The burning of Chakradhara and the refugee killings

A refuge overtaken by the war

In 1121, people fleeing renewed fighting near Vijayeshvara took shelter at the sanctuary of Vishnu Chakradhara. Families brought children, animals, grain and possessions. Soldiers retreating from the same fighting entered with their horses and weapons. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini describes the enclosure being surrounded, deliberately set on fire, and people escaping the flames being killed outside.

The incident occurred after Sussala recovered Srinagar from Bhikshachara. It belongs to the continuing struggle between those rulers and their supporters, rather than to the earlier collapse of Sussala’s first reign. The account places responsibility on Bhikshachara’s forces and identifies a Damara named Janakaraja as the person who started the fire.

Chakradhara is remembered here as a place where people sought protection and died. The destruction of its religious buildings matters, but the people gathered there are the centre of the account. No reliable numerical death toll survives in the passages examined.

The sanctuary and its surroundings

Stein identified Chakradhara with the Tsakdar plateau on the left bank of the Vitasta, near Vijayeshvara, the town associated with present-day Bijbehara. The river bends around the elevated ground. In his historical geography, he explains why the height and relatively isolated position could make the sanctuary attractive as a refuge.

Chakradhara and Vijayeshvara were neighbouring religious centres, not interchangeable names for the same temple. Kalhana’s opening description of Kashmir refers to the Vishnu image at Chakradhara and the Shiva image at Vijayesha. This distinction helps explain the movement from the town towards a separate sanctuary on higher ground.

The plateau also has a much longer settlement history, discussed in archaeological research on Semthan. Older coins, pottery and occupation remains belong to that broader history. Their presence does not, without a securely dated context, establish the circumstances of a particular attack in 1121.

The surviving description gives a courtyard with substantial wooden ramparts and gates. It does not supply a complete architectural plan, the number of entrances, or the dimensions of all the buildings. A reconstruction should therefore distinguish what the chronicle describes from what a later surveyor inferred on the ground.

How the fighting reached Vijayeshvara

Sussala’s restoration did not remove Bhikshachara from political life. The displaced claimant received support in Somapala’s territory. Prithvihara attacked Shurapura and defeated the royal officer Nalla, opening the way for Bhikshachara’s return to the Valley.

Prithvihara then sought the support of Damaras in Madavarajya. Kalhana names Mankha and Jayya among those who joined. The coalition advanced against Harshamitra, Sussala’s commander, near Vijayaksetra. Harshamitra was defeated and withdrew towards Avantipura.

This retreat exposed the inhabitants of Vijayaksetra and nearby settlements. The chronicle describes their flight to Chakradhara immediately after the royal defeat. It does not describe a planned evacuation with assured supplies or a negotiated guarantee of protection. People gathered where they hoped the enclosure and its position would keep them safe.

Families, stores and soldiers inside the enclosure

The list of what the refugees carried is unusually revealing. Rice stores suggest concern about feeding households through a period of danger. Animals and other property show that flight involved attempts to preserve livelihoods as well as lives. Women and children are explicitly present in the narrative.

The soldiers arrived with arms and horses. Their presence made the courtyard a mixed refuge of civilians and military personnel. It would be misleading either to describe everyone inside as a combatant or to remove the soldiers from the account. Kalhana distinguishes the population fleeing with families from the king’s men who joined them.

The surrounding force followed the refugees up to the sanctuary and besieged it. The wooden enclosure initially prevented the attackers from reaching the people inside. The account therefore describes a period of protection before the fire, although it does not tell us how long the siege lasted.

Crowding made the later catastrophe worse. Kalhana describes frightened horses breaking their restraints and trampling people within the confined courtyard. This is part of his explanation of how deaths occurred during the fire, not a basis for estimating the number of horses or the area available per person.

The deliberate fire and killings outside

Kalhana says Janakaraja wanted to burn a personal enemy named Karpura who was among those inside. Janakaraja is associated with a village rendered as Katisthali. Stein could not identify it securely and could not confidently explain a further term applied to him, which may denote an occupation or social group.

The personal motive is what the chronicler reports. It is not supported here by a separate testimony from Janakaraja or Karpura. Nevertheless, the larger account is explicit that the fire was deliberately started by someone in the besieging force. It should not be rewritten as an accidental temple fire.

The narrative describes flames spreading through the enclosure and families unable to escape. People who forced their way out were cut down by Damaras outside. This second action is important: the account includes killings beyond those caused by the burning structures and the panic within them.

Kalhana gives the episode extensive poetic treatment, comparing smoke, flames and destruction to supernatural and cosmic scenes. These images communicate horror and moral condemnation. They are not measurements of temperature, distance, duration or the physical reach of the fire.

Responsibility also appears at more than one level. Janakaraja is identified as the immediate instigator, while Kalhana assigns the crime to Bhikshachara’s side as a whole. The passage does not preserve a separate order in Bhikshachara’s own words directing Janakaraja to burn the sanctuary. That distinction preserves the source’s accusation without inventing a command document.

Date, losses and the first aftermath

The chronicle dates the burning to the twelfth day of the bright half of Shravana, described as a festive day. Stein’s geographical discussion places it in 1121. This article retains the lunar date; a precise modern month and day have not been independently established here.

Kalhana says the loss emptied households in many towns and villages. His use of thousands conveys a disaster spreading far beyond the enclosure, but does not identify a surveyed list of settlements or count the people present. No numerical casualty total should be generated from that language.

The account also names Mankha of Naunagara as taking valuables from the dead. This is a reported act of looting after the killings, not evidence that the victims’ possessions were later recovered and returned to their families. Their individual identities and the fate of their dependants remain largely absent from the text.

Bhikshachara descended to Vijayaksetra and captured Nageshvara, who was then killed. The chronicle connects Nageshvara with the earlier betrayal of Bhikshachara’s father. This reprisal followed the Chakradhara episode but should not be used to explain away the killing of the refugees.

Sussala advanced against the opposing forces. Janakaraja died near Avantipura, and royal troops recovered ground. Later, some bodies from Chakradhara were put into the Vitasta, while others that could not be removed were cremated within the courtyard. These passages record the handling of the dead without preserving a burial register or identifying a surviving memorial.

An older legend must remain separate

Kalhana compares the disaster with an older story about Narapura, a city associated with King Nara and the Naga Sushravas. In that narrative, a ruler’s attempted seizure of a woman leads to supernatural vengeance and the destruction of a town. People again seek protection near the image of Chakradhara.

The resemblance matters because Kalhana himself invokes the earlier story when describing the 1121 fire. It places a contemporary political disaster within a remembered landscape of destruction. It does not turn the supernatural story into a separately dated historical incident or prove that both accounts describe the same burning.

Stein recorded local traditions associated with a dry hollow near the plateau and discussed the possibility of an older town on the adjacent ground. Such observations are evidence for remembered geography and the antiquity of settlement. They do not establish a literal rain of thunderbolts or identify an archaeological layer as the work of a named legendary being.

Keeping these accounts distinct prevents two errors: dating the 1121 killings to the legendary reign of Nara, and treating the earlier legend as independent corroboration of the later attack.

What the physical remains can establish

In his note on the enclosure, Stein reported a visit in September 1895. He observed hollows outlining a roughly square area, about forty yards across, on the northern part of the plateau. He asked whether these might be traces of the wooden walls described in the chronicle.

His wording was tentative. The observation was not a documented excavation of charred timbers dated to 1121, and it did not identify the remains of the victims. A modern description should not convert his question into a proven discovery of the burned sanctuary’s ramparts.

A 2021 archaeological study of Semthan discusses the site’s association with Chakradhara and repeats the historical account, but labels the burning as eleventh-century while citing the relevant Book VIII verses. That century label conflicts with the 1121 sequence used here. Repetition in an archaeological overview does not replace checking the underlying chronology.

Stein also inferred that the shrine had been restored because later textual references mention its image. That is a useful lead for the site’s subsequent history, not a surviving construction record fixing when, by whom or on what scale rebuilding occurred. The later history requires its own examination of the relevant texts and material evidence.

Reading the event through its people

The main account is a chronicle written from the political and literary world of the twelfth century. It names rulers, chiefs and a few individuals, while most people who died remain unnamed. It supplies no surviving testimony from a refugee family and no complete account of how surrounding settlements recovered.

Those limits do not erase what the narrative does record: people fled fighting, brought their households into a defended religious enclosure, faced a deliberate fire, and were killed when some tried to escape. The combination of refuge, siege, burning and killing deserves a full place in Kashmir’s history.

Further work can refine the calendar conversion, examine the site reports and trace later references to the sanctuary. It should preserve the distinction between evidence for ancient settlement, evidence for the medieval shrine and the chronicle’s account of the 1121 catastrophe. None of those bodies of evidence should be made to answer questions it cannot resolve.