Parihaspora and its religious foundations

A royal foundation in the eighth century

Parihaspora, the Parihasapura of the Rajatarangini, was one of the major foundations associated with Lalitaditya Muktapida. Kalhana places its construction among the king’s religious and urban works. The surviving monuments and the chronicle together make it an important place for understanding the Karkota court, its religious patronage and the resources that could be concentrated in a new settlement.

The association with Lalitaditya places the foundation in the eighth century. The year 750 used in this timeline is an approximate sorting point within that period, not a documented year of construction. No founding month or day has been established. The buildings should not all be assumed to have been started or completed at the same moment.

Kalhana links the town’s name with parihasa, or jesting, and presents its creation as an expression of royal splendour. That explanation belongs to his literary account. Stein identified the extensive ruins at Par’spur with the town described in the chronicle and understood it as a royal residence. Its identification is more substantial than the name story alone, but the surviving remains do not supply a complete street plan or a census of its inhabitants.

Vishnu images and the scale of royal gifts

Book IV names several images attributed to Lalitaditya at Parihasapura. Parihasakesava was an image of Vishnu in silver, while Muktakesava was made of gold. Mahavaraha, Vishnu in his boar form, wore golden armour. A silver Govardhanadhara represented the god associated with holding up Mount Govardhana. These are distinct names and forms in the account, rather than interchangeable labels for a single surviving temple.

Kalhana also describes a great stone pillar carrying Garuda, the bird associated with Vishnu. He gives its height as fifty-four hands. This is a measurement reported by the chronicle in a historical unit, not a modern survey of an intact column. The same distinction applies to the materials and dimensions of the lost images.

The account assigns eighty-four thousand tolakas of gold to Muktakesava and the same numerical total in palas of silver to Parihasakesava. It then uses eighty-four thousand prasthas of copper for the Great Buddha. These repeated numbers occur in a passage celebrating exceptional royal generosity. They cannot safely be converted into an audited total of metal or a monetary valuation of the settlement.

Kalhana describes additional precious-metal images attending the principal deities and speaks of treasures, villages and establishments assigned to the shrines. The passage therefore concerns continuing endowments as well as construction. Its language conveys the scale of patronage as the chronicler understood it; it does not provide the surviving accounts, named labour force or complete list of revenue assignments needed to reconstruct the economy of each institution.

Buddhist institutions beside the temples

Lalitaditya’s foundations in the same narrative include the Rajavihara, or royal monastery, a large quadrangle, a caitya and a monumental Buddha image. The image is subsequently called the Great Buddha. Kalhana compares expenditure on the king’s principal works and portrays them as achievements of comparable magnificence. Buddhist patronage is thus part of his account of the town’s creation, alongside the Vishnu foundations.

The court’s religious building activity was not limited to the king. Cankuna, identified in the chronicle with the Tuhkhara region of Central Asia, is credited with a monastery, a stupa and golden Buddha images. Kalhana also records a monastery established by Kayya, the ruler of Lata, where the monk Sarvajnamitra later resided. These named foundations show why the town cannot be represented adequately by a single royal temple.

The different institutions must nevertheless remain distinct. Cankuna’s foundation should not be silently substituted for the Rajavihara, and a stupa should not be treated as another name for a residential monastery. Kalhana also describes a separate foundation of Cankuna in Srinagar. The fact that a patron was active at more than one location matters when matching literary references to archaeological remains.

Queens, ministers and other patrons

Queen Kamalavati appears as a founder in her own right. Kalhana associates her with Kamalahatta and a large silver image called Kamalakesava. He credits another queen, Chakramardika, with Chakrapura and gives it seven thousand dwellings. This population-related figure belongs to the chronicle’s description; it is not an excavated count of houses at the surviving site.

The minister Mitrasharman is credited with a Shiva linga named Mitreshvara. Kayya’s gifts included the Vishnu shrine Kayyasvamin as well as his Buddhist monastery. A learned teacher named Bhappata established Bhappateshvara, and the narrative mentions further lingas. The list places several forms of religious devotion within the same circle of patronage without showing that their institutions were identical in practice or administration.

Cankuna’s wife Ishanadevi is credited with a well. Kalhana praises its water as beneficial to the sick, which is part of his account rather than a medically verified property. The notice is also a reminder that patronage included water provision, not only monumental images. Queens, ministers, visiting rulers and teachers all appear in the record, although the builders, metalworkers and other workers who made the foundations possible are not individually named in these verses.

Reading the surviving monuments

The archaeological inventory places the remains on a karewa northwest of Srinagar. It distinguishes a stupa attributed to Cankuna, the royal monastery and a caitya. The stupa has a square base with projecting sections and steps on four sides; its upper structure is lost. The broad plinth provided a route for walking around it.

The monastery is described as a courtyard enclosed by twenty-six cells with a verandah, with drains and a stone trough among the remains. The inventory also records silver coins found in a jar in a cell. The caitya has a square sanctuary, a surrounding passage and an eastern approach, standing on a base with two levels.

These recorded remains allow a more concrete account of the complex than the chronicle’s descriptions of splendour. They do not, by themselves, establish the appearance or metal content of every lost image. Matching a named foundation to a ruin requires attention to plans, location and excavation evidence.

Reuse, survival and later history

The settlement’s history continued after Lalitaditya. In his discussion of Sankaravarman, Stein summarizes Kalhana’s account of Parihasapura being plundered for materials used at the later royal foundation of Sankarapura. This is a specific account of reuse under a later ruler. It should not be expanded into a claim that every Parihaspora building disappeared at that time.

Book VII gives a different episode from the reign of Harsha. During the king’s seizure of sacred images, the Great Buddha at Parihasapura was spared after the singer Kanaka, who came from the place, appealed to him. Kalhana pairs this with the rescue of another Buddha image in Srinagar through a separate petitioner. Stein identifies the Parihasapura image with Lalitaditya’s foundation. The episode shows that the image had a later history beyond the reign of its founder.

Material reuse, the fate of particular images and the survival of masonry are separate questions. A single destruction date would conceal those differences. Parihaspora’s history is best reconstructed monument by monument, using the foundation narratives, later references, archaeological records and records of repair. The ruins preserve part of that history, while the names of patrons and institutions preserve another part that cannot simply be read from the stones.