The Srinagar fire during Abhimanyu’s reign

A fire within the reign of Abhimanyu

Kalhana records a major fire in Srinagar during the reign of Abhimanyu, who succeeded Ksemagupta in 958 and died in 972. The notice appears near the beginning of the account of the child-king’s rule under Didda’s guardianship. It describes a sudden outbreak near a market and the destruction of large buildings across part of the city.

The passage supplies no exact year, month or day. Its position after the accession does not prove that the fire occurred in 958. The date range used here, 958–972, is the reign within which Kalhana places it. The event appears at the beginning of that range in the timeline solely to keep an uncertain period in chronological order.

The market and the reported spread

The fire is said to have begun in the neighbourhood of the Tungesvara market. Stein interprets the market name as referring to a bazaar near a shrine of Shiva called Tungesvara, mentioned elsewhere in the chronicle. He could not establish the shrine’s location.

Kalhana then describes the fire reaching a locality near the Vishnu shrine Vardhanasvamin and destroying great buildings within an area called Vetalasutrapata. These landmarks provide the narrative’s account of the spread. They do not amount to a street-by-street damage survey.

Stein also leaves the position of Vardhanasvamin and the nearby endpoint uncertain. A map placing the outbreak or its furthest reach at a specific modern intersection would therefore imply precision the examined evidence does not provide. The source supports a substantial urban fire, but not a measured burned area or a claim that every building in Srinagar was destroyed.

An urban boundary remembered through a legend

The name Vetalasutrapata refers to the measuring line of a vetala, a supernatural being. Stein connects it with the earlier story in which such a being indicated the site of Pravarasena’s city. The name thus joins the fire account to the chronicle’s memory of the city’s foundation.

The foundation story is a legend, not a record of a supernatural survey. A place could nevertheless be described through a name associated with that legend. The useful historical distinction is between the area-name preserved in the text and the explanation offered for its origin.

The surviving notice does not make the boundary recoverable on a modern plan. Nor should the legendary limits of the earlier city be treated as identical to the full extent of present-day Srinagar. The passage preserves historical geography while leaving its exact reconstruction unresolved.

Damage and the people missing from the account

Kalhana emphasizes the destruction of large buildings. He does not name people killed or injured, count displaced households, list lost shops or record a monetary estimate. The absence of a casualty figure is not proof that nobody was harmed; it means the account cannot establish the human toll.

The passage also gives no reliable description of firefighting, emergency shelter, relief payments or rebuilding. It does not state whether the ignition was accidental or deliberate. Explanations involving weather, construction materials, warfare or arson would require additional evidence specific to this event.

This fire must be kept separate from the burning of Jayendravihara under Ksemagupta. The earlier account identifies a royal attack on a Damara who had taken refuge in a monastery. The later urban fire is placed under Abhimanyu and lacks that stated cause. Combining the two would create an unsupported account of a single disaster.

Kalhana’s interpretation and its limits

After describing the destruction, Kalhana presents the fire as a kind of purification of buildings supposedly polluted by rulers’ contact with Dombas and Candalas. This is the author’s caste-based moral interpretation. It is not a physical cause of the fire, evidence of wrongdoing by those communities or a justification for the destruction.

The account shifts quickly back to court politics and criticism of Didda. That emphasis helps explain why the disaster receives only a brief notice rather than a history of affected residents. The surviving text gives more attention to royal morality than to recovery or everyday losses.

The Srinagar fire belongs in the city’s history even though its documentation is sparse. The secure scope of the account is a reported outbreak during Abhimanyu’s reign, named but incompletely located landmarks, and substantial damage to buildings. Its exact date, cause, human toll and aftermath remain unestablished.