In consequence of all this wealth of literature, very little remained to be done, when in 1868 Lieutenant Cole, R.E., obtained an appointment as superintendent of the Archæological Survey of India, and proceeded to Kashmir with a staff quite sufficient to settle all the remaining outstanding questions.[304] Unfortunately, however, Lieutenant Cole had no previous knowledge of Indian antiquities in general, and had not qualified himself by any special study for the investigation he was deputed to undertake. All, therefore, he could do was to adopt blindly General Cunningham’s dates, and in this there would have been no great harm, but, when he came across a temple which had escaped his predecessor’s attention, he arbitrarily interpolated it, with a date of his own, into the General’s series. As all these dates are given as if perfectly ascertained without any of the reasoning on which they are based, they would, if accepted, lead to the most erroneous conclusions. Putting these, however, aside, Lieutenant Cole’s plans and architectural details are a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the subject, and with his photographs and those now available by others, enable those who have not had an opportunity of visiting the valley to form an opinion of their own, and with all these lights there seems little difficulty in ascertaining all the really important facts connected with this style. * * * * * The first and most misleading mistake that has been made with reference to Kashmiri architecture, was the assumption by General Cunningham that the enclosure to Zein-ul-ab-ud-dín’s tomb in Srinagar originally belonged to an ancient Kashmiri temple. Lieutenant Cole boldly prints on his plates, “probable date A.D. 400 to 500,” a mistake as nearly as may be of 1000 years, as it is hardly doubtful that it was erected for or by the prince whose name it bears, and who in A.D. 1410 succeeded his father Sikandar, who bore the ill-omened nickname of Butshikan, the idol-breaker. As will be seen from the woodcut (No. 156), it consists of a series of small pointed arches in rectangular frames, such as are very frequently found in Mahomedan art, and the peculiarities of the gateways and other parts are just such as are found in all contemporary Moslem art in India. All the mosques and tombs for instance at Ahmedabad, A.D. 1396-1572, are made up of details borrowed from the architecture of the Jains, and the bases of their minarets and their internal pillars can only be distinguished from those of the heathen by their position, and by the substitution of foliage for human figures in the niches or places where the Hindus would have introduced images of their gods. [Illustration: 156. Tomb of Zein-ul-ab-ud-dín. Elevation of Arches. (From a drawing by Lieut. Cole.)]