Kashmir’s geographical location partly explains is cultural history. It may be that its
natural beauty and temperate climate are the reasons that Kashmiris have a strong
tradition in the arts, literature, painting, drama, and dance. Its relative isolation, the
security provided by the ring of mountains around it, and its distance from the heartland
of Indian culture in the plains of North India, might explain the originality of Kashmiri
thought. Its climate and the long winters may explain the Kashmiri fascination for
philosophical speculation.
Kashmir is at the centre of the Puranic geography. In the Puranic conception, the earth's
continents are arranged in the form of a lotus flower. Mt. Meru stands at the center of the
world, the pericarp or seed-vessel of the flower, as it were, surrounded by circular ranges
of mountains. Around Mt. Meru, like the petals of the lotus, are arranged four islandcontinents (dvipas), aligned to the four points of the compass: Uttarakuru to the north,
Ketumala to the west, Bhadrashva to the east, and Bharata or Jambudvipa to the south.
The meeting point of the continents is the Meru mountain, which is the high Himalayan
region around Kashmir, Uttarakuru represents Central Asia including Tocharia, Ketumala
is Iran and lands beyond, Bhadrashva is China and the Far East. Kashmir’s centrality in
this scheme was a recognition that it was a meeting ground for trade and ideas for the
four main parts of the Old World. In fact it became more than a meeting ground, it was
the land where an attempt was made to reconcile opposites by deeper analysis and bold
conception.
Kashmir’s nearness to rich trade routes brought it considerable wealth and emboldened
Kashmirs to take Sanskrit culture out of the country as missionaries. Kashmiris also
became interpreters of the Indian civilization and they authored many fundamental
synthesizing and expository works. Some of these works are anonymous encyclopaedias,