Pravarasena II and Pravarapura

Pravarapura and the history of Srinagar

Pravarasena II is remembered in Kalhana’s Rajatarangini as the founder of Pravarapura, the city identified with the historical centre of Srinagar. His account describes a capital shaped by the Vitasta, now called the Jhelum, by waterways connected with the lakes, and by the hill of Sharika. Religious foundations, a bridge and markets all form part of the description.

The association between Pravarapura and Srinagar rests on a combination of textual geography, remembered place names and later site identifications. The foundation story also contains demons, miraculous images and a king’s ascent to heaven. Those elements belong to the city’s remembered sacred history; they cannot be used as contemporary building records.

The approximate setting is the sixth to early seventh century CE. The catalogue uses c. 600 as a sorting marker, not as an established founding year. No construction month is known.

Which Pravarasena?

Kalhana distinguishes more than one ruler called Pravarasena. The earlier Pravarasena, also called Shreshthasena and Tunjina, is Meghavahana’s son. Pravarasena II belongs to the later part of the family narrative and is presented as the son of Toramana. When Kalhana introduces the desire to build a new city, the king is living in the city of his grandfather, Pravarasena I.

Stein understood that earlier residence as Puranadhishthana, the old capital associated with Pandrethan. The new foundation therefore represents a change of royal and urban centre within the Valley in the chronicle’s account. It is not a claim that there had been no settlement in the Srinagar area before Pravarasena.

The numbering of the kings is an aid to reading this narrative. A coin bearing the name Pravarasena does not itself include the chronicle’s full genealogy or prove which numbered ruler issued it.

The night journey and the measuring line

In Book III, verses 336–349, Pravarasena decides to found a city under his own name. He goes out at night to discover an auspicious place and time. Near a cremation ground beside a stream, he encounters a formidable supernatural being who praises his courage and promises that his wish will be fulfilled.

The being stretches a knee across the Mahasarit stream, forming an embankment. Pravarasena cuts steps into it with his dagger and crosses. He is then told to build where he finds a measuring line the following day. The line appears at Saritaka, a place associated with the goddess Sharika.

This is a foundation legend explaining royal courage, sacred permission and the choice of a site. Its measuring line is part of that story. The passage does not preserve a surveyed plan, a dated construction inscription or the names of the labourers who built the city.

Waterways, the embankment and Sharika’s hill

Stein examined the legend against Srinagar’s geography. He identified the Mahasarit with the watercourse issuing from Dal Lake towards the Vitasta, known in his time as the Tsunth Kul. His argument compared passages about movement towards the city, river junctions and cremation grounds with the position of the waterways.

He associated the supernatural embankment with the Suth, an old dyke along the northern side of the stream. Its bend suggested a knee, while the name Khudbal offered a proposed connection with the Kshurikabala of the story. These are explanations of how a legend may have attached itself to a real landscape, not proof that the structure was built in the manner narrated.

The place name Saritaka was no longer independently traceable to Stein, but the reference to Sharika helped him place the story near the hill known as Hari Parbat. He also compared later uses of Pravarapura in literature and documents. The identification of the city depends on this wider pattern of evidence, rather than on one isolated resemblance.

Stein’s descriptions concern the landscape he studied around the end of the nineteenth century. They should not be read as a survey of the present condition of every canal, embankment or neighbourhood.

Temples, monasteries and the Great Bridge

Kalhana says that Pravarasena intended to consecrate the Shiva shrine of Pravareshvara, but a Vishnu image miraculously occupied the prepared base. The image was called Jayasvamin after Jaya, the architect associated with knowledge of the auspicious moment. A further story describes the Ganesha image Bhimasvamin turning towards the city. These episodes connect the foundation with several forms of worship.

The chronicle also credits the king with shrines of goddesses and the Brhatsetu, or Great Bridge, over the Vitasta. It associates this bridge with the introduction of boat bridges. Stein could not securely establish its location. The text therefore does not justify identifying it with a particular surviving Srinagar bridge or assigning that structure Pravarasena’s date.

Jayendra, identified as the king’s maternal uncle, builds the Jayendravihara and a Great Buddha image. The minister Moraka is credited with another foundation, Morakabhavana. Kalhana also attributes distant possessions to Moraka, but those expansive claims are not an independently mapped record of Kashmir’s territorial reach.

Stein connected the Jayendravihara with the monastery named in the biography of Xuanzang as the traveller’s residence in the capital. This comparison helps place Buddhist learning within the city’s history. It does not establish the original foundation day or an intact surviving monastery building.

Markets, houses and the limits of the description

Kalhana describes the city as initially built on the right bank of the Vitasta, with regularly arranged markets. Streams reach residences and market streets, and a hill within the city provides a view over its houses. Cool river water, seasonal flowers and lofty buildings give the passage much of its character.

The account also says that the city was once famous for thirty-six lakhs of houses and describes temple wealth sufficient to buy the world many times. These are expressions of abundance in a literary description, not a census or a financial statement. They should not be converted into a population estimate.

The juxtaposition is valuable: the same passage can preserve recognisable urban features while exaggerating scale and wealth. Reading it carefully allows markets, waterways and religious institutions to enter the history without making every number equally credible.

The old city, the new city and the coins

Xuanzang’s account distinguishes an old city from a new city in Kashmir and locates a monastery in relation to them. Later scholars used this description when identifying Pandrethan with the older centre and Srinagar with Pravarapura. The traveller’s geographical reference supports the existence of distinct urban centres by his visit; it is not his eyewitness account of Pravarasena founding the city.

Joe Cribb’s numismatic study discusses coins inscribed with Pravarasena’s name alongside related issues of Meghama, Tunjina and Toramana. He places the closely related group broadly in the late sixth to seventh centuries and stresses the difficulty of fitting it into Kalhana’s much longer royal sequence. Repeated royal names complicate identification.

Cribb also describes British Museum coin 1860,1220.298, a dinara of 7.77 grams and 25 millimetres, with a different design derived from late Kidarite coinage. He considers it evidence for an early position of Pravarasena’s issues within the series. This is an argument about coin sequence. Neither the name nor the design dates the foundation of Pravarapura to a particular year.

The coin evidence and the city tradition can therefore be compared without pretending that they resolve every biographical question. The approximate date used here retains that uncertainty.

The king’s departure and the memory of Pravareshvara

Kalhana assigns Pravarasena sixty years of rule and closes the reign with another supernatural account. A Brahman named Jayanta brings a message telling the king that his earthly work is complete. Pravarasena then ascends bodily towards Shiva’s abode. The chronicle associates his departure with a gateway at Pravareshvara.

Stein notes that Bilhana had already recorded a similar ascent tradition before Kalhana. He also describes a ruined gateway locally associated with Pravarasena near the shrine of Baha-ud-din Sahib and proposes that it belonged to Pravareshvara. This is a historical site identification based on remains and tradition. It does not establish the date of every stone or the building sequence of the later sacred site.

The chronicle names Yudhishthira, born to Queen Ratnaprabha, as the king’s successor. The reign length and genealogy remain part of its reconstruction. Further work on Pravarapura requires archaeological plans, dated building phases, the full traveller biography and comparison of coin specimens. The city’s long history cannot be reduced to a single founder’s date.