Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c39.3

c39.3

THROUGHOUT its history Kashmir has experienced an art life very much its own The natural position of the country encouraged this condition—a valley at a height of six thousand feet above sea level, enclosed within snow-clad ranges, and approached only by long and tortuous routes, imposes an isolation which would normally tend to make its inhabitants self-supporting and self-contained. On the other hand, although itself remote, Kashmir lay within that part of Central Asia which at one period was the clearing-house of several separate civilizations and the influences of these found their way into this natural retreat. Moreover, there was a time early in the first millennium when it came into contact with the wide-spread eastern conquests of the Sassanid empire with its neo-Persian culture, to be followed not long afterwards by a period in which its own territories extended far beyond their natural geographical limits. Yet with all these events and powerful cross-currents, with the ebb and flow of great external movements on its borders, Kashmir continued consistently to maintain a certain indigenous and independent type of culture, as reflected in several of its activities, not the least of which was its form of expression in the field of art Much of the high quality of the latter was due to the inherent aesthetic sense and rare adaptability of its inhabitants.