15

Vaṃśāvalīs
Chronicles of Place and
Person—The Rājataraṅgiṇī

1.╇ The Chronicle

T
he vaṃśāvalī as a genre was the chronicle of a state, region,
or kingdom. It recorded various changes at the tipping
point, as it were, of the small kingdom being converted
into a more powerful larger one. As I have suggested in the
previous chapter, these changes included the mutation of clan
so�cieties into caste societies when the kingdom was established,
the extension of the peasant economy to support the kingdom,
and recognition of the mutual acculturation of Puranic and
local religion. The change was manifested most clearly in the
establishing of a court culture and administration in the kingdom,
requiring literacy for maintaining records. Its most visible form
lay in royal temples as symbols of power. The records covered
local events, but their form reflected the processes of change that
were taking place in other regions as well.
The initial form of the vaṃśāvalīs, as fragments of information,
probably began from the latter part of the first millennium ad,
but their more definitive forms took shape a few centuries later.
Found in many parts of the subcontinent, they vary from brief and
somewhat cryptic dynastic lists to lengthy poems treated as kāvyas,
narrating events in sequential order. They draw on a number of
598 The Past Before Us

sources since they had to adjust the descent lists of dynasties and
create a linear history.
Shuffling events into a single chronology can also be prob­
lematic. For the earlier entries, some concession may be made
to what they assume is history. When the sources become more
reliable, as for instance when inscriptions are consulted, this is
less of a problem. The distinction between the vaṃśāvalī and the
other genres of the time that have been discussed in previous
chapters is that its scope is not limited to a single king, as in the
carita, or to a single dynasty, as in its inscriptions. The chronicle
incorporates the history of a region from its beginnings to the pre­
sent. The sources consulted therefore vary. Some could have their
information “edited” from time to time. Early genealogies would
have been subjected to telescoping or padding—eliminating some
names, adding others—without too much attention to historicity.
Nevertheless, the vaṃśāvalī was written from the perspective of
a point in time, and this would have left a mark on the narrative.
Such chronicles focused on the region and referred to the history
of neighbouring areas only where it impinged on the history being
recorded: other areas would have had their own chronicles.
Vaṃśāvalīs draw on both the itihāsa-purāṇa and the local tra­
dition, focusing on the court or the temple or even, on occasion,
the caste. In some places they are referred to by different names,
such as pīdhiyāvalī (the line of generations); prabandha and rāso
in Gujarat and Rajasthan; buruñjis among the Ahoms of Assam;
Mādalā Pañjī in Orissa. The keeping of court records is advocated
by Kauṭilya and others from earlier centuries, and although these
have not survived, except for inscriptions, some fragmentary
records may have been available to those writing chronicles.
Since the time of William Jones, it has been repeatedly said that
there was only one text from early India that could be regarded as
historical writing: the Rājataraṅgiṇī, a history of Kashmir written
by Kalhaṇa in 1148–9.1 Yet even this statement was doubted by

1╛╛Kalhaṇa’s
Rājataraṅgiṇī, Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir, Sanskrit Text
with Critical Notes, ed. M.A. Stein; Rājataraṅgiṇī, ed. and trans. M.A. Stein;
U.N. Ghoshal, “Dynastic Chronicles of Kashmir”; H.C.Ray, Dynastic History of
Northern India, vol. 1, 107–84.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 599

some. Aurel Stein, who worked extensively on the text, argued that
it was intended for didactic religion and not history, a statemnent
that shows little familiarity with the religion of India, or with
the genre of chronicles as historical writing. The choice of what
is included in a chronicle draws on a historiographic tradition,
however muted it may seem. Kalhaṇa describes it as a kāvya,2
but this should not be read as a disclaimer of its being history.
The literary form is that of a kāvya, as was so with many literary
compositions, especially in Sanskrit, but its contents are intended
as history. The persons and events he describes are those that he
believed existed and occurred in the past. This is different from
other contemporary kāvyas that are clealy fictional. It is also dif­
ferent from the caritas and the praśasti inscriptions, but is closer
to the vaṃśāvalī with its larger canvas and its more expansive
historical perspective.
The uniqueness of this text has been attributed to what some see
as a kind of demarcation of Kashmir, suggesting a sense of nation­
alism at that time;3 there was also contact with other people who
had a stronger sense of history, such as in the Chinese and Islamic
traditions. However, there is little evidence of the Sanskrit literati’s
familiarity with Chinese historical texts, or with texts in Arabic,
Persian, and Turkish. The persistence of Buddhism in the region,
with its recognizable sense of history, as well as the proximity of
Ladakh and Tibet with an incipient tradition of chronicles, could
well have made an impact on scholarship in Kashmir. To this
one may add that although the Rājataraṅgiṇī is of a remarkable
quality in historical writing, the genre as such was not unique to
Kashmir and was known to other courts. What may have made
a difference is that Kashmir from the ninth to the twelfth century
was a significant centre of scholarship in grammar, aesthetics,
and philoÂ�sophy—in the work of Ananadavardhana, Abhinava­
gupta, and others—and this ambience would have affected the
work of a sensitive scholar such as Kalhaṇa.
This intellectual vibrancy is attested to by Al-Biruni, the Central
Asian scholar who spent time in India in the eleventh century. He

2╛╛1.4–5, 1.23.
3╛╛A.L. Basham, “The Kashmir Chronicle”, 57–65.
600 The Past Before Us

makes particular reference to what he calls the Hindu sciences

flourishing in Kashmir and Banaras, and thinks that the inroads of
Mahmud of Ghazni led scholars to flee to these two places.4 But
the high point of the intellectual articulation of Kashmiri scholars
was before the arrival of Mahmud.
Kalhaṇa’s deep interest in the past of Kashmir seems to have
arisen from his observation of recent politics, combined with what
a scholar of that time would have read. There was doubtless an
imprint of the itihāsa-purāṇa tradition through the reading of vari­
ous Purāṇas. For someone curious about the past of Kashmir, there
also had to be a familiarity with Buddhist historiography, re�flect�-
ed in the history of the Saṅgha and the narratives of kings who
were patrons of Buddhism, such as the Aśokāvadāna. This would
be expected in an area where once Buddhism had been an impor­
tant ideological component of the culture.
I shall not discuss the Rājataraṅgiṇī in detail since so much has
already been written on it as a history. I would like to draw attention
to the chronicles or vaṃśāvalīs, of which genre the Rājataraṅgiṇī
is one, and without doubt the most impressive. A comparison with
less-known ones, such as the vaṃśāvalī of Chamba, might provide
some insights into the relation of vaṃśāvalīs with the itihāsa-
purāṇa tradition. As a genre, it is found in various parts of the
subcontinent, although those of the hill states tended to be dis­
cussed in earlier writings on the subject.5
Vaṃśāvalī is a path of succession, and the succession is of kings.
It is not the path of a single line of kings, which is not possible be-
cause the narrative generally starts in the remote past. The history
of various dynasties is being narrated, and these have to be aligned
to provide continuity. The integrating of more than a couple of
chronicles in some cases also creates problems. Other information
fills out the details of the path.
The corpus of inscriptions of a dynasty recorded past events
and persons, but the chronicles fleshed these out with informa­
tion on other facets. The pattern of the inscriptions and that of

4╛╛Alberuni’s
India, vol. I, 22, 45.
5╛╛E.T.
Atkinson, Himalayan Gazetteer (1881–4); J. Ph. Vogel, Antiquities of
the Chamba State; S.P. Sen, Sources for the History of India.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 601

the chronicles suggests a continuity and development in historical

thinking. The vaṃśāvalī was different in form and content from
what preceded it and which remained parallel—namely, historical
biographies and inscriptions. Nevertheless, there are similarities
with these that are incorporated into the chronicles. The unit was,
relatively speaking, the small state and not large imperial sys­
tems. Where there was limited data on early dynasties and if the
turnover of dynasties as in later times was fairly frequent, then
the author of the chronicle had to find ways to make the narrative
read preferably as seamless.

2.╇ The Author

The Rājataraṅgiṇī forms a useful starting point for looking at the
format of the vaṃśāvalī. Stein edited the text, which appears to
have been put together by Ramakantha in 1648–86. Although it
was distributed later among various members of the family of
Pandit Sivarama, who interestingly treated it as a patrimony, it
nevertheless survived.6 Manuscript copies were available in the
nineteenth century in Calcutta and Lucknow.7 The manuscripts as
we have them now and the variations have been discussed else­
where.8
Kalhaṇa is described in the colophon as the son of Caṇpaka, a
minister at the court of the previous king. The king was deposed
and killed in 1101. Caṇpaka was at the court for many years but
may not have had an official position. The successor dynasty may
not have continued the services of families who had served the
previous king. What the court had experienced in the actions of
recent kings was not attractive to a discerning scholar. Kalhaṇa
thus was familiar with court circles, even if not serving at the
court himself. This distancing probably enabled him to make in­
dependent judgements on various rulers. In this, one is reminded
of Bāṇa’s perspective on the court: it may explain the intellectual
6╛╛The genealogical records of present-day dominant castes, maintained by
pāṇḍas at pilgrimage centres, are similarly viewed as property, hence the hesita­
tion to show them to those who are not clients.
7╛╛Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī, ch. 3, 42–55.
8╛╛M. Witzel, “On Indian Historical Writing”, 1–57.
602 The Past Before Us

quality of both texts. It has been suggested that the Rājataraṅgiṇī

was in part a response to the events linked to the change of dynasty
and the removal of Kalhaṇa’s father from office, but the nature of
the narrative suggests a wider interest in the history of the region.
He is critical of earlier rulers but more circumspect about the cur­
rent dynasty, whose reigns are addressed in the last book, which
is half the length of the whole text.9
Unlike the historical biographies, in this text there is no brief
biography of the author. Kalhaṇa’s birthplace was the ancient
BuddhÂ�ist centre at Parihāsapura. He began to write his chronicle in
the Laukika era 4224, i.e. ad 1148/9, and completed it the follow­
ing year. His intention was to write a kāvya, a long poem in śānta
rasa, a mood evoking peace, but what resulted was somewhat
different owing to the turbulence at the court.

3.╇ The Rājataraṅgiṇī

The chronicle begins with invocatory verses to Śiva. Even though
he was a Śaiva brāhmaṇa, Kalhaṇa does not omit narrating the
earlier Śaiva persecution of Buddhist monks and the destruction of
Buddhist monasteries. Possibly he and his family were eclectic, as
would seem from his uncle having saved the Buddha image from
Parihāsapura when the eleventh-century king Harṣa was plunder­
ing temples and religious centres.10 The name Kalhaṇa has been
explained as an Apabhraṃśa form of the Sanskrit kalyāṇa; if this
is so, it is curious that he did not sanskritize his name.
Kalhaṇa was not writing to pamper any particular patron. His
work appears to be an exercise in intellectual curiosity about the
past of Kashmir, the kingdom where he lived and the court at
which his father had served. He is also concerned with understand­
ing the inexplicable behaviour of kings just prior to the current
dynasty. Hence his criticism of the actions of kings who were
his close contemporaries. His narrative is peppered with severe
judgements on various groups who exploited Kashmir. There is
symmetry between the historian and the court, for if the dynasty

╇ 9╛╛Ibid., Book 8.

10╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 7.1097–8.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 603

is being legitimized by the historian, the king has to recognize the

delicate relationship between ruler and historian—lest the latter
use it to the disadvantage of the former. With the decline of Vedic
rituals of legitimation, grants to brāhmaṇas were on occasion an
acknowledgement of their facility in providing status in various
ways, as occasionally by constructing genealogies. This reduc�-
ed the dependence on actual kinship and instead relied more on
using the historical tradition to establish legitimacy. The author
with links to the court could emerge as an authoritative figure.
There has been some discussion on whether the Rājataraṅgiṇī
should be viewed as a kāvya or as history; or, is such a distinc­
tion tenable only for modern historical writing?11 Early societies
tended not to make a sharp differentiation between the two and
there can be overlaps in descriptions of events and persons. Even
if it is called a kāvya, it is not romantic fiction. Kalhaṇa is aware of
representing the past “as it was”, as itihāsa. This was characteristic
of the vaṃśāvalī, and it could take the form of a kāvya. Kalhaṇa
granted the right of the poet to represent the past which the poet
evokes and sees as divya dṛṣṭi (divine insight).12 But the poet must
also be impartial in narrating what happened.13 A Buddhist strand
lay in his underlining the impermanence of event and person be­
cause he believed this encourages the mind to be at peace—śānta
rasa. His narrative incorporates rulers such as Aśoka and Kaniṣka,
and even the evil Mihirakula. These persons figure in Mahāyāna
Buddhist texts but not in the Purāṇas, barring Aśoka who is just
a name in a list of kings.
The text is itihāsa in kāvya form, narrating the history of Kashmir
and incorporating into the narration legends, chronology based on
written records, and details of events closer to the author’s time.
It has many poetic passages but there is little of rasa, dhvani, and
varying metres. It is written in Sanskrit, and his handling of the
language makes it evident that he was a man of considerable learn­
ing. Kalhaṇa maintains that a poet in a sense resurrects the past,
and a good kāvya must on that account be an impartial narration
11╛╛See, for example, the discussion in W. Slaje, “In the Guise of Poetry—
Kalhaṇa Reconsidered”, 207–44.
12╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 1.4–5.
13╛╛Ibid., 1.7.
604 The Past Before Us

of events, free from love and hatred. It must incorporate informa­

tion from as many sources as possible. It must bring together the
fragments and give a connected account. Echoing Bilhaṇa, he
writes that the poet can bestow immortality on kings who would
otherwise not be remembered.14 He uses the term bhūtārtha, which
is not just “the past” but “the meaning of the past”, and “that which
has really happened”, and this makes a significant difference to
the narration of the past.
Kalhaṇa claims that his narrative has been arranged in accor­
dance with the time and succession of kings, and can be read or
heard.15 He further claims that he is correcting the chronology of
his predecessors and giving a connected account of the past by
partly filling in gaps and removing fictitious genealogies.16 This
of course is an area where the reliability of the source becomes
crucial, and Kalhaṇa, even though generally careful, may not have
been so on every occasion.
His attitude to history was also conditioned by his belief in
karma, the consequence of individual actions. But to this he
added that the karma of the king was intertwined with that of his
people, a ready explanation for good or bad kings. The narrative is
straightforward and takes an independent position—all the more
striking in an age when eulogies were a common idiom. Belief
in the supernatural is, however, conceded when he attributes
events to the power of Fate, divine retribution, magic, the decline
of dharma in the Kaliyuga, and karma. However, this does not
prevent him from explaining the intricacies of factions at the court
or the importance of fiscal and political policies.

4.╇ The Sources

Unlike many other chronicles, Kalhaṇa takes care to mention the
sources that he has consulted, apart from his reading as a scholar.
The work shows a familiarity not only with the epics and Purāṇas,
which would be expected, but with more historically-oriented
writing, such as the historical biographies written by Bāṇa and

14╛╛Ibid., 1.3–4, 45–6.

15╛╛Ibid., 1.21–4.
16╛╛Ibid., 1.8–18.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 605

more recently by Bilhaṇa. The influence of the Harṣacarita is

noticeable.17 The discussion on his sources is not only of interest
to the writing of the chronicle, it also indicates the lively interest
in the past of various scholars and keepers of records. This ap­
pears to have been, not unexpectedly, normal to the activities of
royal courts. Kalhaṇa’s description of the sources provides further
evidence for the existence of such texts.
As sources for the Rājataraṅgiṇī he consulted eleven works
on the rājakathā (narrative of rulers).18 He read the prabandha or
chronicle of Suvrata, a collation and summary of fragmentary
chronicles, and thought it lacked learning. Writing the biography
of a contemporary king, he feels, requires less skill than writing
a chronicle. Other sources include the important local Purāṇa
called the Nīlamata Purāṇa, with its minimal historical data, and
Kṣemendra’s Nṛpāvalī, or list of kings, which he dismisses as in­
correct. Various local inscriptions, especially the śāsanas (orders)
for establishing temples and monasteries, which were generally
grants of land and often included praśastipaṭṭas (the history of the
dynasty in summary form), and coin legends were consulted, as
were segments of the oral tradition preserved in popular legends
and other historical narratives. Among them, the Chavillākara had
information about Aśoka and his successors;19 the Pārthivāvalī of
Helarāja mentioned other kings, as did the text of Padmamihira.
The Nīlamata Purāṇa was an important source being the spe­
cific Purāṇa for Kashmir.20 It had been named after Nīla, whose
identity is a little ambiguous, either as an early king or a Nāga. It
was probably composed around the late first millennium ad and
was well known by the twelfth century (although dated to as
early as the sixth or seventh centuries ad).21 Since it does not con�-
form to all the themes required of an ideal Purāṇa it is perhaps
better categorized as an upapurāṇa or sub-Purāṇa.22 It has some

17╛╛Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī, vol. I, Introduction, 11.

18╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 1.9–15.
19╛╛Ibid., 1.17–19.
20╛╛Ved Kumari, The Nīlamata Purāṇa.
21╛╛G. Buhler, “Report on a Tour in Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Kash­

mir”, 38ff.
22╛╛Krishna Mohan, Early Medieval History of Kashmir.
606 The Past Before Us

information on ideas of time and of the descent of various lineages

similar to those of the major Purāṇas, reflecting a familiarity with
the manvantaras (reckoning in enormous time spans), the yugas, as
also the vaṃśānucarita section with genealogies of earlier rulers.
Kalhaṇa quotes from these but some names in the genealogies
were by now missing in their more recent recensions, suggesting
that there had been a “telescoping” of this section by eliminating
a few names. All the names are unlikely to have been authentic,
so the deletion of some would have resulted from a variety of
reasons, not least simple forgetfulness in memorizing a list. In
starting with the Nīlamata Purāṇa Kalhaṇa is locating Puranic
history well into the past, and prior to the kind of history that fol­
lows. History for him is not an extension of the Purāṇa, although
this has been suggested.23
Other categories of texts used as sources were the sthala-purāṇas
and the māhātmyas. These purported to narrate the believed his­
tories of specific sacred places and their topographies and were
enveloped in the mythology of the location, its deities and its as­
sociations. Of these the Vitasta-māhātmya was the most relevant
for Kalhaṇa. This relates to the Jhelum river, the mainstream in
every sense of the Kashmir valley. The māhātmyas attempt to put
together the legends of temples and places of pilgrimage and the
rituals to be performed at each place. They often subsume what
is believed to be local history. A fair amount of geographical
information is included through the descriptions of the places.
Such texts were written on birchbark, which requires that they be
copied more than once, and the rewriting could have introduced
changes.
The Nīlamata Purāṇa is thought to have borrowed from the BrahÂ�-
māṇḍa and Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇas whereas borrowing from
the Mahābhārata is more subtle. It has been argued that it has three
frame stories in imitation of the two of the Mahābhārata,24 each
frame representing a cultural tradition. It starts with a question
that Vaiśampāyana is said to have asked Janamejaya at the yajña

23╛╛R. Inden, “Imperial Purāṇas: Kashmir as Vaiṣṇava Center of the Words”,

29–99.
24 ╛╛M asato Fuji, “On the Textual Formation of the Nīlamata Purāṇa”,

55–82.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 607

with which the epic opens, and the question was why the kings of
Kashmir did not participate in the war at Kurukṣetra. This is the
first frame linking the text to the epic and could well have been
added on at some point. It reflects the wish to associate the history
of Kashmir with events of the Mahābhārata.
The second frame, which is more regional, is the imagined con­
versation between the first mythical king of Kashmir, Gonanda I,
and the ṛṣi Bṛhadāśva. This introduces aspects of the early history
of Kashmir which have parallels with the epic. The third is the
local frame of the conversation between the imagined king Nīla,
the lord of the Nāgas, explaining the rituals and customs of the
first inhabitants to the brāhmaṇa Candradeva. The first frame is
a claim to wide cultural links and depth in time, the second incor­
porates most of the text, and the third focuses on events linked
to the Nāgas who are said to be the indigenous inhabitants—in
a sense constituting the prehistory. This perhaps suggests that
the current religions were brought in by later settlers such as the
brāhmaṇas.
The mythological history of Kashmir is related through the
legend that the area was once a great lake and devastated by the
presence of a demon. Eventually the demon, through a ruse, was
made to drink dry the waters of the lake and the valley emerged.
This story is also told in the account of Xuanzang. It is a stereo­
typical story which occurs in the origin myths of many Himalayan
kingdoms.25 The mention of various places leads to the narration
of their māhātmyas. A list of people who inhabited Kashmir at
various times is given, and this includes the Nāgas who were pre­
dominant and the Piśācas associated with the north-west of India.
Many of the names are known from other sources, such as the
Abhisāras, Gāndhāras, Śakas, Khasas, and Madras—interestingly,
all people of the North. The term nāga is also used for tutelary
deities residing in the springs and pools of the valley, each of
which had a small shrine or temple, described in some detail in
the text.26

25╛╛N. Allen, “And the Lake Drained Away”, 435–51; H.H. Wilson, The Hindu
History of Kashmir, 8–9, mentions later historians of Sultanate times referring
to the breaching of the Baramullah Pass to allow the lake to be drained.
26╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 1.29ff.
608 The Past Before Us

A number of well-known stories relating to religious events, as

given in the major Purāṇas, are repeated here. Buddha is included
as an avatāra of Viṣṇu. Although also known from other areas,
in Kashmir this might suggest that there was still a presence of
Buddhism. Some texts speak of the Śaivaśāstras having been
written to stem the spread of Buddhism and expose the Buddha
as fraudulent.27 In the tenth century a vihāra was burnt and what
remained of it was used for building a temple to Śiva.28 The
ostensible reason for burning the vihāra was to trap a rebellious
feudatory, but the revocation by the king of the grant of thirty-six
villages to the vihāra and their being granted to others, suggests
that the motive was the suppression of Buddhism. Kashmir was
one of the important centres of Northern Buddhism, from where
Buddhist monks and scholars went to Central Asia and China in
the early centuries ad. The competition with the Śaivas was fierce
since, among other things, they saw the Buddhists as rivals for
royal patronage.
Reference is made to many groups of brāhmaṇas. Those con­
cerned with historical traditions are two: the kathāvid who recites
or reads the Purāṇas at various ceremonies, and the itihāsavid who
is knowledgeable about the past. The latter category is an addi­
tional qualification to the usual ones associated with brāhmaṇas,
although the Bhṛgu-Aṅgirasas were already associated with
itihāsa. Referring specifically to an itihāsa-knowing brāhmaṇa
makes itihāsa more central to the construction of knowledge
about the past.

3.╇ The Development of the Rājataraṅgiṇī

The Rājataraṅgiṇī consists of eight books of unequal length and
divides seemingly into three sections, suggestive of the pattern of
the vaṃśānucarita (the section on succession) in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.
This may be a natural division based on themes.29 The first part

27╛╛Ved Kumari, The Nīlamata Purāṇa, 177.

28╛╛T.Funayama, “Remarks on Religious Predominance in Kashmir: Hindu
or Buddhist”, 367–76; Rājataraṅginī, 6.171–3.
29╛╛A.L. Basham, “Kalhana and his Chronicle”, 57–65.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 609

covers origin myths and early inhabitants. The second moves

towards kings of vaguely defined early dynasties. The third and
most substantial section is the narrative of established dynas­
ties.
The origin myths of Book One continue into Book Two with
its references to scattered kings and dynasties. The draining of
the lake prior to the settlement of the area coincided in time with
the first six Manus and was ready for settlement during the time
of the seventh Manu. 30 This links the local narrative with the
meta-narrative in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa. The earlier text was taken as
a source for the beginnings of history, and in the itihāsa-purāṇa
tradition, history began with the narrative as given in the Purāṇas.
(Significantly there are no references to Aryans as the founders
of history!) The draining of the lake was necessary to forming
a nucleus for the region. The implicit symbolism is that of the
receding of water to provide land for settlement, as in the story
of Manu and the Flood from the Purāṇas. It helps establish terri­
torial boundaries which were more firmly defined by subsequent
events.
The names of fifty-two rulers approximately contemporary
with the early lineages listed in the Purāṇas are said to be lost. 31
The chronology is then synchronized with the calculation of the
Kaliyuga, as given in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, a post-Gupta text on
astronomy. 32
The earliest people were the Nāgas associated with the VidyāÂ�
dharas, an association that is more frequent in the Sramanic
texts. The kings of the first book often borrow names from the
Nīlamata Purāṇa, which links them with the major Purāṇas. The
earliest king, Gonanda I, is said to be related to Jarāsandha of the
Mahābhārata, and therefore involved in the battles with Kṛṣṇa.
The choice of relationship was with someone who was opposed
to the Yādavas, and therefore to Kṛṣṇa, and was virtually mur­
dered in the epic. His son Gonanda II was a mere child when the
Mahābhārata war took place and therefore could not participate

30╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 1.25–8.
31╛╛Ibid., 1.44ff.
32╛╛Ibid., 1.56.
610 The Past Before Us

in it. This answers the question why the kings of Kashmir were
not present on the battlefield at Kurukṣetra. Participation in
the war was a matter of status but also suggested links with the
kṣatriya rājās of the genealogies of the Purāṇas. The fifty-two
lost generations appropriately belong to this period, a grey area
in historical events.
A further list of kings includes Lava, the first to grant an agra�
hāra, and Kuśa, the latter succeeding the former, but these two are
not connected with the Rāmāyaṇa. Rather, the early times involve
many siddhas (holy men), and Śaiva ascetics, common to other
chronicles as well. The former would have been attuned to the
local religion, the latter probably less so although their opposition
was to the Buddhists. The opposition is sometimes disguised in
stories of misbehaviour against royalty. 33 An example of this was
a Buddhist monk seducing, through magical power, the wife of
king Nara. The predictable punishment is the burning down of
many vihāras, with their grants being revoked and given instead
to brāhmaṇas. These Śaiva–Buddhist confrontations are referred
to often, and, with royalty generally supporting the former, some
decline in Buddhism was inevitable and the decline has to be ex�-
plained. This contrasts with earlier times, when both were reci­
pients of royal patronage.
Aśoka receives more attention than he gets in other brahmani­
cal works, where he is merely a name in a king-list. Here he is
the first historically known king in the narrative. Kalhaṇa cites
a specific source, the Chavillākara, now unavailable, as provid­
ing information on the king. Such information was also available
from the Buddhist texts of the Northern Tradition, such as the
Aśokāvadāna. Kalhaṇa states that Aśoka embraced the doctrine
of the Jina, i.e. became a Buddhist, founded the city of Śrīnagara,
and built many stūpas. He is said to have brought Buddhism to
Kashmir. 34 He is treated as a king of Kashmir with no mention of
the rest of his empire, except that he is called a bhūpati (lord of
the earth). He obtained a son, Jalauka (not mentioned in any other
source) through propitiating Śiva, and this son was instrumental in

33╛╛Ibid., 1.199–200.
34╛╛Ibid., 1.101ff.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 611

attacking the mlecchas—presumably the Hellenistic Greeks that

threatened the kingdom. Unlike his father, Jalauka was not a patron
of the Buddhists. He settled new lands, introduced the practice
of caste in social functioning, and created a kingdom with a state
administration comparable to that of Yudhiṣṭhira (who by now
was being held up as the paragon of a dharmic king). The process
described by Kalhaṇa seems fairly accurate. Subsequent to this,
the Kuṣāṇa kings are listed but described as turuṣkas (Turks), the
label doubtless pointing only to their Central Asian origin. Some
of the names in the list are known from other sources but their
order here is confused. This is the period when Buddhism was pre�-
valent but conflict with the brāhmaṇas is apparent.
The competition between Buddhists and brāhmaṇas soon des­
cends into the persecution of the Buddhists, with their monasteries
being burnt, their grants revoked, and on occasion their monks
killed. The Hūṇa/Hun king Mihirakula was especially vicious
and is described as bhūpāla vetāla (demon king). 35 Kalhaṇa is
contemptuous of the brāhmaṇas of Gandhāra who accepted grants
from such a despicable king. He is surprised that the subjects did
not rise in revolt and kill him and asserts that he was probably
protected by the gods. 36 The Hūṇas are followed by a series of
kings that came from elsewhere. Among them was a Meghavāhana
brought from Gandhāra, at the request of the prajā (subjects), and
the saciva (ministers), which was an unusual procedure.
Book Three opens with the narrative of Meghavāhana’s rule and
ends with that of Balāditya. Meghavāhana is a non-brahmanical
figure given to Buddhist and Jaina ethics, such as forbidding ani­
mal sacrifice. He is said to have conquered Laṅkā, the sea having
parted, allowing the army to cross over. 37 He and his queen are
donors of many vihāras for monks, but also many agrahāras. The
listing of some of the vihāras is reminiscent of Buddhist chronicles
listing monasteries. Further on in the narrative the removal of a
king is signalled by his abdication in order to become an ascetic,
a theme that crops up from time to time in various narratives. 38
35╛╛Ibid., 1.292ff.
36╛╛Ibid., 1.289, 307–16, 324.
37╛╛Ibid., 3.71, 7.1137–8.
38╛╛Ibid., 2.143–4, 151–3, 162.
612 The Past Before Us

The wish to become an ascetic may have been a euphemism for

being forced to abdicate.
Book Four introduces dynastic history in a more systematic
way, constituting a distinctive second section of the text. It begins
with the Kārkoṭa dynasty, which was responsible for consolidating
the kingdom of Kashmir in the seventh century. The origin of the
Kārkoṭas is linked to the Nāga Kārkoṭa, said to be a deity but also
a kinsman of the ruling family. Since this was a dynasty of the
seventh century ad, Chinese annals also provide incidental refer­
ences to corroborate the text, the T’ang rulers being interested in
northern India. They mention that the Kārkoṭa king Candrāpīḍa
requested assistance against the Arabs in ad 713, a time when the
Arabs were attempting a conquest of Sindh. The chronology seems
to tally. Northern India at this time experienced at its frontiers the
proximity of the Chinese, the rise of Tibetan power, the presence
of the Arabs, and the threat of Turkish rule in Afghanistan. This
is not reflected even in a history as perceptive as that of Kalhaṇa,
which may be a comment on the visibility of the threat.
Lalitāditya Muktāpīḍa, the most accomplished king of this
dynasty, carried out expeditions, moving round the earth like the
sun. 39 Claims to conquest echo the praśasti inscription of Samu­
dra Gupta, which may have become a model for the writing of
praśastis. Victories in distant places, such as against the almost
mythical Uttarakurus or against Prāgjyotiṣa in Assam may be an
exaggeration, but his campaigns against the Dards in the north-
west of Kashmir and the Bhoṭas or Tibetans to the east are more
plausible. The spectacular campaign against the Central Asian
Turkish tribes, the Tukhāra, is also alluded to by Al-Biruni.40
Kashmir had close relations with them and they are remember­
ed as having been patrons of Buddhism.41 The story is told of a
Tukhāra who used a magic charm to part the waters of the river so
that the army could cross over. When asked for the charm he was
willing to exchange it for an icon of the Buddha from Magadha.42
Lalitāditya was not a major patron of Buddhism as is evident from

39╛╛Ibid.,4.126ff.
40╛╛Alberuni’sIndia, vol. I, 302.
41╛╛This would of course have been prior to their conversion to Islam.
42╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 4.259.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 613

his having built the magnificent Mārtaṇḍa temple to the sun-god

Sūrya. Brāhmaṇas had been invited to settle in Kashmir and they
had come in large numbers, some from Gandhāra and some from
āryadeśa—Central India, Kanauj, and Gauḍa.43
Another narrative states that an icon of Viṣṇu in a temple was
suspended by two magnets, one above it and one below it, a notion
known to more than one author, and may reflect the popularity of
magnetic material at this time.44 This presumes that the icon was
made of metal, possibly iron, although bronze was frequently used
in Kashmir for icons.45 On another occasion, when a piece of waste
land was dug at his orders, two ancient temples were found with
images, and engraved on the pedestals were the words “Rāma”
and “Lakṣmaṇa”. The story suggests wishful thinking. Similarly,
water wells up when Lalitāditya pierces the surface of the desert
with his lance. These are symbolic of the good king deriving from
recognized stereotypes.
Lalitāditya’s grandson Jayāpīḍa set out to conquer Kanauj, and
Kalhaṇa speaks of him as moving in the maṇḍala of kings just as
the sun moves in a maṇḍala of clouds.
The third section of the Rājataraṅgiṇī, consisting of Books Five
to Eight, covers the history of Kashmir over the 300 years prior
to Kalhaṇa. This part is more focused, the narrative becoming
more historical, perhaps in part due to epigraphic records. The
turbulence of politics probably demanded a more precise ac�-
count of events. Avantivarman, ruling in the mid-ninth century
(ad 855–83) built the town of Avantipura. He is best remembered
for permitting the engineer Suyya to redirect the course of the
Jhelum by an upstream dam with strategically located dykes. This
resulted in controlling the river for irrigation and an amazing
increase in agricultural production, with a dramatic reduction in
the price of rice.46

43
╛╛Ibid., 1.313, 341–3.
44
╛╛For modern readers this statement is similar to that of al-Qazwini, who
maintains that the liṅgam at Somanātha, made of iron, was suspended by a mag­
net, to the amazement of Mahmud of Ghazni and his entourage, who were anxi­
ous to destroy it. R. Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, 55.
45╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 4.185.
46╛╛Ibid., 5.68–117.
614 The Past Before Us

Śaṅkaravarman, who succeeded Avantivarman, campaigned in

the plains of the Punjab and more repeatedly against the Hindu
Shāhiya dynasty which had established itself in Kabul after the
decline of the Turkish Shāhiyas. Kashmir in the ninth century
was involved in the politics not only of the Punjab but also of
Gandhāra and Central Asia. Despite the agricultural prosperity of
the earlier time, there now seems to have been a fiscal crisis which
is reflected in various ways. The peasants came under an oppres­
sive administration which Kalhaṇa attributes to the appointment
of unscrupulous kāyastha officers. This was intensified by forced
labour in the form of kara-begara (porterage corvée), carrying
loads where there was an absence of roads, and the demand of high
taxes.47 Not content with this, the king began plundering temples,
a form of acquiring wealth which was resorted to by other Hindu
rulers of Kashmir as well.
Kalhaṇa mentions the rise of the Tantrins and their rivals the
Ekāṅgas. Both were military groups serving as royal bodyguards
but with a base in land holdings. Each supported opposing factions
at the court especially when a succession was being contested, and
made demands on the one who succeeded. In the tenth century
the intrigue involving these two groups increased, which finally
led the king to call for help from the land-owning intermediaries,
the Ḍāmaras, to re-establish the authority of the ruler. They were
disliked by the kāyasthas and the brāhmaṇas at the court who
saw them as rivals, and were finally brought under control in the
eleventh century.
Kalhaṇa argues that the amassing of wealth by these groups
and their associates and by the king was a disaster,48 as it followed
from famines dislocating people. Storing food in excess of a year’s
consumption, or more than that produced by the tillage of the
fields, was to be prohibited. Surplus food encouraged accumula­
tion which led to wealth and in turn to rebellion.49
Much historical detail follows, till we reach the queen Diddā,
wife of Kṣemagupta, who emerged as the eminence grise during

47╛╛D.D. Kosambi, “Origins of Feudalism in Kashmir”, 31–2, 108–20; RājataÂ�

raṅgiṇī, 5.51–2.
48╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 5.270–5.
49╛╛Ibid., 4.347–8.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 615

the reigns of a few short-lived kings and eventually in ad 980

assumed the rulership herself for a period of twenty-three years.
This was an extraordinary event, unforeseen in the śāstras, but
quite logical in terms of the contemporary politics of Kashmir as
described by Kalhaṇa. It brought her family, from Lohara, into
the contest for kingship. Among other things she restored old
and ruined temples, whereas her husband Kṣemagupta had burnt
down a Buddhist monastery, and had used the remains and those
from decaying temples to build a new temple to Śiva.50 On her
death in 1003 the throne passed to the family of Lohara with the
accession of Diddā’s nephew, Saṁgrāmarāja, who was her brother’s
son. This was in effect a change in the patriline. He was called
upon to assist the Hindu Shāhiya king against Mahmud of Ghazni,
referred to by Kalhaṇa as Hammīra, the king of the Turuṣkas.
With the defeat of the Hindu Shāhiyas, princes from their family
took refuge in Kashmir.
Kalhaṇa repeatedly blames the kāyasthas for maladministration,
and regards them with contempt for being oppressive, and for
looting temples and the treasury. Harṣa, who seized the throne and
ruled from 1089 to 1101, is also called a Turuṣka because he looted
temples in an attempt to overcome a fiscal crisis. Catastrophic
conditions caused by floods and famine resulted in a devastating
rise in prices. The king instituted a special category of officers,
the devotpatananāyaka, the officer for the uprooting of the dei­
ties, and they plundered the temples,51 keeping the wealth for the
king and themselves, despite the extreme distress of the people,
Kalhaṇa attributes Harṣa’s weakness to his lack of policies, his
poor ability to implement orders, his exploitation of his people
and his lack of morality.
Book Eight records the Lohara dynasty of the twelfth century.
The personalities of the time were close contemporaries so there
are virtually blow-by-blow accounts of court politics where some
descriptions read like pen-portraits of people. The intrigues, fac­
tion fighting, and violence continue, and some of this is attributed
to the scheming brāhmaṇas and kāyasthas at the court. There

50╛╛Ibid., 6.171ff., 307, 8.2380.

51╛╛Ibid., 8.1095.
616 The Past Before Us

is additionally a pendulum swing between collaterals. Kalhaṇa

praises the king Uccala, whose benefactions took care of some
of the distress of the subjects.52
In Kalhaṇa’s world deities do not come to the aid of kings, rituals
do not bestow divinity but only status, and caste observances are
not observed by royalty—queens were sometimes from the lowest
castes, the passion of the king overcoming social codes. Rules of
marriage are not observed, with kings marrying indiscriminately.
Was this necessitated by the manoeuvring of the intermediaries
or by a weakness in patriarchy?
The role of ministers, as given in theoretical texts referring
to polity of the post-Gupta period, seems divorced from the
realÂ�ity presented by Kalhaṇa, where they are part of the faction-
fighting and dissensions in the administration of the kingdom. His
father having been a minister either to Harṣa or to the later kings,
Kalhaṇa would have had fuller information on their activities.
This is reflected in the details of their reigns. Although the planets
were malignant at his birth, argues Kalhaṇa, Harṣa’s dependence
on ministers and his aversion to confrontations accounted for
many of his problems.53 Resort to the supernatural, and to fate
occasionally mentioned in earlier sections of the text, now tend to
fade. There is greater discussion of the politics of those involved
in governance.

5.╇ The Chronicle as History

The vaṃśāvalī, although it is a succession of kings, is also con­
ducive to constructing the history of a region, which is a charac­
teristic attempt of the genre. It is written at a point when the
identity of the region has been understood, even if not defined, and
therefore events tend to lead up to this identity. The geography and
topography help in the definition. The construction of the region
includes pointers of change, which become apparent from about
the late first millennium ad: the establishing of the state in the
newly emerging kingdoms; forms of political economy different

52╛╛Ibid., 8.107ff.
53╛╛Ibid., 7.1715–16.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 617

from the earlier ones; the acculturation of the region to caste and
Puranic religion; the coming of literacy and the interface between
mainstream culture and local culture, the mārga and the deśī; and
new styles of architecture and sculpture.
Space having been contoured, there remained the problem of
time, and this was more complex. The sources used were not al­
ways meticulous about time and often the contradiction between
yugas (ages) and samvats (eras) required some manipulation of the
succession, whether genealogical or dynastic. There was always
the temptation of telescoping, removing some names, and padding
by adding names when constructing genealogies. Editing of this
kind was common to the form, which is seldom tightly structured,
since its function is not limited to chronology. The concern with
status was often more central.
The format of the Rājataraṅgiṇī follows that of most vaṃśāvalīs.
The narrative begins with an origin myth relating to the region.
Connections are made with the early kṣatriya heroes of the PurāÂ�
ṇas to provide a link with the main Puranic tradition. The narrat­
ive then moves to listing early kings that are believed to be local,
with indications of a Sramanic presence. This gradually gives way
to dynasties, with descriptions of greater detail for more recent
dynasties. Independent statehood is claimed by the taking of royal
titles, but the more effective indicators are conquests, such as those
of Lalitāditya and Avantivarman (which seem like digvijayas),
or making marriage alliances with families of established status,
or building a magnificant temple which becomes a statement of
power.54 The focus of the narratives is usually on the king and this
gets sharper in contemporary times when the politics of opposition
also becomes more apparent. Kalhaṇa criticizes the oppression
of subjects by kings.55
Women intervening in the policies of kings is deplored, particu­
larly when kings were susceptible to their beauty to the extent of
one king making a woman of the lowest Domb caste his queen.56
Yet he does give space to queens such as Yaśovatī, Sugandhā,

54╛╛Ibid., 4.183–207, 5.44, 7.299.

55╛╛Ibid., 1.188, 7.1091–1115, 5.165–77.
56╛╛Ibid., 5.387–9.
618 The Past Before Us

Sūryamatī, and of course much more to Diddā. Some bestowed

status on the royal family, others reduced the status. Politics was
not entirely a male preserve and even concubines had some say
in matters of state, especially when they involved questions of
regency and of collateral lines succeeding to the throne.57 Kalhaṇa
seems to suggest that the competition for the throne largely re­
sulted from the ambitions of women involved in this struggle.
Kalhaṇa’s social conservatism is apparent from his discussion
of high and low castes. The brāhmaṇas seem to divide easily into
three categories: the sāmanta-dvija, the brāhmaṇa intermediary
generally of the family of the recipient of an agrahāra; the puro-
hita pāriṣadyas, the brāhmaṇas who ran the temple corporations;
and the paṇḍits or scholars who could be dedicated to learning or
could be ministers, high officials, and even military commanders,
and play politics at the highest levels, organizing opposition to
the king.58 The purohita pariṣads were corporations of those who
were the brāhmaṇa administrators of the temple and its property,
and of places of pilgrimage which brought in a sizeable income.
They had common ownership of the properties, the fees, and
the endowments of these places. They were therefore extremely
rich, powerful, and politically influential.59 This allowed them to
confront kings and ministers, often threatening to fast to death, an
effective threat in a society that believed that causing the death of
a brāhmaṇa was a heinous sin.60
Kalhaṇa takes the granting of agrahāras back to the earliest
dynasties, presumably because he could not visualize a situa­
tion when they did not exist. The brāhmaṇas from Gandhāra he
categorizes as the lowest because they accepted agrahāras even
from Mihirakula.61 The propitiation of brāhmaṇas was necessary
because it was thought that they could cause the destruction of
the king by magical means and through witchcraft, and also by
expressing opposition to the king.62 Kalhaṇa describes the use of
the fast as an instrument of threat to the king, as it was also used
57╛╛D. Rangachari, Invisible Women, Visible Histories, 83–191.
58╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 5.461–6, 7.12–13, 177, 675, 8.1071.
59╛╛Ibid., 2.132, 5.465–6, 8.900.
60╛╛Ibid., 8.898–900, 2224.
61╛╛Ibid., 1.307.
62╛╛Ibid., 1.272; 4.122–5.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 619

in other regions. Opposition by the brāhmaṇas takes the form

of prāyopaveśa, a voluntary fast that would cause havoc should
the brāhmaṇa die. There is a hint of blackmail in this form of
opposition since it is not accompanied by a lengthy and appro­
priate preparation. Such a fast was attempted against Diddā but
failed because she bribed the brāhmaṇas.63 In the next reign both
brāhmaṇas and the pāriṣadyas fasted against Bhikṣācāra.64
Kalhaṇa’s description of the functioning of the king in a world of
Ḍāmaras and other political groups, and particularly the purohita
pariṣad, provides little evidence to justify the theory that there was
a separation of political and ritual power, and that ritual power
was predominant in the peripheries of the kingdom and political
power in the centre; or that the relations between ritual and power
are best understood by seeing them through the heavy emphasis
on symbolism and the practice of ritual.65 The brāhmaṇas of the
pariṣads and the agrahāras drew an income primarily from the
land they controlled, and much less from their control over ritual.
Land made them so wealthy that they became a target for the
Ḍāmaras. Their power was based on their intervention in politics,
not as ritual specialists but as landowners: hence their being called
sāmanta-dvijas.
Kalhaṇa, being himself a brāhmaṇa, nevertheless holds these
brāhmaṇas in contempt, both for accepting the patronage of sub-
standard kings and for making this their claim to power.66 At the
popular level the respect and fear of the brāhmaṇa arose as much
from his status as from his wealth as a landowner, and the power
this brought, as also from the fear of the curse of the brāhmaṇa.
Brahmanical sects were competing for royal patronage on the
one hand, but were incorporating popular local practice into
their beliefs and practices to acquire wider support. One of the
manifestations of this was the assimilation of Tantric belief and
practice into the conventional practices of the sects.67

63╛╛Ibid.,6.335–40.
64╛╛Ibid.,8.768–75.
65╛╛B. Stein, “The Segmentary State in South Indian History”, 3–51; R. Inden,

“Hierarchies of Kings in Medieval India”, 99–125.

66╛╛K. Mohan, Early Medieval History of Kashmir, 217.
67╛╛A. Sanderson, “Religion and the State: Śaiva Officiants in the Territory of

the King’s Brahmanical Chaplain”, 229–300.

620 The Past Before Us

The confrontation of religious sects and their involvement in the

politics of the kingdom is also laid bare in another text of the late
ninth century, the play Āgama-ḍambara by Bhaṭṭa Jayanta, with
which Kalhaṇa is likely to have been familiar.68 The play dates
to the reign of Śaṅkaravarman. Jayanta was known for his com­
mentaries on Nyāya philosophy and discussions on the centrality
of logic. This may have encouraged the satire of the play.
The leading character in the play, Saṅkarṣaṇa, is hostile to the
Buddhists, Jainas, and Cārvākas, as well as to the Śaiva NīlāmÂ�
baras. The presence of the Cārvākas as materialists is interesting
since they hardly figure in most brahmanical texts. Not only is
the relationship of these sects extremely problematic, but there is
the additional role of the Vaiṣṇava Bhāgavatas, also patronized at
the time by the queen and some members of the court. This is not
unusual, since factions in the royal courts each supported different
sectarian views. The debate in the play takes strongly opposing
positions. Finally, a way is suggested that allows the validity of
variant views, provided none supports overthrowing the social
order. But this is the crux of the matter, since the varṇa ordering
of society was at issue, among other things.
Kalhaṇa observes a social distance with the lower castes. Even
when praising the hydraulic engineering of Suyya, he mentions
Suyya being a śūdra.69 His intention seems to have been to empha­
size Suyya’s innate intelligence, which led him to such an unusual
solution and eventually a high position. Elsewhere he states that
a king took a Śvapāka woman as his wife—which led to the rise
in status of the low-caste Śvapākas. He asks what could have
happened to the gods that they permitted her to enter the temple,
adding that the brāhmaṇas who allowed this were committing a
sin.70 He refers to some categories of people as impure, such as a
queen that came from the Domb community, and the Gāndhāras,
the Khasas from the mountains, the Bhauṭṭa from Tibet, and the
Dārada.71 The Dārada of the trans-Himalayan region are said to
speak an unfamiliar tongue, which makes them alien.72

68╛╛Bhaṭṭa Jayanta, Much Ado About Religion.

69╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 5.73–4, 80–91, 110–12.
70╛╛Ibid., 5.387–94.
71╛╛Ibid., 1.312–17.
72╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 8.2762–4. Recent work on the Dardic language points to it
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 621

According to Kalhaṇa the contestation for power began to in­

clude a wider range of people from about the eighth century ad.
There was of course the traditional fear of princes overthrowing
their father, a caution first articulated in the Arthaśāstra, which
compares princes to crabs who eat their parents.73 Kalhaṇa lists a
variety of reasons which may cause disaffection between father
and son. In these the roles of wives and stepmothers are as signifi­
cant as that of ministers, brothers, and evil-minded persons.74
Kalhaṇa states that the contenders for power over a period of
time were the Ḍāmaras, a term peculiar to Kashmir, but as a socio-
economic entity found in many regions at this time. They were
wealthy and powerful landowners anxious to control royal power
and ready to revoke grants to temples and appropriate them.75
Some began as ordinary householders but increased their power
by either setting up strongholds on their land or taking over those
of others. Since many of these were in the fertile portions of the
valley, their success was guaranteed. Their resort to lawlessness
led to their being disliked both by officials and brāhmaṇas. Their
rise in social status is probably indicated by their marrying wives
from among the local aristocracy and giving their daughters to
the royal family.76 During the reign of Avantivarman they ap­
propriated the villages donated to a temple, and on another occa­
sion they defeated the Tantrins whilst assisting Cakravarman to
regain the throne; later they assassinated the king.77 Conflict with
the reigning kings continued, including a rising of the Ḍāmaras
against Jayasimha and confrontations with Harṣa in the eleventh
century. They were subdued finally by Uccala, who followed
this act by magnanimous donations, which makes one wonder
whether Kalhaṇa is implying that the king seized the lands of the
Ḍāmaras.78 Clearly, those who had the potential to oppress were
also the ones who had the power to revolt.

being among the early Indo-Aryan languages, but it seemed unfamiliar at that
time to speakers of another Indo-Aryan language.
73╛╛Arthaśāstra, 1.17.4–5.
74╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 7.678.
75╛╛Ibid., 5.48ff., 7.494ff.
76╛╛Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī, vol. II, 304ff., Note G-IV.348.
77╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 5.51–2, 306, 406–13.
78╛╛Ibid., 7.154, 576–9, 1227–8, 8.991, 1157, 3129ff.
622 The Past Before Us

Revolts against the king by the Ḍāmaras and by other interme­

diaries are clearly of serious concern to Kalhaṇa, who sees them
almost as an ongoing confrontation of the previous couple of
centuries.79 This is not an unusual condition in the political struc­
tures of North Indian kingdoms of this period and needs greater
attention than it has received. Not only was there wealth to recruit
private armies, the Ḍāmaras were also well armed.80 Kalhaṇa calls
them dasyus who destroyed whatever they could.81 The same term
was used for the Kaivartas, who rebelled against the Pāla king.
As makers and breakers of royalty who intervened in the flow of
political authority, keeping track of them in a historical narrative
would have been problematic.
The repeated intervention of the Ekāṅgas, Tantrins, and ḌāmaÂ�
ras in high-level politics, and the determination with which they
tried to control the royal court, is a striking aspect in Kalhaṇa’s
account. The idea of maṇḍala in the politics of the hill states
remains somewhat tangential, perhaps because intermediaries
were less deeply grounded in territories from where they could
aspire to create their own kingdoms. In Kashmir the intention was
to intervene in the politics of the court and gain power through
that process, by tring to overthrow the ruling family. That seems
to have been the pattern by which the first Lohara dynasty came
to power.
If Kalhaṇa protested against the power of the Ḍāmaras and desÂ�
cribed them as the scourge of the land, he was also hostile to the
kāyasthas, who used literacy and administrative positions to build
their strength in the hierarchy of power. As with the brāhmaṇas,
kāyasthas were invited to Kashmir and many families came
from the Ganges plain in search of employment. The land which
had earlier been plundered by Ḍāmaras was now being severely
punished by the administration of the kāyasthas—whom Kalhaṇa
refers to as a plague on the people,82 and are the ones who manipu­
late kings and policies. The king Śaṅkaravarman, whom Kalhaṇa

79╛╛Ibid., 5.395ff., 447, 6.354, 7.223, 404ff.

80╛╛Ibid., 8.709.
81╛╛Ibid., 8.991, 1157.
82╛╛Ibid., 5.439.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 623

describes as “the foremost among fools”, is said to have oppressed

his subjects and plundered temples because he had fallen into the
hands of kāyasthas.83 Harṣa tormented his subjects through the
fines and taxes imposed by the kāyasthas.84 Again, it is Uccala
who ridicules the kāyasthas, and especially the most powerful
among them, Sadda, who was in control of the treasury and was
accused of intrigue against the king.85 Sadda is said to be the son
of a lower-caste load-carrier, and obviously Kalhaṇa is not taken
in by any subsequent origin myths of the kāyasthas.
Kalhaṇa was writing of a time that had seen disturbed condi­
tions. His history therefore becomes a record of events as viewed
by a member of the ruling elite whose family had been close to
court circles, but who himself seems to have distanced himself
from the powerful factions, his opposition to these being evident.
This in part accounts for a change in historical explanation. From
the Kārkoṭa dynasty onwards, his narrative reads as a relatively
down-to-earth history of Kashmir, even critical at times, in which
political factors are balanced with a variety of other fairly rational
explanations. It is also intended to underline the importance of
rājanīti (political concerns) in arguing that a strong king is nec­
essary to protect the subjects and stating by implication that few
such had ruled Kashmir in his time.
Resort to the supernatural and the mystical is not absent in his
explanations of the course of events but occurs with rather more
frequency in the earlier books.86 The last book sees a fading out
of such explanations and politics is discussed in terms of the per­
sonalities involved and their ambitions: the king; the feudatories,
the Ḍāmaras, the politics of the brāhmaṇas and kāyasthas; and
the economic conditions of the peasant at the receiving end of
oppression by all these.
This is not to say, however, that his work is so strongly historical
in the modern sense as to negate the occasional intervention of
Fate.87 The term which he uses for Fate, vidhātṛ, could also imply

83╛╛Ibid., 5.180–1.
84╛╛Ibid., 7.1226.
85╛╛Ibid., 8.258, 276ff., 298–308, 443.
86╛╛Ibid., 1.165, 179–81, 259, 333, 2.17–55, 4.101–5, 6.185.
87╛╛Ibid., 7.67, 916–17, 1187, 8.1811, 2999.
624 The Past Before Us

the Creator, and therefore divinity. Inevitably, there is a belief in

divine retribution. A certain moralistic element runs through the
narrative as well, but surfaces only occasionally. Thus he says,
“In order to enjoy pleasures, which on account of the preceding
evil deeds yield no enjoyment, the wicked destroy the virtuous
as the young camels destroy the ketaka tree in order to get at its
thorns.”88 Yet overall his is an independent position which he
defends with arguments.
Kalhaṇa’s purpose is to establish places and times of kings as
against fluctuating and conflicting tradition; to set out the ac­
tions of those that govern; to please and entertain his readers by
descriptions of the past; to give his readers food for thought on
the impermanence of things, thereby encouraging resignation.89
The latter suggests an attitude inspired by Buddhist thinking: it
is interesting that, in spite of the disappearance of Buddhism, its
imprint on the minds of the thoughtful remained. The profession
of a historian was not seen as a distinct and separate profession.
The historian was regarded as a kavi (poet). The Rājataraṅgiṇī is
therefore treated as a mahākāvya by later writers, even if its style is
far less ornate and embellished as compared to other mahākāvyas.
Some brahmanical norms are conceded. The king’s karma can af­
fect historical events and is linked to the karma of his people; thus,
good kings arise because of the merits of the people and meritori­
ous action lies in the observance of brahmanical norms.90
Woven into this is the theory of the four yugas and the pro­
gressive decay of all things. The turmoil of more recent times
was almost expected. A hint of the world turned upside down in
the Kaliyuga hovers in the background of factions and feudatory
revolts. Yet the events recorded are dated not in the Kaliyuga but
in the more commonly used Laukika era.
That Kashmir had been intellectually vibrant over the couple
of centuries before Kalhaṇa is evident from the quality of thought
and writing of authors based there. A likely reason is that there
had been for a while a migration of the learned to Kashmir. A

88╛╛Ibid.,trans. M.A. Stein, 4.113.

89╛╛A.L. Basham, “Kalhana and his Chronicle”.
90╛╛Rājataraṅgiṇī, 1.158, 161, 324.
 Vaṃśāvalīs: Chronicles of Place and Person 625

tradition of learning seems to have been established through the

presence and work of many scholars. Not that their writings would
have necessarily lent themselves to the genre of vaṃśāvalīs, but
at least they created an ambience of intellectual curiosity of the
kind which is evident in the chronicle.
The tradition of writing chronicles continued in Kashmir with
those of Jonarāja, Śrīvara, Prajyabhaṭṭa, Śuka, and Dāmodara
Paṇḍita, among others. Jonarāja continued his account of the
period subsequent to Kalhaṇa’s text, from Jayasimha to the reign
of the Sultan Zayn-al-‘Ābidin. It has been plausibly argued that
Śrīvara’s “Jaina Rājataraṅgiṇī” is a reference to Zayn, and its
contents would support this proposition.91 But these were not of
the quality of Kalhaṇa’s work, neither in their writing nor in their
understanding of the past.

91╛╛W.
Slaje, “A Note on the Genesis and Character of Śrīvara’s So-Called
Jaina-Rājataraṅgiṇī ”, 379–88.