Birth of Kashmir
KASHMIR’S ORIGIN
Kashmir was a glacial lake known as “Satisar” during Rigvedic period. Nilamata Puran, also known as the Kashmir Mahatmya is an ancient text (6th-8th Century CE) from Kashmir. It contains information on the history, geography, religion and folklore of Jammu & Kashmir. It narrates how Kashmir was created out of a lake called Satisar, the ‘Lake of Sati’. As per legend, in the “Satisar” lake, lived a demon named Jalodhbhava who caused great distress to mankind. Rishi Kashyap requested Lord Vishnu for help, who ordered his brother Balabhadra to drain the lake Jalodhbhava was then killed by Vishnu with his war disc.
Another legend of Kashmir Valley is of ‘Hari Parbat-The mountain of Myna’. To rescue the inhabitants from Jalodhbhava a goddess took the form of Hari (Myna Bird), carried a pebble in her beak and cast it upon the demon. The pebble transformed into a mountain and fell on the demon, instantly killing him. Since then, the mountain framing the landscape of Srinagar is known as ‘Hari Parbat’.
Rishi Kashyap settled the land of Kashmir in the beautiful valley that emerged as the lake dried up. Kashmir is a Sanskrit word which implies land desiccated from water, ‘ka’ (water) and ‘shimeera’ (to desiccate).
Kashmir as a land exists since the existence of the land and sea after the Big bang and the movement of tectonic plates forming our continents. But the land’s name as Kashmir was born in the vedic period and then started a new history of Kashmir and its people. There are a number of stories and assumptions of how this etymology of Kashmir evolved. Many of them known and few of them believed.
First the land was called Satisara because of the Satisar lake that drained in the area and it was a Sanskrit term.
Some say, Ka means water and Samira, off by wind.
Another interpretation says Kas means channel and Mir mountain which might mean a rock trough and both are Prakrit compounds.
All the above are definitely convincing. But as we dig deeper and turn back more pages of history, we come across Kashyap Rishi, a prominent rishi in the vedic period and some call it land of Kashyap or Kashyap’s Mira, Kashmira.
Most of the people have also called it, Cashmere for its fabric.
Another theory exists of Kashir, named after its inhabitants called Kash, a semitic tribe. Kashir has been mentioned in Sir Lucas King’s English translation of Babur’s memoir. These names have originated in India itself.
But to think, did the world know Kashmir then and if they did what did they call them? The earliest Chinese reference to Kashmir is as Ku-shih-mi. Portuguese when entered India first mentioned a land called Kashmir. When Alexander attacked Porus in the battle of Hydaspes, Greeks called this land, Kaspatyrus.
We can keep reading going about what the nations called Kashmir or how they knew it in the past through either folk tales, stories or their written text.
The earliest name that anyone has found written about Kashmir is Kasperia by Ptolemy in his book Geographia. And then we hear about in the great epic, Mahabharata.
Kashmir has its stories from where the name came from or the people, the language and its traditions, the mountains that stand tall here or the river that flows within and definitely the people of this land, Kashmiri or Koshur.
”How exceedingly hospitable is the land of Kashmir
Even the wayside stones offered me water to drink.”
– Pandit Narayan Chakbast.