A Brief Survey of Literary Tradition of Early Medieval Kashmir

Abstract

Kashmir has always attracted the attention of various scholars worldwide not only for its cultural traditions socio-political milieu or landscape, but also for its unique place in the history as an abode of learning and literary tradition. People from all parts of the known world used to visit Kashmir in order to cater their literary pursuits. Fa-Hien mentions Kashmir during his visit in India during the time of Gupta period. Hieun Tsang spent two years in Kashmir in order to master different traditions associated with Buddhism In his Rajatarangini, Kalhana has mentioned five most famous things which are attributed to the valley of Kashmir and the foremost amongst them was learning. Kashmir was frequented by foreigners and almost all of them have mentioned and lauded the intelligence of Kashmiri people. Kashmiris were known for their intelligence, their good looks, hard working ethos. This was the land which preserved the traditional and conservative aspect of Buddhism in the form of Sravastivadin sect. Moreover, Kashmir during early medieval period witnessed a literary boom where corpus regarding different genres was produced in this region. In present study we will briefly summarize the literary output and diverse canons produced in the given period.