Kalhana and the writing of history

A history written in Kashmir

Kalhana composed the Rajatarangini in Sanskrit in the twelfth century, during the reign of Jayasimha. Its title is usually rendered as the River of Kings. The work brings a long sequence of Kashmir’s rulers into a single narrative, reaching from stories of a distant past toward events much closer to the author’s own lifetime.

For Kashmir’s history, the work is indispensable because it preserves names, successions, descriptions of places, political conflicts and traditions that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to reconstruct. It is also a literary composition. Its speeches, character portraits, moral judgments and extraordinary stories must be examined alongside its chronological information.

Why the earliest books need a different reading

The first three books look back across periods far removed from Kalhana’s lifetime. They contain legendary rulers, very long reigns and gaps in the succession. Stein’s critical study identifies the problem of fifty-two lost reigns within the chronology and shows why its starting calculations cannot be treated as a continuous series of independently established dates.

This does not make every name or tradition in those books worthless. It means that the date of a story’s setting and the date when the story was written are different facts. A tradition can be historically important as a record of memory, religious geography or political imagination even when its events cannot be placed in a particular year.

For that reason, this encyclopedia does not fill an ancient monthly calendar with the chronicle’s legendary dates. Archaeological layers, objects, inscriptions and comparisons with other records are needed to establish what can be dated more securely.

The Karkota period and outside comparisons

Book IV describes the Karkota dynasty, including Lalitaditya. Here the narrative can be compared with Chinese records, travellers’ accounts and surviving monuments. Stein finds the broad dynastic sequence much more closely connected with historical evidence than the chronology of the earliest books.

Comparison also exposes disagreement. His study identifies a discrepancy of about twenty-five years in parts of the Karkota chronology. This is not a reason to ignore either body of evidence. It is a reason to preserve approximate dates and explain why a precise-looking modern succession table may conceal unresolved assumptions.

The same approach applies to stories of conquest. A named embassy, a monastery described by a traveller and an elaborate poetic circuit of victory are not interchangeable kinds of evidence. They answer different questions about a ruler’s activity and reputation.

From Avantivarman toward Kalhana’s own time

Beginning with Avantivarman, whose accession is placed in 855 or 856, the account supplies more exact chronological detail. Reigns are related to years, months and days in the historical calendar. Stein also draws attention to the sequence of coins that can be compared with the names and order of rulers.

The later books therefore support a more detailed political chronology. Even here, an exact date in the Laukika calendar must be converted carefully before being presented as a Gregorian date. An accession year does not automatically establish a modern accession month.

Greater chronological detail also does not remove the author’s perspective. Accounts of palace conflict may judge a ruler harshly, praise a supporter or explain events through the moral expectations of the writer. Descriptions of Didda’s rule are a particularly important example of the need to distinguish political events from hostile character judgments.

Reading beyond the kings

The Rajatarangini is useful for more than royal succession. Its accounts of Suyya’s waterworks, temple foundations, ministers, landholders and food prices provide openings into environmental and social history. They show that farming, revenue and religious institutions were part of the political order.

Ordinary people nevertheless appear unevenly. The chronicle cannot supply a complete account of women outside the court, labourers, village life or all the communities of the wider region. Its omissions should guide further research rather than be treated as proof that those experiences did not matter.

A Kashmir-centered history can value this extraordinary local work while reading it critically. The objective is to recover as much of the past as the evidence permits, without turning literary prestige into a guarantee that every statement is true.