Uchchala takes the throne

The reign after Harsha

Uchchala, written Uccala in Stein’s translation of the Rajatarangini, became king of Kashmir in 1101 and ruled until his assassination in 1111. He was a son of Malla and a brother of Sussala. The struggle that brought him to power grew out of Harsha’s declining authority, conflict with powerful local landholders and divisions among the royal forces.

The reign opens Book VIII of Kalhana’s chronicle. Its account is unusually detailed, but it is also a judgment of kingship. Kalhana praises Uchchala’s attention to grievances and relief of scarcity, then describes his intolerance, humiliating treatment of officials and pleasure in dangerous combats. A full account needs both parts of this portrait.

The catalogue places the article under the accession year, 1101. It does not assign an exact accession day: recognition as a claimant, entry into the capital and the final elimination of Harsha were stages in a contested transfer of power. The article follows the reign rather than treating all its events as incidents in its first year.

From claimant to ruler in 1101

Uchchala and Sussala had served in Harsha’s political and military world before becoming his opponents. When the king moved against them, they escaped and sought support beyond his immediate control. Uchchala returned across the mountains in 1101 and established connections with Damaras, local landholders whose resources and armed followers could sustain a challenge to the court.

The campaign was not an uninterrupted advance. Harsha’s forces at times drove Uchchala back, while Sussala opened another front. Defections and changing allegiances eventually weakened the king’s position. Kalhana describes a Brahman assembly recognizing Uchchala as king while Harsha was still struggling to retain power.

The destruction associated with the conflict included the fighting at Parihasapura and the burning of the royal palace. Harsha’s death closed the struggle over his person, but left the new ruler with depleted resources, demanding supporters and a brother with ambitions of his own. Later classification as the beginning of a second Lohara sequence should not obscure these practical difficulties.

Sussala at Lohara and the power of the Damaras

At the beginning of the new reign, Kalhana presents Sussala and the Damara supporters as obstacles to Uchchala’s independent authority. Uchchala arranged for his brother to rule the territory dependent on Lohara. Sussala took troops, animals, resources and advisers with him. Lohara here is the mountain stronghold and its territory associated with Loharin, not the city of Lahore.

Janakachandra, a prominent Damara, also gained exceptional influence. He advised preserving Harsha’s young grandson Bhikshachara, and Kalhana attributes to him a plan to control the child and rule in his name. Uchchala responded by encouraging rivalry between Janakachandra and other local leaders through the prospect of an important appointment.

The resulting confrontation became a violent fight near the palace and endangered Uchchala himself. Janakachandra was killed, and his wounded brother Gargachandra was sent to Lahara to recover. Kalhana dates this killing three fortnights after Harsha’s death, noting an intercalary Bhadrapada month in that year. This is a relative sequence in the source, not an invented modern calendar date.

Uchchala then forced Damaras in Kramarajya to dismiss their troops and used executions against opponents in Madavarajya. His consolidation combined accommodation, rivalry and coercion. Gargachandra nevertheless retained the king’s favour, illustrating why the relationship cannot be reduced to an undifferentiated war against every Damara.

Petitions, officials and access to the king

Kalhana credits Uchchala with spending much of the day outside his private apartments so that he could hear what people said. He also describes the king moving about on horseback and correcting faults brought to his attention. These passages present accessibility as a royal duty, although they do not establish an equal or formal right of access for every inhabitant.

The chronicler connects vigilance in judging complaints with a severe personal vow concerning deaths during protest fasts. The point of the account is the pressure placed on judges to respond to grievances. It should not be read as a recommendation of self-harm or as proof that every petitioner obtained a satisfactory decision.

Uchchala dismissed, imprisoned and publicly humiliated officials whom the narrative treats as oppressive or dishonest. Sahela was among those removed. Kalhana’s language about Kayasthas is sweeping and hostile; it reflects his assessment of the official class, not evidence that every person associated with that designation committed the same abuses.

The learned Shivaratha publicly urged the king to relieve the capital from officials, royal relatives, burdensome arrangements, ministers and protest fasts. According to the chronicle, Uchchala insisted on making him a chief superintendent. The exchange shows criticism and appointment within the story of government, while leaving the actual reach of the new official’s authority uncertain.

Grain relief and the limits of a royal success story

One of the most consequential measures attributed to Uchchala is the sale of his grain stores at low prices when scarcity began. Kalhana says that this checked famines at their onset. The later comparison with Sussala again praises Uchchala for responding quickly to shortages.

The passage gives concrete substance to the praise of generosity: stored food could be released into a market when access to grain was under pressure. Stein related this to revenue received in kind and the influence of royal stores on urban grain prices. His broader explanation is a reconstruction, while the chronicle itself supplies the narrower claim about cheap sales.

The account does not give a continuous series of prices, the quantity distributed, a village-by-village record or a count of people reached. It therefore cannot establish that hunger disappeared throughout the Valley. The policy is significant without turning Kalhana’s favourable description into a complete statistical assessment.

Other passages describe assistance to people in distress, food and medicine for ill Brahmans, and employment for men who had lived by plunder. These claims show the range of conduct that the chronicler valued, but also the particular groups visible to him. They do not amount to a documented universal welfare system.

The lawsuit decided through coin evidence

Kalhana devotes a long episode to a dispute between a depositor and a merchant. The depositor had left money during Kalasha’s reign and later drawn smaller sums for household expenses. After many years, the merchant claimed that the withdrawals and interest had exhausted the balance. The judges could not resolve the dispute.

Uchchala asked for a sample of the supposedly preserved deposit. He found coins carrying his own name among money said to have remained from Kalasha’s time. In the narrative, this exposed the merchant’s use of the funds rather than the untouched safekeeping he implied.

The king then applied reciprocal reasoning: if the customer owed interest on advances, the merchant also owed interest on the deposit he had employed. The episode links commercial dealings, accounting and royal judgment. It also assumes that a coin’s royal name could identify it as later than the alleged deposit.

This is a judicial story in a literary chronicle, not a surviving case file. Its speeches and itemized expenses should not be presented as a verbatim court transcript. Nor does the stated monetary amount mean that every unit was a separate gold coin. The distinction between money of account and physical currency remains essential.

Rebuilding shrines and the royal seat

After a fire, Uchchala is said to have rebuilt the settlement around Nandikshetra, associated in Stein’s discussion with the Bhuteshvara site at Buthser. Kalhana also credits him with work at Chakradhara, Yogesha and Svayambhu. Exact foundation or restoration months are not supplied for these projects.

At Parihasapura, the chronicle says that Parihasakeshava was set up again after Harsha’s actions against the shrine. Because the earlier silver image had been destroyed, Stein understood the notice as the installation of a replacement, not the recovery of an intact original. The wording should not be used to claim that the earlier monument survived unchanged.

Uchchala also restored the royal throne damaged during Harsha’s overthrow. Kalhana links it with the earlier king Jayapida. Such restoration could reassert continuity of royal authority after a destructive struggle, although that political significance is an interpretation of the act rather than a preserved statement of the king’s intention.

Stein observed later repairs among the ruins at Buthser during his nineteenth-century visit and suggested a connection with Uchchala’s work. That attribution was a historical inference based on the chronicle and the remains visible to him. It is not a modern excavation date or a current condition survey.

Jayamati, religious foundations and a divided household

Queen Jayamati is credited with the unusual distinction of occupying half the royal throne. Kalhana praises her generosity and support for people in distress, while commenting on her social origins. His language about birth reflects assumptions of rank that should be distinguished from an assessment of her actions.

Jayamati founded a vihara with an associated matha. Uchchala established a matha in honour of his father on the site of a paternal residence and a vihara in honour of his sister Sulla at another family property. Kalhana says that endowments for the king’s foundations had not been settled when he died, an important qualification to the list of buildings.

The king later became estranged from Jayamati and favoured Bijjala, a daughter of the ruler of Vartula. Kalhana reports different explanations for the change, including Jayamati’s alleged protection of Bhikshachara. The account does not justify presenting one private motive as independently established fact.

The queen’s patronage, the family foundations and the dispute over a surviving rival child belong to different aspects of court life. Keeping them distinct prevents the political suspicions surrounding the household from erasing Jayamati’s recorded public role.

Court violence and insecure appointments

The chronicle’s praise gives way to sharp criticism of Uchchala’s character. Kalhana says that he publicly attacked the appearance, descent and conduct of his servants, encouraged rivalries and rewarded soldiers for dangerous single combats. The account includes the fear experienced by the families of men attending the palace.

These passages qualify any portrayal of the reign as simply humane or orderly. A ruler praised for listening to grievances could also exercise humiliating and lethal personal power. Kalhana himself presents the contradiction, rather than leaving it solely for a later historian to discover.

Appointments were unstable. Men could rise from modest circumstances and then lose office when their influence or conduct displeased the king. Bhogasena obtained high responsibility, while Radda, Chudda and Vyadda, sons of a soldier, also became ministers. Kandarpa, recalled from exile, declined office because of the king’s intolerance as described by the chronicle.

No numerical tally of victims can responsibly be drawn from the text’s expansive language. What it supports is a pattern in the narrative: favour could change abruptly, dismissal threatened livelihoods and status, and repeated insults helped create enemies within the ruler’s own establishment.

Conflict with Sussala and other claimants

Sussala attempted a sudden invasion of his brother’s kingdom. Uchchala moved quickly against him, and Gargachandra defeated a renewed attack. Pursued towards the northern routes, Sussala withdrew into Darad territory and eventually returned to his own dominion after a difficult journey.

Kalhana says that Uchchala did not exploit his brother’s absence by seizing Lohara. The brothers’ relationship combined affection and conflict. Their eventual reconciliation is associated in the narrative with the birth of Sussala’s son Jayasimha and an auspicious mark on the child’s foot. The bodily omen belongs to the chronicle’s explanation, not independently verified causation.

Other threats involved Bhimadeva, a son of Kalasha named Bhoja, and the Darad ruler Jagaddala. This Bhoja should not be confused with Harsha’s son of the same name. Uchchala used diplomacy to prevent the Darad intervention and later eliminated the claimant after betrayal by a servant.

The fate of Bhikshachara is especially uncertain within the source. Kalhana recounts an attempt to kill the child, a rescue and upbringing outside Kashmir, but also preserves versions involving substitution and doubts about identity. The article cannot settle those alternatives. What is clear in the political narrative is the continuing importance of a claimant presented as Harsha’s grandson.

The conspiracy and assassination in 1111

A false report of Uchchala’s death during a journey gave some officials an opportunity to discuss taking power. Kalhana connects this with the ambitions of Radda, Chudda and their associates. Although the report proved false, the chronicle says the aspiration persisted.

The grievances described include loss of office, repeated insults, punishment inflicted on the brothers’ mother following a sexual allegation, and an accusation that the treasury official Sadda had embezzled revenue. These are elements of Kalhana’s explanation of the conspiracy. They should not be treated as independently adjudicated allegations or as justification for the violence that followed.

Bhogasena was drawn into the plot after his own dismissal and humiliation. The narrative says he considered warning the king, but a further rebuff ended that opportunity. Conspirators and their armed supporters then attacked Uchchala inside the palace after his evening meal.

Kalhana describes resistance by the king and a small number of attendants, including a lamp-bearer and the official Shringara. Uchchala was killed and his body taken for hurried cremation at an island near the confluence of the Mahasarit and Vitasta. The narrative places the attack in the royal palace; it does not support relocating the assassination to Banihal.

The chronicle dates his death to the sixth day of the bright half of Pausha in Laukika 4187, corresponding to the 1111 succession crisis. Stein places the ensuing brief rule of Radda in December. The traditional date is retained here without claiming a separately verified exact Gregorian conversion. Radda’s short occupation of the throne and the subsequent rise of Salhana form the next stage of the chronology.

What the reign reveals

Uchchala’s reign shows a monarchy recovering authority after civil conflict while remaining dependent on powerful supporters and vulnerable to its own officials. Grain sales, hearings and restorations appear alongside coercion, personal rivalry and violence. None of these strands can stand for the whole reign on its own.

Kalhana wrote close enough to this period to preserve a dense account of people and institutions, but density does not remove literary selection, hostile judgments, damaged passages or conflicting reports. Later translations and studies of the same chronicle help interpretation; they do not automatically supply independent corroboration.

Further work should compare surviving objects, inscriptions, the archaeology of the foundations and the transmission of the narrative. The present account distinguishes reported actions from inferred institutions and uncertain motives, while leaving individual dates unresolved wherever the evidence does not establish them.