Abstract
The Nilamatapuräna (Ancient Lore according to (the serpent) Nila), is a short text (by puranic
standards) of 1453 verses. Rather than a full-fledged puråna or even an upa-puräna, it is really a
sthalamühütmya (local sacred lore) about the valley of Kashmir. It provides a great deal of informa-
tion regarding the Brahmanical/Hindu religion of Kashmir, of immense interest to both historians of
religion and art of the Valley. It was composed or rather compiled almost certainly in the early years
of the Karko a dynasty that came into power in 626 CE with Durlabhavardhan, the ruler who received
and befriended the famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang who visited the subcontinent five years later.
The text of the Nilamata, first published in 1924, was republished with a substantial commentary
and an English translation in 1973 by Ved Kumari.l Since then it seems to have attracted the atten-
tion of Japanese Indologists who, in 1994, published a collection of studies on this seemingly minor
text that many major puranas have not yet received (Ikari 1994). This book, which is not very easily
accessible to students in the subcontinent, is in many ways a very detailed analysis of the text, both
linguistically and contentwise. Nevertheless, it does not exhaust the analytic possibilities of the in-
teæsting Nflamara, and one of the topics, that of the veneration of the Buddha, is the subject of this
modest anicle.
PRATAPADITYA PAL . (2009) The Veneration of the Buddha in the Nilamatapuräqa , Pakistan Heritage, Volume 1, Issue 1.
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