Tunga’s expedition in support of Trilochanapala

An appeal for assistance

Tunga’s expedition was a Kashmiri intervention in support of the Shahi ruler Trilochanapala against the forces of Mahmud of Ghazni. King Sangramaraja sent his powerful minister beyond the Valley with an army. The expedition ended in defeat near the river called Tausi in Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, but it did not bring the Kashmir Valley under Mahmud’s rule.

The campaign belongs to the early eleventh century, conventionally around 1013–1014. Its precise dating remains a problem. Kalhana supplies a traditional month for the dispatch of the force but omits the year. Later historians reconstruct the surrounding campaigns by comparing accounts that do not agree in every detail.

The main Kashmiri narrative is in Book VII of the Rajatarangini, written in the twelfth century. It combines a sequence of military events with a strong contrast between Tunga’s rashness and Trilochanapala’s courage. Its speeches, judgments and heroic descriptions require different treatment from the basic record of an alliance and defeat.

The campaign calendar

Kalhana says Sangramaraja dispatched Tunga in Margasirsa after Trilochanapala requested help. This is a month in a traditional calendar. Without a securely identified year and a checked calendar conversion, it cannot responsibly become an exact Gregorian departure date. The catalogue therefore retains an approximate period and leaves the Gregorian month unassigned.

In his 1900 commentary, Aurel Stein considered Mahmud’s campaign of 1013 the most likely setting. He explicitly acknowledged that discrepancies in the chronology and geographical details of the other accounts prevented a certain identification. His proposed year is an argument, not a date supplied by Kalhana.

Abdur Rehman’s 1976 comparative study places Mahmud’s first departure in November 1013, followed by a return to Ghazni when snow blocked the routes. It places the renewed departure in March 1014 and the arrival near Nandana after about two months. This reconstruction explains why the wider campaign can extend across two years. It does not establish a precise month or day for the battle on the Tausi.

These are different chronological observations: a traditional month for Tunga’s dispatch, a proposed identification of the campaign, and a reconstructed sequence for Mahmud’s movements. Combining them into a single exact anniversary would conceal the uncertainty instead of resolving it.

The Shahi position and the southern approaches

Rehman describes Trilochanapala leaving Bhima to defend Nandana while seeking Kashmiri assistance. After the defeat of its defenders, the fortress surrendered. His comparison of the accounts also records a disagreement: one narrative takes Mahmud onward towards the Kashmir pass, while another reports a return to Ghazni. The sequence is therefore not equally secure in every source.

Kalhana’s account begins its detailed campaign narrative with the arrival of the Kashmiri force in the Shahi ruler’s country. Trilochanapala welcomed Tunga and his son. The chronicler says they had been there for five or six days when the Shahi ruler noticed their lack of attention to watches, scouts and other preparations.

The geographical identification also needs qualification. Stein identified the Tausi of this episode with the Tohi of Poonch, a river running towards the Jhelum. He noted that similar river names occurred elsewhere and rejected the Rajauri stream as too far east for his reconstruction of Mahmud’s advance.

That interpretation locates the encounter on the southern approaches to Kashmir, rather than inside the Valley. It supports a regional setting, not a securely excavated battlefield or an exact modern map coordinate. The names of a river and an approach route should not be expanded into a claim that every nearby settlement was captured.

Advice, an initial success and the main encounter

In Kalhana’s narrative, Trilochanapala advised Tunga to remain on the steep side of a hill until he understood the enemy’s methods. Tunga was eager to fight and rejected the counsel. The passage presents the Shahi ruler as experienced and the Kashmiri commander as overconfident; the reported conversation is not a surviving military dispatch.

Tunga then crossed the Tausi with a relatively small force and defeated a reconnaissance detachment sent by the opposing commander. Kalhana calls that commander Hammira. Stein explains the designation as a title associated here with Mahmud, rather than treating it as evidence for an otherwise separate ruler.

The first success is important to the sequence. The chronicle does not describe an uninterrupted Kashmiri collapse from the moment of arrival. It says a limited victory encouraged Tunga to continue disregarding Trilochanapala’s advice, even when the warning was repeated.

The next morning, according to the narrative, the opposing commander appeared with his main force. Tunga’s army dispersed, while the Shahi troops continued fighting for a time. The text supplies no dependable numerical strength for either army and no documented casualty total. Its enormous heroic numbers later in the passage should not be converted into statistical estimates.

Those who continued fighting

Kalhana singles out Jayasimha, Shrivardhana and the Damara Vibhramarka as continuing to fight after the wider force broke. He associates Vibhramarka with Sangrama’s family. Their appearance preserves individual participants beyond the two principal commanders, although the passage does not supply complete biographies or reliable unit strengths.

The chronicler praises these men for preserving their country’s honour. He praises Trilochanapala still more extravagantly, comparing his fighting with Shiva’s destructive power and describing him emerging from surrounding enemies. Such imagery belongs to the literary account of bravery. It does not demonstrate supernatural action or an independently measured number of opponents.

Trilochanapala survived the encounter and continued efforts to recover his position. Kalhana’s admiration for him does not reverse the military outcome: the allied force had been defeated. Nor does the failure establish that every Kashmiri participant behaved as the chronicler says Tunga behaved.

Defeat, return and the limits of the record

Kalhana describes hostile forces spreading through the country after Trilochanapala withdrew. His language is hostile and uses a degrading social label for the enemy. The account conveys devastation and loss of control, but it is not a district-by-district record of annexation, civilian deaths, captivity or displacement.

Tunga returned slowly to Kashmir. The chronicle says Sangramaraja did not respond with anger over the military failure, while also describing the king’s growing discomfort with dependence on his minister. Tunga’s subsequent killing belongs to a wider struggle at court. The battlefield defeat alone should not be presented as a documented judicial charge or a sufficient explanation of every later conspiracy.

The episode weakened the Shahi position and exposed the risks of Kashmir’s intervention beyond the Valley. It must nevertheless remain distinct from Mahmud’s subsequent approach to Lohara. A defeated Kashmiri contingent outside the Valley is not evidence that the Valley itself was conquered during this expedition.

The surviving narrative gives far more space to rulers, commanders and reputation than to ordinary people. It does not name the affected civilians or provide a recoverable total of losses. Further work on the Persian and Arabic accounts, their chronology and the geography of the approaches may clarify the sequence. Those gaps should remain visible rather than be filled with invented incidents or modern political claims.