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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 12, p. 239.

GILGIT 239 (Felis uncia), and occasionally the wild dog (Cyon rutilans). The red bear ( Ursus isabellinus), the snow-cock (Tetraogallus hinzalayanus), and the grey partridge are common; and many of the migratory birds of India-wild geese, duck, and quail-pass up and down in the autumn and spring. Below the forest on the lower and more barren hills, nume- rous flocks of wild sheep (Ovis vzgnei and O. nahura) are met with. The climate is healthy and dry. At Gilgit itself it is never very cold and snow seldom lies for more than a few hours. In the summer it is hot owing to the radiation from the rocky mountains, but it is cool compared with the climate of Northern India. The rainfall is very light. The remains of ancient stone buildings and Buddhist carvings suggest that Gilgit was once the seat of a Hindu kingdom, or a Buddhist dynasty, while traces of abandoned cultivation point to the fact that the population in early times was far larger than it is at present. For many centuries the inhabitants of Gilgit have been Muhammadans, and nothing definite is now known of their Hindu predecessors. Tradition relates that the last of the Hindu Ras, Sri Badat, known as Adam-Khor, the `man-eater,' was killed by a Muham- madan adventurer, who founded a new dynasty known as Trakhane. Sri Badat's rule is said to have extended to Chitral, and the intro- duction of Islam seems to have split up the kingdom into a number of small states carrying on a fratricidal warfare and incessant slave- raiding. The Trakhane dynasty is now extinct, though it is claimed that the present titular Rd of Gilgit has a slight stain of Trakhane blood. In the early part of the nineteenth century we find Yasin giving a Rd to Gilgit. He was killed by the ruler of Punial, who in turn was killed by Tair Shah, chief of Nagar. Tair Shah was succeeded by his son, who was killed by Gauhar Aman, ruler of Yasin. For the subsequent history of Gilgit see KASHMIR. The history of Astor, or, as the Dogras call it, Hasora, is intimately connected with that of Skardu. More than 300 years ago Ghazi Mukhpun, a Persian adven- turer, is said to have married a princess of the Skardu reigning family. The four sons born of this union became Ras of Skardu, Astor, Rondu, and Kharmang respectively, and from them are descended the families of the present chiefs of those places. The independence of Astor ceased at the Dogra conquest. The present titular Rd of Astor is the lineal descendant of Ghazi Mukhpun. The Dogra rule has secured peace to the country, but it will be long before the country recovers entirely from the desolating slave-raids of Childs. The wazdrat contains 264 villages, with a population, according to the Census of r90r, of 6o,885. The pressure on the cultivated area is great, the density being 1,295 per square mile. The people of Astor and Gilgit would be surprised if they were told that they were Dards