to the circumstantial details of the great cold of antiquity, the long prevalence of winter, the occupation of the country by nomads at first during only half the year, and the later change to conditions adapted to agriculture. The circumstantial character of the legend and the agreement of the details with physiographic facts in Kashmir and elsewhere, as will shortly appear, give ground for believing that the story is founded on fact.
Another legend, also quoted by Stein, relates how, after the drying up of the lake, the site was occupied by a town called Candrapura. A certain holy man, coming to the town and being refused entertainment, cursed it, and foretold its destruction by water. Later, a fountain-god, who visited the country in the guise of an old Brahman, asked and obtained permission to settle in the town, and then out of gratitude revealed himself in his true form and warned the king of the prospective submersion of the city. The king and his people accordingly migrated a short distance westward and, under the god's direction, founded a new town. Then the god took up his residence in the lake, which soon overwhelmed the old city. The natives say that ruins, supposed to be those of this city, have been seen at the bottom of Lake Wular.
Turning from legend to attested history, it appears that Kashmir, now and always, has suffered more or less from
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famine, due, not to drought, as in so many countries, but to floods, which drown the rice crop. In the time of King Avantivarman, A. D. 855-883, as Stein, on the authority of Kalahana, relates, Kashmir had long been suffering from peculiarly disastrous floods of this sort, and from
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