Kashmir Under The Dogras

Description

Contemporary literature and published works covering the Dogra period in Jammu and Kashmir do not provide any significant account to the development of modern healthcare and education in Kashmir. The accounts, generally, have been glossed over with scant details. Nor do the published accounts refer to any collaborative literature or provide any historical perspective of the joint scholarly pursuits undertaken by the Kashmiri and western scholars during the Dogra period. There is also a complete historical hiatus about the existence and use of Kashmiri Numeral System developed during the Dogra Rule. With the objective to undertake the research enquiry into the above stated historical gaps, the present study, a first direct investigation into these critical areas of Kashmir history, evaluates the scantily recorded and scattered missionary work and the state patronage the Dogra Rule extended in bringing the benefits of modern education and modern healthcare facilities to Jammu and Kashmir during the late 19th and 20th century. The study constructs a historical perspective that defines the contours and development of the interface in scholarship and outlines the landmarks of Indic studies undertaken through collaborative scholarship between the Western and Kashmiri scholars as an outcome of humanistic orientalism duly patronized and supported by the Dogra Maharajas under a state policy. The study also re-interprets and evaluates the now lost and currently unknown indigenous Kashmiri Numeral System developed during the Dogra period and thereby adds an important new contribution to the corpus of the Kashmiri language. Significantly, the entire study is based on never-before-known archival sources of the Dogra era dealing with the Kashmiri numerals and surveys a copious quantity of very unique archival cache of highly interesting correspondence exchanged between the Kashmiri and Western scholars, many of which for the first time.