Age of Literature: The Art & Science of Living (6th BCE - 1st BCE)

Crossing the Pir Panjal Pass near Srinagar, just beyond the old village of Aliabad Sarai, there’s a precipitous cliff locally known as ‘Hastivanj’ or ‘Hasti Watar’, which roughly translates to ‘the place where the elephants died’ in Sanskrit and Persian, respectively. While visitors may be surprised to find a reference to elephants so high up in Kashmir’s mountains, the story of this cliff and the elephants who died here goes back over 1,500 years. Now shrouded in legend, this is a dark tale of brutality, referred to not just in 12th century CE Kashmiri historian Pandit Kalhana’s text Rajatarangini but also Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari written in the 16th