Kashmir before the common era in Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Wikipedia: A critical analysis in 2022 (original) (raw)

Is Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya the earliest Indian source to attest to the word Kashmir? Does Kashmir in the Mahābhāṣya occur in a context that only reveals information about rice cultivation in the valley? Is Kashmir not mentioned anywhere in the Vedic literature? Did Pāṇini call the people of Kashmir Kashmirikas? If one were to look for answers to these questions in the Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism-which claims in its preface that the depth and breadth of information provided in it are unmatched by any reference work on Hinduism-and Wikipedia, one will find statements that answer the above questions in the near-affirmative. This paper will foreground evidence from Aṣṭādaśavidyā texts (the lack of evidence in one case) and secondary literature that problematises answers to the above questions in the near-affirmative. Finally, this paper will add a new data point to the considerations already present in a recently published paper (Landscape in the Nāṭyaśāstra and clues to its spatial origin: A study in 2019) that strengthens the case for Kashmir when thinking about the spatial origins of the Nāṭyaśāstra.