Rajatarangini

01A minister’s son

Kalhana’s father Champaka was a minister of King Harsha of Kashmir, who was murdered in 1101, and Kalhana grew up close to the turmoil he later described. He was a Shaiva brahmin, and every taranga of his poem opens with a prayer to Ardhanarishvara, Shiva and Parvati in one body. He began writing in the Laukika year 4224, which is 1148–49 CE, under King Jayasimha, and finished in about two years. He held no office himself. That freedom shows: he praises and blames kings, ministers and priests alike, including men whose families were still powerful when he wrote.

02A historian like a judge

In the first taranga Kalhana explains his method, and no other Sanskrit author does anything like it. He read eleven earlier chronicles, he says, and found most of them lost or careless; Kshemendra’s list of kings he calls full of errors. He used the Nilamata Purana, the inscriptions recording the founding of temples and gifts of land, praise-poems of kings, and old writings he could still find. Then he sets out his standard: that person of merit alone deserves praise whose speech, like a judge’s, keeps free of love and hate in telling what has happened. He also names the rasa of his poem as shanta, calm, since the record of kings shows how quickly every greatness passes.

03The land Kalhana loved

Kashmir, Kalhana writes, was once the lake Satisaras, drained when Maharshi Kashyapa had the demon Jalodbhava slain, and the valley is Parvati herself. Its king is to be known as born of a portion of Hara. The land can be won by the strength of merit, not by the strength of soldiers, and so those who live there fear only the next world. Its rivers have no crocodiles, its bathhouses are warm in winter, and the sun itself softens in summer out of respect for the land Kashyapa made. Lofty halls of learning, saffron, water cold with snow and grapes, he says, things hard to find even in heaven, are common here.

04The earliest kings

The first three tarangas carry the line from Gonanda I, a contemporary of Shri Krishna, who fell fighting Balarama for Jarasandha. When his son also fell, Krishna had the pregnant widow Yashovati crowned, quoting the verse that the king of Kashmir is born of a portion of Hara. Kalhana then tells of Ashoka, who built Shrinagari, and his son Jalauka; of the Turushka kings Hushka, Jushka and Kanishka; of the cruel Huna Mihirakula, who drove a hundred elephants over a cliff to hear their cries; of the gentle Meghavahana, who forbade killing; and of Pravarasena II, founder of Pravarapura, today’s Srinagar. Some early reigns run for impossible spans, and Kalhana admits his reckoning here is weak.

05Lalitaditya and Avantivarman

With the Karkota dynasty of the fourth taranga the chronicle stands on firm ground. Lalitaditya Muktapida, in the eighth century, marches out on campaigns that Kalhana carries across all India and into Central Asia, and builds the Martand Sun temple, whose ruins still stand on their plateau, and the city of Parihasapura. His grandson Jayapida gathers scholars at court. In the fifth taranga the Utpala king Avantivarman founds Avantipura with its temples to Vishnu and Shiva, and his engineer Suyya, a foundling raised by a chandala woman, clears the choked Vitasta by throwing gold coins into the river so that villagers would dig out the rocks, saving the valley from flood and lowering the price of rice.

06Queen Didda and the Loharas

The sixth taranga belongs to Didda, a princess of Lohara who married King Kshemagupta and then ruled Kashmir for half a century, first as regent for her son and grandsons and at last in her own name until her death in 1003. Kalhana does not hide her cruelty or her cunning, and he does not hide her ability either. She left the throne to her nephew Sangramaraja, founding the Lohara line. In the seventh taranga comes King Harsha, poet and patron of music, who in his last years ran out of money and appointed an officer to strip the gold and silver images from the temples. Kalhana calls him a Turushka for it. Harsha was hunted down and killed in 1101, and Kalhana’s father served him to the end.

07The eighth taranga

Nearly half the poem, about 3,450 of its some 7,800 verses, is the eighth taranga, the half-century Kalhana and his father lived through. The brothers Uchchala and Sussala seize power from Harsha; the damara landholders rise again and again; famines empty villages; kings are murdered in their halls. Jayasimha, ruling as Kalhana writes, restores some order. These chapters read less like a chronicle than a minister’s memoir, full of names, quarrels, betrayals and prices. They are hard going, and they are the most valuable part of the work, because nothing else records twelfth-century Kashmir.

08Continued, translated, trusted

Later Kashmiri pandits carried the chronicle on: Jonaraja to the reign of Zain-ul-Abidin, Shrivara after him, and Prajyabhatta and Shuka to Akbar’s annexation of Kashmir in 1586. Aurel Stein, helped by Pandit Govind Kaul, set the text from a Sharada manuscript in his critical edition of 1892 and translated it in 1900; Ranjit Sitaram Pandit’s translation of 1935 carries a foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru. Archaeologists in Kashmir still identify ruined temples by Kalhana’s founders’ names, and for Kashmiri Pandits the poem is the memory of their homeland’s Shaiva and Sanskrit past.

What it contains

1. 1
   Taranga 1

   Invocation, Kalhana’s sources and method, and the praise of Kashmir. The lake Satisaras, then the earliest kings from Gonanda I, including Ashoka and Jalauka, the Turushka kings, and the Huna Mihirakula.

2. 2
   Taranga 2

   A short book of six kings, from Pratapaditya to Aryaraja. Kalhana gives their reigns briefly and with some doubt.

3. 3
   Taranga 3

   The restored Gonanda line: Meghavahana who forbade killing, the poet Matrigupta set on the throne by Vikramaditya of Ujjayini, and Pravarasena II who founded Pravarapura. It ends with Baladitya, last of the line.

4. 4
   Taranga 4

   The Karkota dynasty: Durlabhavardhana, Lalitaditya Muktapida’s conquests and buildings at Martand and Parihasapura, and Jayapida, patron of scholars.

5. 5
   Taranga 5

   The Utpala dynasty: Avantivarman and Avantipura, Suyya’s river works, Shankaravarman’s campaigns and heavy taxes, and the weak kings who followed.

6. 6
   Taranga 6

   Yashaskara, chosen king by an assembly of brahmins, and his successors to Queen Didda, who ruled until 1003. Her favourite Tunga and the Lohara succession.

7. 7
   Taranga 7

   The first Lohara dynasty, from Sangramaraja through Ananta and Kalasha to King Harsha, his brilliance, his plunder of temple images and his death in 1101.

8. 8
   Taranga 8

   The longest book, almost half the work: Uchchala, Sussala, the damara risings and famines, down to Jayasimha, in whose reign Kalhana wrote.

Famous verses

श्लाघ्यः स एव गुणवान्रागद्वेषबहिष्कृता । भूतार्थकथने यस्य स्थेयस्येव सरस्वती ॥

That man of merit alone deserves praise whose speech, like a judge’s, keeps free of love and hatred in telling what has happened.Rajatarangini 1.7

विजीयते पुण्यबलैर्बलैर्यत्तु न शस्त्रिणाम् । परलोकात्ततो भीतिर्यस्मिन्निवसतां परम् ॥

It is a land conquered by the strength of merit, not by the strength of armed men; so those who live there fear only the world to come.Rajatarangini 1.39

विद्यावेश्मानि तुङ्गानि कुङ्कुमं सहिमं पयः । द्राक्षेति यत्र सामान्यमस्ति त्रिदिवदुर्लभम् ॥

Lofty halls of learning, saffron, water cold with snow, and grapes: things hard to find even in heaven are common there.Rajatarangini 1.42

कश्मीराः पार्वती तत्र राजा ज्ञेयो हरांशजः । नावज्ञेयः स दुष्टोऽपि विदुषा भूतिमिच्छता ॥

Kashmir is Parvati, and its king is to be known as born of a portion of Hara; a wise man who wishes for his own good should not despise him, even if he is wicked.Rajatarangini 1.72 (a Puranic verse Kalhana puts in Shri Krishna’s mouth)