origins of the kashmiri style 161
have stood either literally at the edge of their territory, beyond which were
independent local states, or else within a frontier state controlled and taxed
during the height of Kārkoṭa power. It is hard to imagine a scenario by which
local elites would create such an image at the edge of their territory unless, as
suggested already, they were feudatories to the greater power with the need
to signal their loyalties and impress their subjects and their masters with the
depth of their Kashmiricisation.
According to Vohra’s analysis of Kalhaṇa’s twelfth-century The River of Kings
(Rājataraṅgiṇī), a historical but panegyrical chronicle of Kashmiri kings, the
Darada rulers North of Kashmir were in constant interaction with Kashmir,
were sometimes allies, sometimes rivals, at times looting Srinagar itself. They
welcomed “rebellious princes [who] often took refuge in Daradeśa from
where they were able to pursue their ambitious plans to capture the throne
of Kashmir”.28 Further, “the area of Ladakh, at least Purig [the region of lower
Ladakh, including Dras], also formed a part of the same ethnic complex”.29 He
makes clear that “the term ‘Darada’ was not always used to refer to an eth-
nic group but at times may also have designated a ‘Politico-geographical area’
inhabited by varying ethnic groups,”30 and that is the sense that I would evoke
here. In short, it is also possible to envision that Dardic officials were staking
civilisational claims by employing (faulty) Kashmiri Sanskrit and (superb)
Kashmiri artists.
It is difficult to pierce the ambiguity surrounding the historical circum-
stances here. What we do know is that at least two stone sculptures of bodhisatt-
vas Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara, done in a sophisticated Kashmiri style, were
carved around the seventh or eighth century by an artist steeped in Kashmiri
traditions, and likely to be Kashmiri in some meaningful sense. They were
inscribed in Sanskrit in the Śāradā script associated with Kashmir. There are
too many grammatical mistakes to accept the inscriptions as Kashmiri court
productions in both composition and execution, though one can conceive a
fluent composition into which errors were introduced by a semi-literate carver.
The composer and the donors might very well have been local, from the East
side of the Zoji pass, though it is possible to envision foreign merchants or
28 Vohra, Rohit, “Ethno-Historicity of the Dards in Ladakh-Baltistan: Observations and
Analysis,” in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 4th Seminar of the International Association
for Tibetan Studies. Schloss Hohenkammer—Munich 1985, ed. Helga Uebach and Jampa L.
Panglung (Munich: Kommission für Zentralasiatische Studien Bayerische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1988), 542–543.
29 Vohra, “Ethno-Historicity,” 543.
30 Vohra, “Ethno-Historicity,” 536.