Brahman fasts as political pressure

A recurring form of political pressure

Kalhana’s Rajatarangini records fasting as a way of bringing grievances before rulers, challenging ministers and intervening in struggles for the throne. Brahmans and temple corporations appear prominently, but soldiers and individual petitioners also used the practice. Its political effects depended on the participants, the demand and the circumstances surrounding a particular dispute.

The chronicle uses terms including praya and prayopavesha. Stein often translates them as solemn fasting or voluntary starvation. In these accounts, the prospect of a protester’s death could place a grave religious and political burden on the person held responsible. The narrative records both concessions and refusals, rather than a rule that a fast necessarily succeeded.

This is a thematic article spanning several reigns. Its catalogue position around 1100 is an approximate organizing point, not the date when political fasting began. The examples below proceed from earlier royal stories through the tenth and eleventh centuries to the conflicts of the early twelfth century. No single month can properly be assigned to the whole subject.

Status, institutions and the limits of the evidence

Temple priests could act through corporations described as parishads. Brahmans holding agraharas, endowed lands or settlements, also appear as collective participants. These groups had resources, connections and access to sacred places. They were not interchangeable with every inhabitant of Kashmir, and their demands did not always represent the interests of all social groups.

John Nemec’s study emphasizes that the practice could seek redress for other people as well as for the protesters themselves. He interprets the threatened religious consequences of a Brahman’s death as a means of pressing rulers to fulfil obligations of government. This reading recognizes a possible public purpose without assuming that every protest was unselfish or free of manipulation.

Kalhana himself alternates between praise for responsiveness to petitioners and harsh criticism of organized fasters. He sometimes treats them as defenders of justice and sometimes as participants in destructive intrigue. The details of a dispute therefore matter more than extracting one judgment and presenting it as his view of every fast.

The surviving descriptions are literary historical narratives, not a complete register of protests. They rarely provide dependable totals of participants, the duration of every action or the precise terms of a negotiated settlement. Reported speeches convey the chronicler’s explanation and should not be mistaken for preserved transcripts.

Earlier stories of petitions and royal justice

In Book IV, a Brahman woman brings the death of her husband before Chandrapida. She suspects another Brahman of killing him through sorcery and fasts while seeking punishment. The king initially insists that guilt must be established. When the dispute remains unresolved, he undertakes a fast of his own before the image of Tribhuvanasvamin.

The episode moves into a dream and supernatural revelation. It belongs to Kalhana’s portrayal of a just king confronted by a difficult accusation. It does not establish that sorcery caused a historical death, nor that an accused person’s guilt can be inferred from a complainant’s suffering. The tension between the demand for redress and the need for proof is central to the story.

Under Yashaskara, whose reign is dated to 939–948, Kalhana tells of a man who had sold his house but claimed to have retained a well as a source of income for his wife. After a long absence, he found her impoverished and learned that the buyer had denied her access. Earlier judicial decisions had gone against him.

Officials responsible for observing cases of fasting brought the man’s protest to the king’s attention. Yashaskara examined the dispute and, in the story, exposed a fraudulent alteration in the deed through the buyer’s accounts. The claimant received redress and the buyer was exiled.

The account is evidence for how Kalhana imagined responsible government: a ruler should investigate a complaint rather than merely defer to officials. It also refers to an administrative response to fasting. It is not a surviving case file, and the narrative’s ingenious detection of fraud requires the same caution as other royal justice stories.

Succession in 939 and opposition under Didda

Fasting also appears in the succession crisis that brought Yashaskara to power in 939. After military intervention displaced the existing ruler, a Brahman assembly debated the next king. Temple priests arrived with drums, banners and other ceremonial equipment. Stein interprets their fast as pressure on the assembly to reach a decision.

Kalhana describes disagreement and ridicule before the assembly eventually selected Yashaskara. The episode connects religious authority with the making of a king. It should not be called a popular election in the modern sense: the account concerns particular organized groups acting within a crisis shaped by armed power.

During Didda’s rule, displaced ministers supported her nephew Vigraharaja against Tunga. Vigraharaja encouraged Brahmans holding important agraharas to fast. The chronicle describes wider disorder and a search for Tunga, whom the queen concealed.

Didda gave gold to leading Brahmans, after which the fast ended and Vigraharaja withdrew. Kalhana presents this as bribery. A renewed attempt followed through secret emissaries, but Tunga had strengthened his position. Participants and associated opponents were subsequently imprisoned, killed or driven away.

These episodes show the vulnerability of protesters as well as their influence. A settlement could break a coalition without resolving the underlying struggle, and those who accepted royal gifts were not necessarily safe from later punishment. The chronicle supplies no secure Gregorian month for these particular actions.

Tunga’s opponents and a temporary reconciliation

After Sangramaraja succeeded Didda in 1003, Brahman councillors again organized opposition to Tunga. Brahmans and priests of sacred shrines began a fast at Parihasapura. Kalhana says their demands initially included the minister’s expulsion and that the king found the combined pressure difficult to contain.

The dispute escalated around an accusation that Tunga had caused a Brahman’s death. Kalhana alleges that his opponents used an unrelated body to support the claim. Fighting broke out and the protesters scattered. That allegation is the chronicler’s account of a hostile faction, not independently verified forensic evidence.

A different use appears during the prolonged conflict between Ananta and his son Kalasha. Book VII says Brahmans fasted against both men because their hostility was damaging the country. A reconciliation followed, and Ananta and Suryamati returned to the capital for two months.

The agreement did not last. Suspicion of a plan to imprison the older couple led them to leave again for Vijayeshvara, and the conflict resumed. The fast therefore achieved a temporary settlement in Kalhana’s narrative, rather than a permanent end to dynastic violence.

The contrast matters. Fasting could support a faction against an individual minister, but it could also press two rival centres of power to stop a conflict. The form of protest alone does not tell us whose interests it served.

Harsha: forced labour and military allowances

During Harsha’s reign, 1089–1101, the seizure of wealth from the Bhimakeshava temple prompted a fast by members of its priestly corporation. Kalhana says they obtained exemption from compulsory carriage of loads as compensation. The passage does not say that the temple treasury was fully restored.

This was a specific concession concerning labour obligations. It should not be inflated into the abolition of forced labour throughout Kashmir. Nor does the account establish that all cultivators or carriers received the same exemption as the protesting corporation.

Another episode took place during Harsha’s expedition against Rajapuri. The king was besieging Prithvigiri, whose defenders were running short of supplies. According to Kalhana, the opposing ruler bribed Sunna, who secretly encouraged Harsha’s soldiers to demand additional marching allowances.

The soldiers began a fast while the royal treasury was far away, disrupting the camp. Sunna also spread a warning of an approaching Turushka attack. Harsha withdrew. The chronicle thus places the fast within a combination of pay demands, military discontent, bribery and misinformation.

The account does not prove that the soldiers had no legitimate claim to payment simply because their commander is portrayed as corrupt. It does show that fasting was not restricted to Brahmans or to disputes conducted apart from armed forces.

At the end of Harsha’s reign, Kalhana bitterly criticizes Brahmans skilled in fasting but unable or unwilling to help the fallen king. That passage reflects his anger at abandonment in a particular crisis. Read beside the earlier concession at Bhimakeshava, it also illustrates the unevenness of his judgment.

Uchchala and the disorders of 1120

Kalhana portrays Uchchala, who ruled from 1101 to 1111, as determined to prevent petitioners from dying through an unresolved grievance. He attributes to the king an extreme personal vow and says it made judges more attentive. The episode presents royal accountability through the chronicler’s ideal of kingship; it is not advice to imitate the threatened act.

The same reign includes a verse by Shivaratha that counts organized fasting among several destructive pressures on the city, alongside officials, royal relatives, ministers and objectionable regulations. Concern for petitioners and criticism of coercive collective action could therefore appear together.

By 1120, under Sussala, warfare and insecurity were producing widespread distress. Kalhana records Brahman fasts and deaths by fire amid the disorder. These were different acts with grave consequences; they should not be collapsed into one protest with a single cause or outcome.

Brahmans of Rajanavatika demanded that the king take hostages from ministers whose commitment to fighting they distrusted. They feared losing the approaching harvest to the enemy. The demand connected official loyalty with the security of endowed agricultural income.

Later, soldiers blocked the palace entrances with drawn weapons and fasted for allowances. Temple priests also demanded distributions, and the king was made to break up valuable vessels to provide resources. The record shows collective fasting operating alongside armed intimidation, rather than outside the struggle over military power.

Bhikshachara, sacred images and shifting allegiance

During Bhikshachara’s short rule in 1120–1121, plunder of the agrahara of Akshosuva led its Brahmans to fast against the king. Other landholders gathered at Vijayeshvara, while a fast at Rajanavatika spread the pressure into the capital.

Priestly corporations then assembled at the Gokula with images from their shrines, carried on litters and accompanied by parasols, ornaments, drums and cymbals. Kalhana emphasizes the scale and spectacle of the gathering. Sacred objects helped make the protest visible and connected it with the authority of religious institutions.

The protesters called for the return of Sussala, whom many had recently opposed. Their conduct formed part of a rapidly changing political contest involving ministers, troops, citizens and Damaras. Kalhana’s contempt for popular changes of allegiance should not substitute for examining the insecurity and material grievances he also records.

After Bhikshachara defeated an opposing force in the capital, the assembled priests abandoned the fast and carried away their images. Those remaining with the empty litters were spared after declaring that they had given up the action. The outcome depended on the military situation as well as on the protest itself.

Later disputes under Jayasimha

The practice continued under Jayasimha, whose reign began in 1128. Brahmans of Madavarajya opposed Sujji’s appointment as commander-in-chief. Their fast occurred amid rivalry among powerful officials and the movement of armed supporters. It was one element in a struggle over office, not a separate constitutional procedure.

At Avantipura, increased exactions under the minister Chitraratha prompted another fast. Kalhana says the minister ignored it and describes deaths by fire, including that of a cowherd after the confiscation of grazing land. The passage records the failure of an appeal to restrain official conduct and the suffering associated with that failure.

Elsewhere, Brahmans concerned for their lands fasted at Vijayeshvara to demand action against Trillaka. Jayasimha initially argued that the moment was unsuitable. He later secured the end of the fast with a promise to act after dealing with rival claimants to the throne.

These later examples distinguish several possible outcomes: pressure over an appointment, refusal with fatal consequences, and negotiation over the timing of military action. Their dates must be established from their own narrative contexts; the article’s approximate 1100 catalogue label is not an event date for any of them.

What the episodes show

Political fasting in the Rajatarangini connected bodily risk with claims about justice, religious responsibility and the proper conduct of government. It could bring an overlooked complaint before a ruler, secure a limited concession or help assemble a coalition. It could also be manipulated, ignored or broken by force.

Its effectiveness was unequal. Priestly corporations, landholding Brahmans and soldiers possessed different forms of influence. The chronicle gives them more visibility than many people without comparable institutional support. It does not prove that everyone could obtain a hearing on the same terms.

The practice should not be treated either as an unchanging tradition of peaceful politics or as nothing more than elite extortion. The recorded demands range from private property and military pay to protection from destructive royal conflict. Each requires attention to evidence, participants and consequences.

Further research can compare the Sanskrit readings, legal vocabulary and individual episodes with other texts. A direct line from these medieval accounts to any particular modern hunger strike would require its own evidence of transmission. Similarity of form alone does not establish continuity of organization, purpose or belief.