The murder of Uchchala and the coup at Srinagar

01The night attack

Rajatarangini Book VIII gives the scene. Uchchala had ruled firmly for ten years, humbling the Damaras and the nobles. A party of discontented courtiers, led by Radda, who claimed royal descent, burst in on him at night in the palace. The king, unarmed, fought them with his bare hands and a borrowed weapon, wounded, until he fell. Radda proclaimed himself king under the name Shankharaja, but the loyal officers rallied, and he was killed the next day.

02Brothers at war

The ministers put Uchchala’s half-brother Salhana on the throne. Within months his other brother Sussala, who held the hill fortress of Lohara, marched on Srinagar and took the crown in 1112. The murder opened twenty years of civil war in which Sussala, the pretender Bhikshachara, the Damara barons and the city factions fought over the valley, the years Kalhana himself lived through as a boy.

Person · 12th century CE; Rajatarangini 1148–1150 CEKalhanaKalhana, son of Champaka, minister to King Harsha of Kashmir, wrote the Rajatarangini (‘River of Kings’) in 1148–1150 CE: about 7,800 verses in eight tarangas tracing the kings of Kashmir from the earliest times to his own day.Read →