Note 8 — Feast of the Second New Year.

On Thursday, the 14th, I encamped in the pargana of Chandāla.8 Thence on Saturday, the 16th, making one stage in the middle, I came to Ḥāfiz̤ābād.9 I stayed in the station which had been erected by the exertions of the karorī of that place, Mīr Qiyāmu-d-dīn. Having reached the Chenāb in two marches on Thursday, the 21st Ẕī-l-ḥijja, I crossed the river by a bridge which had been built there and my camp was pitched in the neighbourhood of the pargana of Gujrat. At the time when His Majesty Akbar went to Kashmir, a fort had been built on that bank of the river. Having brought to this fort a body of Gujars who had passed their time in the neighbourhood in thieving and highway robbery, he established them here. As it had become the abode of Gujars, he made it a separate pargana, and gave it the name of Gujrat. They call Gujars a caste which does little manual work and subsists on milk and curds. On Friday I pitched at K͟hawāṣṣpūr, five kos from Gujrat, founded by K͟hawāss K͟hān, a slave of S͟hīr K͟hān Afg͟hān. Thence, with two halts in the middle, I pitched on the bank of the Bihaṭ (Jhelam). On that night a great wind blew and a black cloud hid the face of the sky. The rain was of such violence that old men remembered none such. It turned to hail, and every hailstone was the size of a hen’s egg. From the flooding of the river and the force of the wind and rain, the bridge broke. I, with the inmates of the harem, crossed in a boat. As there were few boats, I ordered the men not10 to cross in these, but to rebuild the bridge. It was finished in a week, and the whole army crossed with ease. The source of the Bihaṭ is a spring in Kashmir called the Vīr-nāg; in the language of India a snake is vīr-nāg. Clearly there had been a large snake at that place. I went twice to the spring in my father’s lifetime; it is 20 kos from the city of Kashmir. It is an octagonal reservoir about 20 yards by 20. Near it are the remains of a place of worship for recluses; cells cut out of the rock and numerous caves. The water is exceedingly pure. Although I could not guess its depth, a grain of poppy-seed is visible until it touches the bottom. There were many fish to be seen in it. As I had heard that it was unfathomable, I ordered them to throw in a cord with a stone attached, and when this cord was measured in gaz it became evident that the depth was not more than once and a half the height of a man. After my accession I ordered them to build the sides of the spring round with stone, and they made a garden round it with a canal; and built halls and houses about it, and made a place such that travellers over the world can point out few like it. When the river reaches the village of Pāmpūr, at a distance of ten kos from the city, it increases, and all the saffron of Kashmir is obtained in this village. I do not know if there is so much saffron in any other place in the world. The annual crop is 500 maunds by Hindustan weight, equal to 5,000 wilāyat (Persian) maunds. In attendance on my revered father, I went to this place at the season when the saffron was in flower. On other plants of the world, first the branches (stems) shoot out and then the leaves and flowers. On the contrary, when the saffron stem is four fingers breadth from the dry ground, its flowers shoot out, of the colour of the iris,11 with four petals, and in the middle are four threads (rīs͟ha) of an orange colour like that of the flower, and of the length of a finger-joint. This is the saffron. The land is not ploughed12 or irrigated, the plant springs up amongst the clods. In some places its cultivation extends for a kos, and in others for half a kos. It looks better from a distance. At the time of plucking, all my attendants got headache from its sharp scent. Though I drank wine and took a cup, I too got headache. I asked the animal-like Kashmiris, who were employed in picking the flowers how they felt. I ascertained that they had never experienced headache in their lives.