KASHMIR 331
having straps made of grass ropes covering their feet and an
old-fashioned turban, while the young men use boots and
shoes, tight pants, long coats and turbans after the
Punjabi style.
The women adhere to their old mode of dress, the
pheran with long sleeves. These have a small white veil
covering only the back part of the head, and above the
forehead they have a white celluloid band to signify that
they are married. The unmarried and the widows are
without this band. The ornaments the women wear are of
the Muslim style; a number of thin wide rings are pierced
through the edge of the ears. They have the custom of
bearing the crimson mark on the forehead, which is con-
spicuously absent among the Punjabi ladies.
The Pandits are a f air-complexioned race* Some of the
young Panditanis, Ramdas saw in Kashmir, possessed a
beauty in feature and colour, which was quite unique and
ethereal. Their gait was peculiarly their own. They would
walk in all their majesty and stateliness like veritable
queens.
The spoken language of both the Muslims and Pandits
is a strange mixture of several tongues, Sanskrit, Urdu and
Persian. It has no script. The written language, for all
business, legal and other purposes, is Urdu.
The fertile valley of Kashmir was in the past, before the
advent of the British in India, a cynosure in the eyes of
the Persian invaders, who raided and pillaged the place,
converting by force most of the Hindu population to Islam.
The present generation of Muslims in Srinagar are the
descendants of the pandits converted during the invasions
and reigns of Muslim kings. In language and mode of dress
a Muslim and a pandit have no difference. The distinction
is made out from the absence of the sandal mark between
the eye-brows on the face of the Muslim, while the mark
is very prominent on that of the pandit.
In regard to food, it is almost common between the two
42*