Jalauka in the Rajatarangini

A ruler in the chronicle, without a secure reign date

Jalauka appears in Book I of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini as the son and successor of Ashoka. His story combines royal conquest, religious patronage, miraculous powers and an encounter that turns an act of persecution into a demand for restitution. It is one of the ways the chronicle gives Kashmir’s landscape a remembered political and sacred past.

The narrative does not establish a securely dated historical reign. M. A. Stein’s critical introduction describes much of the account as legendary and notes that he could not independently trace this alleged son of Ashoka in the sources available to him. The former research-list date of about 200 BCE has therefore been removed. Jalauka belongs in the record, but assigning an apparently historical year would conceal the uncertainty.

Birth, teacher and royal powers

Kalhana introduces the birth through Ashoka’s devotion to Shiva Bhutesha. Jalauka then appears as a king with extraordinary abilities, including a substance that transforms other metals into gold and access to the worlds of the Nagas. These episodes announce the supernatural character of the account; they are not descriptions of demonstrated technologies or ordinary political events.

His instructor is called Avadhuta and is represented as overcoming Buddhist disputants. Stein notes that the word may designate a renouncer rather than an individual’s personal name. Jalauka vows to worship at Vijayeshvara and at the shrine of Jyeshthesha in Nandikshetra. A Naga carries him between distant sacred places, explaining within the story how the king fulfils his daily obligations.

Warfare and the claim to good government

The chronicle says that Jalauka expelled people it calls mlecchas and conquered territories extending to Kanyakubja, now Kanauj. It also gives his conquests a much larger, conventional reach to the surrounding oceans. These are the poem’s claims. They do not supply a verified campaign itinerary or a map of territory administered from Kashmir.

The narrative connects victory with the arrival of settlers and people knowledgeable in legal procedure. It contrasts an earlier administration of seven principal officials with eighteen offices established by Jalauka. The seven named roles include judicial, revenue, treasury, military, diplomatic, priestly and astrological functions. Stein’s commentary connects the eighteen-office scheme with a wider literary model of kingship.

This is evidence of how the chronicle imagined an effective royal order. It is not a surviving appointment register from a datable Jalauka government. Nor does the word mleccha securely identify one army or nationality: proposed connections with Greeks remain interpretations of an unspecific narrative category.

Ishanadevi and the geography of protection

Jalauka’s queen, Ishanadevi, is credited with establishing circles of the Mothers at the gates of Kashmir and other places. Stein interprets the gates as entrances through the mountain routes and discusses the religious diagrams associated with these foundations. The passage gives the queen an active role in the kingdom’s sacred protection, rather than mentioning her only as a genealogical detail.

The king is also credited with an endowed settlement at Varabala. Stein proposed identifying it with Baravul and described carved remains seen there in the nineteenth century. The proposed place-name connection is useful historical geography, but the presence of old stones does not independently date the royal grant or identify its donor.

The spring and the golden cup

Another story concerns a shrine of Jyeshtharudra at Srinagari and its relationship to the sacred spring of Sodara. Unable on one occasion to fulfil his observance at the distant spring, Jalauka sees a new spring appear. To test the connection, he places a covered golden cup in the original waters; it emerges at the new spring after two and a half days.

The episode links distant places through a miracle and confers sanctity on the newer location. Stein compares the narrative with place-names and pilgrimage traditions around Srinagar and the Haramukh region. The miracle should be read as part of that sacred geography, not as a measured account of groundwater flow.

The destroyed monastery and the demand for restitution

The most developed moral episode begins when a woman asks the king for food. After he promises to satisfy her request, she reveals an alarming demand. Jalauka offers himself rather than take another life. She praises his compassion in Buddhist terms, which the Shaiva king asks her to explain.

She then reveals why she came. Disturbed by music from a monastery, Jalauka had ordered its destruction in anger after listening to malicious advisers. The injured Buddhists had sent her against him, but Bodhisattvas directed her towards another outcome: the king must surrender hoarded wealth and build a monastery as atonement.

Jalauka promises and constructs the Krityashrama Vihara. The story therefore includes religious hostility and royal wrongdoing as well as generosity. Its resolution places an obligation on the king to repair harm. Calling Jalauka simply a persecutor, or simply a tolerant ruler, would each omit a central movement of the narrative.

A monastery tradition is not proof of its founder

Stein connected Krityashrama with Kitshom near Baramulla and compared the name with a monastery in the account of the eighth-century pilgrim Ou-k’ong. He also described remains in the locality and the reuse of stone. This is an argument about a monastic site and the transmission of its name.

Even if the site identification is accepted, it does not independently prove Jalauka’s foundation or the supernatural encounter. A monastery can have a documented later history while its origin story remains legendary. The distinction lets the place’s importance survive without forcing all parts of its tradition into a single level of certainty.

Later interpretations and the end of the story

The 2021 study of Semthan by Shah and Lone discusses a hypothesis, attributed to Alexis Sanderson, that connects Jalauka’s name with the Hephthalite name Javuka. Such a proposal would move the story’s historical associations away from a straightforward Mauryan succession. It is an interpretation of names and religious memory, not an established replacement biography.

Kalhana closes Jalauka’s story with further Shaiva patronage and the king and queen attaining union with Shiva at Ciramocana. The ending belongs to the same religious narrative as his miraculous powers. The account remains valuable for understanding kingship, sacred places, conflict and restitution in Kashmir’s historical imagination, while the identity and date of a historical Jalauka remain unresolved.