Kashmir (Balti: کشمیر; Dogri: कश्मीर, Gojri : کشمیر; Poonchi/Chibhali: کشمیر; Kashmiri: कॅशीर, کٔشِیر; Ladakhi: ཀཤམིར; Shina: کشمیر; Uyghur: كھسىمڭر) is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term “Kashmir” referred only to the valley lying between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal range.; since then, it has been used for a larger area that today includes the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir consisting of the Kashmir valley, Jammu and Ladakh; the Pakistani-administered provinces of the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir, and the Chinese-administered, mostly uninhabited, regions of Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract.
In the first half of the first millennium, Kashmir became an important center of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose in the region. The heritage of Kashmir during this period is well documented in Rajatarangini by Kalhana. In 1349, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir and inaugurated the line Salatin-i-Kashmir. For the next five centuries Kashmir had Muslim monarchs, including the Mughals, who ruled until 1751, and thereafter, the Afghan Durranis, who ruled until 1820. That year, the Sikhs under the Jat-Sikh King Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Dogras—under Gulab Singh—became the new rulers. Dogra Rule, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until 1947, when the former princely state became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of China.
The Nilamata Purana describes the Valley’s origin from the waters, Ka means “water” and Shimir means “to desiccate”. Hence, Kaashmir stands for “a land desiccated from water.” There is also a theory which takes Kaashmir to be a contraction of Kashyap-mira or Kashyapmir or Kashyapmeru, the “sea or mountain of Kashyapa”, the sage who is credited with having drained the waters of the primordial lake Satisar, that Kaashmir was before it was reclaimed. The Nilamata Purana gives the name Kaashmira to the Valley considering it to be an embodiment of Uma and it is the Kaashmir that the world knows today. The Kaashmiris, however, call it Kashir, which has been derived phonetically from Kaashmir, as pointed out by Aurel Stein in his introduction to the Rajatarangini.
In the Rajatarangini, a history of Kashmir written by Kalhana in the 12th century, it is stated that the valley of Kaashmir was formerly a lake. This was drained by the great rishi or sage, Kashyapa, son of Marichi, son of Brahma, by cutting the gap in the hills at Baramulla (Varaha-mula). Cashmere is a variant spelling of Kaashmir.
The eastern region of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir has also been beset with a boundary dispute. In the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, although some boundary agreements were signed between Great Britain, Afghanistan and Russia over the northern borders of Kashmir, China never accepted these agreements, and the official Chinese position did not change with the communist takeover in 1949. By the mid-1950s the Chinese army had entered the north-east portion of Ladakh.
“By 1956–57 they had completed a military road through the Aksai Chin area to provide better communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet. India’s belated discovery of this road led to border clashes between the two countries that culminated in the Sino-Indian war of October 1962.”
China has occupied Aksai Chin since the early 1950s and, in addition, an adjoining region almost 8% of the territory, the Trans-Karakoram Tract was ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963.
