Lalitaditya Muktapida’s campaigns

01Kalhana’s account

Book IV of the Rajatarangini gives Lalitaditya the longest reign story of any early king. He first made an alliance with Yashovarman of Kanyakubja, the patron of the poets Bhavabhuti and Vakpati, then quarrelled over the wording of the treaty and destroyed him. Kalhana then sends him east to Kalinga and Gauda, south to the Karnatas and the Kaveri, and north against the Tibetans and the Tukharas. Historians accept the Kanyakubja war and the Tibetan wars; the rest of the digvijaya Kalhana wrote four centuries later, and it cannot be checked.

02Martand and Parihaspora

The Tang annals record an envoy from Muduobi, Muktapida, king of Kashmir, at the Chinese court around 733, asking for help against the Tibetans. At home Lalitaditya built the city of Parihaspora and the great Surya temple at Martand on its plateau above Anantnag, whose grey limestone colonnade still stands. Sikandar of Kashmir had the temple broken in the late fourteenth century; the ruins are under the ASI.

Person · Reigned c. 724–760 CELalitaditya MuktapidaLalitaditya Muktapida made Kashmir, for one reign, the strongest power in north India: he defeated Yashovarman of Kannauj and built the Sun temple at Martand. Kalhana gives him the longest war chapter of the Rajatarangini.Read →