapidity