Sharda

Sharda lies beside the Neelum River in the mountains of Kashmir. Here stands Sharada Peeth, a temple dedicated to Sharada, the Kashmiri name for the goddess Saraswati. Once a celebrated centre of learning, it was known for a library that drew scholars from far away. The Sharada script takes its name from the institution, and Kashmir itself came to be called Sharada Desh, the country of Sharada.

The shrine was already a place of pilgrimage by the eighth century. The chronicler Jonaraja recounts that Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin visited it in 1422, seeking a vision of the goddess; she appeared to him in a dream after he had slept in the temple court. In the sixteenth century Abu'l-Fazl described the stone temple and the great reverence in which it was held.