Cakravarman’s restorations and another interruption

Two returns, with an interruption between them

Cakravarman returned to Kashmir’s throne in 935 after the brief second reign of Partha. He lost power again later that year, then recovered it through military action in 936. His final reign ended with his killing in 937. These were separate phases of a struggle involving royal claimants, ministers, the Tantrin infantry and the landed chiefs called Damaras.

The main account is Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, written in the twelfth century. It gives a detailed narrative but also uses speeches, dramatic scenes, moral judgments and caste prejudice to explain events. Its precise-sounding details should not all be treated as independently corroborated observations.

The restoration of 935 and its financial limits

Kalhana says Cakravarman offered substantial wealth to the Tantrins and was restored in Ashadha of Laukika year 4011, conventionally 935. He then appointed members of Meruvardhana’s influential family to high office despite their earlier involvement in displacing rulers and harming their own royal relatives.

Sankaravardhana became superintendent of the Aksapatala; his brother Sambhuvardhana received charge of the Grhakrtya office. The precise institutional meaning of Aksapatala has been debated. Stein discusses interpretations including a court, an archive and an accounting office, and relates it to the recording of grants. Calling its head simply a modern chief justice or finance minister would conceal that uncertainty.

The arrangement did not last. In Pausha of the same Laukika year, Cakravarman could no longer pay what the Tantrins expected and fled. The chronicle gives the traditional month; it does not establish a Gregorian day of flight. Stein’s note offers a date for the beginning of the month, which should not be mistaken for the date on which the king departed.

Sambhuvardhana takes the throne

After Cakravarman’s flight, Sankaravardhana sought the crown and sent his brother Sambhuvardhana to negotiate with the Tantrins. Kalhana says the envoy promised still greater payments and secured the throne for himself, deceiving the brother who had sent him.

The brothers’ names are easily confused, but their roles differ. Sambhuvardhana was the intervening ruler. Sankaravardhana later commanded the troops opposing Cakravarman. The full narrative is essential here because a compressed succession list can obscure the distinction.

This episode continues Kalhana’s account of a crown dependent on competing promises of money. He explains it through an image of creatures preying on one another, an illustration of political deceit rather than a separate description of an administrative system. The surviving passage does not preserve the actual agreements made with the troops.

The alliance with Samgrama

Cakravarman sought assistance from the Damara Samgrama, whom the chronicle places at Sridhakka. Stein could not securely locate that place. Kalhana depicts Samgrama welcoming the displaced ruler but warning that kings often forget those who help them once power has been recovered.

The king promised protection, and the two men sealed their alliance with a sacred oath. The narrative describes a libation, swords and a blood-sprinkled sheepskin on which they placed their feet. The ceremony expresses a mutual obligation within the story. The speeches around it are literary representations, not surviving minutes of negotiations.

Samgrama’s backing gave Cakravarman access to a force of Damaras. Their role marks a change from relying on the Tantrins’ willingness to accept another financial offer to confronting them with armed support from another source. The account does not supply a dependable total for the army that assembled.

Battle and the third accession in 936

Kalhana places the confrontation outside Padmapura. The Tantrins marched under Sankaravardhana on the eighth day of the bright half of Chaitra, in the sequence dated to 936. The chronicle credits Cakravarman with killing the opposing commander and describes the Tantrin force breaking apart after his death.

The reported loss of five or six thousand Tantrins is the chronicler’s figure, not a verified casualty count. His account praises the king’s personal prowess and uses elaborate battlefield imagery. It records a decisive defeat in the political narrative, but should not be expanded into an exact reconstruction of troop movements or the deaths of every member of the military body.

Cakravarman entered the city on the following day, welcomed by chiefs, ministers and Ekangas. Kalhana’s procession scene also mentions frightened residents and looted shops. He depicts the king threatening marauders and reassuring townspeople. The scene preserves the chronicler’s image of both victory and civilian insecurity during the transfer of power.

Sambhuvardhana was captured and brought in fetters before the restored king. Kalhana says Bhikshata killed the prisoner to demonstrate loyalty. The killing of the defeated ruler is distinct from the battlefield death of his brother Sankaravardhana. Cakravarman’s third accession had been secured through both military victory and the removal of a rival.

Ranga, Hamsi and Nagalata at court

Kalhana next describes an audience for Ranga, a renowned Domba singer who had arrived from outside the country with a band of performers. The setting includes ministers and chiefs in the reception hall and women of the royal household watching. Ranga’s daughters Hamsi and Nagalata attracted the king through their performance and later entered the royal household.

Hamsi became chief queen. Kalhana describes her relatives and people close to them gaining influence over offices and royal decisions. He also objects to her presence in temples and to ministers accepting food or marks of favour from people he regarded as socially impure. Those objections reveal the chronicler’s caste hierarchy. The women’s background is not itself evidence of wrongdoing.

The performance belongs to Kashmir’s cultural history as well as its court politics. Advaitavadini Kaul’s study of music in Kashmir draws attention to the singing and dancing in this episode. That discussion returns to the same chronicle; it does not provide an independent eyewitness account or identify a surviving musical score.

The narrative gives far more space to the king’s attraction and the author’s disapproval than to the performers’ own views. A history centred on the people involved should preserve their names, artistic work and positions without repeating the idea that their presence at court was inherently corrupting. At the same time, a grant obtained through intimidation can be examined as an allegation of coercion regardless of the recipient’s caste.

The Helu grant and a trace of spoken language

One episode concerns the village of Helu, which the king granted to Ranga as an agrahara. Kalhana says the official responsible for recording the grant did not execute the document. Ranga then went to the Aksapatala, angrily demanded that it be written and frightened the recorder into complying.

The passage is valuable for its distinction between a royal grant and the official act needed to record it. It does not preserve the original charter, its boundaries, its fiscal terms or the reactions of Helu’s inhabitants. The story cannot establish those missing details.

Kalhana places a short vernacular demand in Ranga’s mouth. Stein regarded the expression as a very early surviving specimen of Kashmiri. That is an interpretation of language embedded in a twelfth-century Sanskrit narrative about a tenth-century event. It is not a recording of Ranga’s actual voice or proof that the exact words were documented when the grant was made.

The chronicler uses the speech to disparage the speaker’s manners. Its value for language history can be recognized without adopting that social judgment. The account also illustrates how personal access to the king could be represented as overriding resistance within an office.

Allegations, patronage and the breaking of alliances

Kalhana accuses Cakravarman of becoming arrogant after victory and dependent on flattery. In a passage about religious expiation, he alleges that the king violated a Brahman woman after accepting a perverse justification from advisers. This is an allegation of sexual violence within the chronicle. It should not be conflated with the author’s separate condemnation of the king’s relationships across caste boundaries.

The same account credits Cakravarman with beginning a matha for Pashupata ascetics. Called Cakramatha, it was still incomplete when he died, and his wife finished it. The passage does not name that wife, so the completion should not automatically be assigned to Hamsi. Stein notes no further mention of the establishment in this context; a precise surviving site or construction plan is not established here.

The political alliance that had helped restore the king also fractured. Kalhana says Cakravarman treacherously killed Damaras who trusted him, forgetting their earlier assistance. Other Damaras retained his confidence while preparing to kill him. These actions form the chronicler’s explanation for the conspiracy, rather than an independently documented account of every conspirator’s motive.

Assassination in 937 and succession

The attack came at night, when Cakravarman was unarmed near the bedchamber of the woman whom the chronicler identifies through a caste label. He was attacked, fled into the chamber in search of a weapon and was killed. Kalhana says other royal wives encouraged the attackers. These details remain attributed to the source, whose presentation is both violent and openly hostile.

The death is dated to the eighth day of the bright half of Jyaishtha, Laukika year 4013, conventionally 937. The traditional day and month can be preserved without inventing a Gregorian conversion. His death ended the final restored reign, not the reign begun in childhood without interruption.

Unmattavanti, a son of Partha, was then installed by Sarvata and other ministers. The changes of 935–937 had broken the Tantrins’ earlier dominance in Kalhana’s narrative, but had not created a secure succession or protected the ruler from former allies.

These years bring together several kinds of evidence: a narrative of war and political bargaining, notices of officials and grants, the presence of named performers at court, a religious foundation and the chronicler’s own social prejudices. Keeping those elements distinct allows the history to include both political violence and cultural life without treating Kalhana’s judgments as the last word on either.