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Before considering the history of Kumaon and Garhwal as taken from internal sources, it will be well to refer to the evidence of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hwen Thsang, who in 634 A.D. passed through Northern India, and has left an itinerary of his travels giving most important facts regarding the condition of the country at that period. His statements, whenever capable of verification, have been found remarkably accurate. Selecting only what is of local interest for our purpose, we find that he describes a city called Mayura or Mayapura, near to the present town of Hardwar, and tells how he journeyed thence to Brahmapura in the hills, 300 li or 50 miles to the north. The kingdom of Brahm'apura, says Hwen Thsang, was 666 miles in circuit, "surrounded on all sides by mountains. The capital is small, but the inhabitants are numerous and prosperous. The soil is fertile, and seedtime and harvest come at regular intervals. Copper and rock-crystal are produced there. The climate is slightly cold, and the people are rough in their manners ; a few devote themselves to literature, but the greater number prefer the pursuit of commerce. The inhabitants are naturally uncultivated, and there are followers of both the Buddhist and Brahmanical faiths. There are five monasteries, within which reside a few monks, and there are some dozen temples of the gods. The followers of the different Brahmanical sects dwell together without distinction. To the north of the kingdom, in the midst of the great snowy mountains, is the kingdom of Son-fa-la-na-kiu-ta-lo (Suvarnagotra), where gold of a superior quality is procured, and hence its name. , From east to west this kingdom has its greatest extension, but from north to south it is narrow. For many centuries the ruler has been a woman, and hence it is called ' the kingdom of the queens.' The husband of the reigning sovereign has the title of 'king/ but does not meddle in affairs of state. The men occupy themselves with war and husbandry. The soil is fertile, and is favourable to the growth of a poor kind of barley, and the people rear large numbers of sheep and ponies. The climate is icy-cold, and the inhabitants are abrupt and turbulent in their manners. This country touches on the east the country of the Tibetans, on the north is the country of Khoten, and on the west is Son-po-lo."
The city of Brahmapura evidently lay in Garhwal. Mr. Atkinson was of opinion that its site is to be found at Barahat in Tihri or independent Garhwal, which is exactly fifty miles north of Hardwar and in every respect agrees with Hwen Thsang's description. There, also, are many remains of temples and ancient buildings, and it is traditionally known as the seat of an old monarchy. There is a great brazen trident of vast antiquity, and bearing inscriptions of Nepalese Buddhist rajas who had visited the place in the twelfth century and found the trident there, showing that at that period Buddhism was still a flourishing religion in Nepal and professed by some of its leading chiefs.
The kingdom mentioned by Hwen Thsang as existing to the north of Garhwal among the snowy mountains is evidently that of Suvarnagotra, or the "golden country." For a long time it was supposed that he was romancing when he described the Amazonian constitution of this kingdom, but his account has now been ascertained to rest on a basis of solid fact. The kingdom evidently lay across the Himalayas in the valley of the Satlej, where there are still famous gold mines among the sandy hills, which have simply to be scooped out to obtain the gold. Old fables met with in Megasthenes and elsewhere speak of "goldbearing ants" in that region, which may refer to the appearance of the vast sandhills and the dark figures of men employed in digging in them. (The reader is again referred to M'Crindle's Ancient India.) The Amazonian kingdom of the north is mentioned in the Yishnu Parana, and Wilson in his famous translation of that work says that it is usually placed in Bhot, and is an allusion to the custom of polyandry. But Mr. Atkinson refers us to the Chinese "Sui" annals, of which a report was given in the Journal of the Asiatic Society by Dr. Burnell. This chronicle describes a tribe in Eastern Tibet known as the Nuwang, who always had a woman for their ruler. The female sovereign held her court in a palace nine storeys high, and was attended by hundreds of women. The men confined themselves to fighting and cultivating the land. Gold, copper, cinnabar, musk, yaks, and horses, with salt, are mentioned among the products of the country, and they were great traders with India. At the funeral of the queen, " several tens of the great ministers and relatives were buried at the same time." From the year 742 A.D. they adopted male rulers, and a few years later the kingdom was absorbed by Lhassa.
Thus Hwen Thsang is again justified, and the kingdom of the Amazons, regarding which so many wild legends were current in the ancient world, is seen to have had a real existence, in Tibet. The details as given by the Chinese traveller are in every respect correct, and suggestive of modern conditions in the same regions. Thus, only a few weeks ago, I was offered a fine rock-crystal for sale in Almora, and when I inquired where it had come from, the very district described by Hwen Thsang was named. The Tibetan or Bhotiya ponies are still much sought after, and are a common article of commerce, while the trade in salt and gold still goes on over the Indian border.
Hwen Thsang's account shows Buddhism and Brahmanism as still dwelling side by side, and apparently on fairly friendly terms, in the Himalayan region. The fact appears to be that to some extent Buddhism died a natural death in India, owing to the failing of its early impulse and its growing admixture with superstitious elements. The Northern Buddhists began to assimilate their beliefs to those of their neighbours, and to reverence the Hindu gods as powerful dispensers of boons, alongside of the incarnations of Buddha. The degraded Tantric rites connected with Siva worship were also taken into their system, together with the elements of the Yoga theosophy, and all the darker features of aboriginal cults. Indian Buddhism when it perished was no longer worth preserving ; indeed, it differed in no essential from the surrounding cults, and therefore opposed no strong or united opposition to Brahmanical aggression.
It is time, however, that we addressed ourselves to a closer study of the internal history of Kumaon and Garhwal, for which the foregoing remarks have served as a background and preparation.
Hwen Thsang's account already quoted shows us a flourishing Hindu kingdom in Garhwal, and from other records there is evidence of the widely extended dominion of the rulers of Garhwal and Western Kumaon during the period from 400 to 700 A.D. Hwen Thsang's description also proves that Buddhism still flourished in the Himalayas.
Between that date, however, and the time of Sankara Acharya, important religious changes must have taken place, because all local traditions testify to the complete removal of Buddhism from Kumaon after Sankara's strenuous campaign against it. It is difficult to determine when Sankara lived. Indian writers, with characteristic uncertainty, assign all kinds of dates. His own particular Brahman followers in the south of India say that he lived two thousand years ago ; others give the beginning of the Christian era or the fourth century as his period. Colebrooke refers him to 1000 A.D. The general testimony of modern scholars is in favour of the seventh or eighth centuries, soon after the visit of Hwen Thsang. Weber, in his History of Indian Literature, says " about the eighth century."
The vexed question as to the mode in which Buddhism passed from India is one of great interest, and we can study it with reference to the Himalayan region perhaps better than any other. In Southern India, Kumarila Bhatta was the champion of Brahmanism, and Sankara in the Himalayas. The traditions of Nepal, as given by Dr. Wright, cast light on the subject, and they show that there is after all much truth in the ordinary view that there was a great deal of conflict, and that Buddhism, in some quarters at any rate, was suppressed by force. This view has been strongly contested of late, especially by Professor Ehys Davids, who, with reference to a statement that the followers of Buddha were persecuted and slain, exiled or made to change their faith, and that by this means Buddhism was driven out of India, says (Buddhist India, p. 317): " I do not believe a word of it. The misconception has arisen from an erroneous inference drawn from expressions of vague boasting, of ambiguous import and doubtful authority. We must seek elsewhere for the causes of decline of the Buddhist faith ; and they will be found, I think, partly in the changes that took place in that faith itself, partly in the changes that took place in the intellectual standard of the people." But what is to be made of a statement like that about to be quoted from Dr. Wright's Nepal, due not to the boasting of Brahmans, but to the tradition current among Buddhists or people of Buddhist sympathies themselves? The Nepalese and Kumaon traditions agree that Sankara came to the Himalaya and drove out or suppressed Buddhism by force. He found a curious intermixture of the two religions, Buddhist or Bauddhamargi priests officiating in the temples of Pasupati (Siva), and "all the four castes" following the religion of Buddha. Some were professed monks and nuns (Bhikshus and Bhikshunis), while others were household professors of the religion (Grihasthas).
" Some of them," says Dr. Daniel Wright, quoting from Nepalese traditions, "were put to death. Some who would not allow that they were defeated were also killed. Wherefore many confessed that they were vanquished, though in reality not convinced that they were in error. These Sankara ordered to do Hinsa (that is, to sacrifice animals), which is in direct opposition to the tenets of the Buddhist religion. He likewise compelled the Bhikshunis or nuns to marry, and forced the Grihasthas to shave the knot of hair on the crown of their heads when performing the ' charakarma ' or first shaving of the head. Thus he placed the ascetics and the householders on the same footing. He also put a stop to many of their religious ceremonies and cut their Brahmanical threads. There were at that time eighty-four thousand works on the Buddhist religion, which he searched for and destroyed. Having thus overcome the Buddhists, he introduced the worship of Siva in place of that of the religion of Buddha. . . . Sankara thus destroyed the Buddhist religion and allowed none to follow it, but he was obliged to leave Bauddhamargis in some places as priests of temples, where he found that no other persons would be able to propitiate the gods placed in them by great Bauddhamargis."
What Sankara did in Nepal, he did also in Kumaon and Garhwal. He drove out the Buddhists and restored the Brahmanical religion, aided by the princes who were worshippers of Siva and Yishnu. No doubt great tracts of land had passed into the possession of the monasteries, as in other Buddhist lands, and the same motives that actuated many of the nobles of England and Scotland at the time of the Reformation must have been at work on the minds of the hill rajas. The Buddhists were driven out of the ancient shrines of Siva and Yishnu at Kedar and Badari, and Sankara established disciples of his own there and in many other places in the Himalayas, and preached the efficacy of pilgrimage to these holy places. Thus, as Mr. Atkinson points out (ii. 466), the constant influx of Brahmanical pilgrims in Kumaon and Garhwal prevented a relapse into Buddhism, and powerfully affected the religious tone of the people, while Nepal, being more inaccessible and practically cut off from communication with the plains, retained its admixture of Buddhism to a much greater degree.
The Katyuris were for many centuries the rulers of Western Kumaon and Garhwal. Their earlier capital was at Joshimath in Garhwal. From there they seem to have been driven by religious quarrels between the followers of Siva and Vishnu, not long after the time of Sankara, to make their headquarters at Katyur in Kumaon, a valley about twenty miles west of Almora. Early Sanskrit inscriptions exist in temples of Kumaon and Garhwal recording grants of land made by the rajas, whose capital is called Kartikeyapura, from Kartikeya, a god. It is a question whether the resemblance between Katyur or Kator and the name of the city is accidental, or whether the dynasty took its name from the city. One of the inscriptions is on stone at the temple of Bageswar, and mentions the names of a number of sovereigns of the Katyur dynasty, and their wives. Five inscriptions are records of grants engraved on copper, still in the possession of the holders of the lands therein mentioned. One of these includes a most interesting list of the different classes of inhabitants of the capital, more especially the officials of the royal court. It is interesting as a proof of the advanced and complex state of society in an Indian kingdom of that age, about 700 to 900 A.D. (The date is determined from the use of the Kutila style of writing employed at that period.) It is probable, however, that the Kumaon kingdom did not itself contain all these officials and classes. Elephants and camels are mentioned, which would hardly be kept in the hills ; and the enumeration of tribes with which the list ends, named as subjects of the king, could never have applied to Kumaon. The probability is that the long list is a copy of some formula used in one of the larger Hindu kingdoms of the plains. The Katyur dominions doubtless at one time extended far into the plains ; and in inscriptions in the plains the empire of one of its kings, Deva Pala, is said to have extended from the Mahendra mountain to the Himalaya.
The site of the ancient Kartikeyapura is in the valley of the Gumti and Sarju rivers. An old legend relates that there was an earlier town there called Karbirpura, near the present village of Baijnath, and that the materials were used in building the new city. There are still extensive ruins and remains, but until lately the neighbourhood was one of the least populous in Kumaon, and more than half the existing villages were deserted, owing to the unhealthiness of the place. The Chand rajas, who reigned at Almora, are said to have been in the habit of offering criminals the option of suffering punishment or exiling themselves to this valley, where they were certain to die before long. There are now several tea-gardens in the vicinity, and the place is more prosperous and healthy than it was half a century ago. The sites of ancient capitals in the East are generally very unwholesome, and this was no doubt the reason that in former times absolute rulers often ordered complete deportation of populous communities to another site.
The cause of the decline of the Katyur kingdom is not clearly known, but it seems to have been due in part to the oppression of the later rajas and their general unfitness for rule. An interesting tradition is told regarding the later days of the kingdom, under the rajas Dham Deo and Bir Deo, who finally brought on the downfall of the dynasty. "The revenue of the country was collected in kind, and it was customary to give out a part of grain brought into the raja's treasury to be ground for the use of the household. Each village took its turn to prepare the flour, as a customary due to the state. The servants of the raja, however, used to measure out the grain in the slightly indented bottom of the c nali' (a measure) turned upside down, but still called the grain given out ' a nali.' When the people brought back the grain ground, the raja's officer spread at the foot of a great stone seven mats, and then mounting on the stone scattered the flour in the wind. The heavier particles fell on the mats near the stone, and none but the very finest reached the seventh mat. Then coming down, he collected the flour from the seventh mat and told the people to take away the rest, as it was not fit for his master's use. Of this fine flour, moreover, they were obliged to give a quantity equal to the nominal weight of the grain that had been given out to them from the raja's stores. The raja used also to seize their sons and daughters as slaves, and the taxation was on no system. In order to provide themselves with water from a favourite spring some twelve miles from the palace, the Katyuris stationed slaves along the road, who remained there night and day and passed the water from hand to hand. Bir Deo still further shocked the prejudices of the people by marrying his aunt. He used to fasten iron rings on the shoulders of the litter-bearers and pass through them the poles of the ' dandi ' (litter), so that the bearers might not be able to throw him down a precipice ; but, wearied with his tyranny and profligacy, two men were at last found patriotic enough to sacrifice themselves for the good of the people. They reflected that they themselves were ruined, their children were taken as slaves, and life was not worth living : so one day being pressed into service as litter-bearers, they flung themselves and the raja over a cliff, and so perished. After the raja's death dissensions broke out amongst his family, and each seized on a portion of the kingdom for himself, whilst the countries beyond Kumaon and Garhwal that had once paid tribute to the Katyuris threw off their allegiance."
After the break-up of the kingdom, members of the Katyuri family established themselves in various centres as independent rajas. Thus there was one at Askot, another to the east in Doti, another in Kali Kumaon, another in Barahmandal (the country around Almora), others in Dwarahat and Katyur itself. These principalities are sometimes spoken of as Khassiya kingdoms, and it is possible that in a few instances a Khassiya family succeeded in establishing a local chieftainship, but as a general rule the rajas were members of the Katyur royal house. Their descendants yet remain in the province. They were not exterminated by the Chand rajas, it is said, because the latter wished to take wives from among them. They married daughters of the Katyuris, but never gave their own daughters in marriage to them. The Katyuris were thus compelled, says Mr. Atkinson, to take wives from the small Thakuri rajas in Nepal, or even of late years to intermarry with the wealthier Khassiya families. One of the chief kingdoms for a long time was that of Doti on the Nepal border, which ruled over or took tribute from a considerable part of Kumaon, and often came into conflict with the Chand rajas. The smaller chiefs in Kumaon and Garhwal seem to have occupied fortresses on hilltops, whence they harried and laid under tribute the surrounding couhlfy, something like the "free barons" of the Ehineland in former ages.