[Sidenote: ANCIENT CITY OF AVANTIPURA. _May, 1848._]
The neighbourhood of the village of Avantipura is one of the most interesting places in which the lacustrine strata of the Kashmir valley can be studied, as there is distinct evidence of the existence in that place of deposits much more recent than those which extend over the whole plain, and which were therefore formed when the valley was occupied by a large lake. Avantipura was formerly the site of a very large town, the capital, I believe, of the kingdom; built in the shape of an amphitheatre in a deep semicircular bay, enclosed by two low spurs, which project from the mountain Wasterwan, which rises immediately behind.
The ruins of the ancient town are still visible, consisting of heaps of stones, some of immense size, indicative of large buildings, but none of them showing the slightest traces by which the shape or structure of the edifices could be determined. These ruins extend all round the deep recess in the mountains, and terminate below quite abruptly, without any apparent cause, in a perfectly horizontal line along the mountain-side. The mountain behind is an isolated peak, furrowed by numerous ravines, which are dry except immediately after rain. The place would therefore appear singularly inappropriate as the site of a large city, were there not, I think, sufficient evidence that a lake existed in front of the town, the surface of which was on a level with the horizontal line by which the ruins are abruptly terminated.
[Sidenote: CLAY, WITH BROKEN POTTERY. _May, 1848._]
The ruins of the ancient city stand upon the lacustrine clay of the Kashmir plain, and are therefore posterior in age to the period when the valley was occupied by one large lake. Immediately in front of the ancient ruins, between them and the small modern village of Avantipura, which is situated on the banks of the Jelam, there occur beds of fine brown-coloured clay, containing in great quantity fragments of pottery, with here and there small pieces of charcoal and bone. In one place on the bank of a small ravine, which then probably carried a streamlet into the lake, I found the clay to contain, mixed with the broken pottery, numerous shells, some fresh-water and some land species, and all the same as are common at the present day in the river Jelam, or on the grassy hill-sides in the valley. The place where these shells occur is fifty or sixty feet above the river.