Varnata and Samgramadeva

Two successors during Yasaskara’s final illness

The succession crisis of 948 began before Yasaskara died. During his final illness, he first arranged the installation of his relative Varnata, then reversed that decision in favour of the child Samgramadeva. After Yasaskara’s death, ministers and a royal grandmother exercised power around the child. Parvagupta eventually displaced the other powerful figures and killed Samgramadeva in 949.

The principal account is Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, composed in the twelfth century. Its narrative supplies a sequence of appointments, reversals and violence, but much less about the two rulers’ personal lives. It is important to distinguish this tenth-century Samgramadeva from later Kashmiri rulers with similar names.

Varnata’s appointment and removal

Kalhana describes Varnata as a son of Ramadeva, Yasaskara’s paternal grand-uncle. When abdominal illness threatened the king’s life, Yasaskara entrusted Varnata to ministers, Ekangas and chiefs and had him consecrated. The account places this decision within the reigning king’s household and military establishment, rather than describing an independent conquest by Varnata.

Yasaskara passed over Samgramadeva, whom the chronicle calls his son, because he believed the child had not been fathered by him. This is an allegation concerning parentage, not an independently verified genealogy. It also serves the narrative by explaining why the king initially preferred an adult relative to a child whom ambitious courtiers might find easier to displace.

Varnata then failed to visit the dying king, even while Yasaskara remained in the palace. Kalhana makes this neglect the turning point. The king regretted his choice, and ministers encouraged him to give the throne to Samgramadeva instead.

By royal order, Varnata was confined for one night in the hall of eight columns, with its entrance locked from outside. He was to be expelled the next morning. Kalhana calls him a one-day king and adds a humiliating account of his attendants fouling the hall. The episode reflects the chronicler’s manner of portraying a failed claimant as well as the abruptness of the removal.

One attendant, Devaprasada, is said to have been of royal descent. In shame at the episode, he deposited his sword at the shrine of Vijayesvara. This symbolic act belongs to the account of the household’s disgrace. It does not establish Devaprasada as a third king in the succession, and the passage does not disclose Varnata’s later fate.

Samgramadeva and the grandmother’s guardianship

Samgramadeva was inaugurated before Yasaskara withdrew from the palace to his matha. Kalhana describes the older king’s suffering, the seizure of his money by ministers and an eventual poisoning. Yasaskara’s death is dated to the third day of the dark half of Bhadrapada, Laukika year 4024, conventionally 948. Those allegations of betrayal explain the political setting in the chronicle; they are not a surviving judicial finding.

Parvagupta installed the child’s grandmother as his guardian. The passage does not name her or establish whether she was his maternal or paternal grandmother. Nor should she automatically be identified with a better-known royal woman simply because both appear in the same period.

Kalhana says Parvagupta exercised power with the ministerial group that included Bhikshata. He then removed the others and the grandmother from his path, becoming the dominant figure in the palace. The brief statement does not describe each person’s fate. It should not be expanded into separate executions for which this passage supplies no account.

Parvagupta still performed personal service for the child, including bringing him food. Kalhana presents these gestures as a deceptive appearance of loyalty. The contrast between outward attendance and effective control is central to his explanation of how a minister could prepare to replace the king he served.

Military opposition and a coup during snowfall

The Ekangas remained a potential obstacle to an open attack on Samgramadeva. Kalhana says Parvagupta feared that killing the child would provoke them. The account therefore does not describe the entire military establishment as unanimously supporting the minister.

It also includes an attempted resort to witchcraft and a supernatural voice promising the throne to Parvagupta and his family from the first day of Chaitra, while warning against premature action. These are elements of the chronicler’s story about fear, ambition and fate. They cannot be treated as independently observed events or as proof that supernatural forces determined the succession.

Parvagupta acted before the promised date. According to the narrative, he assembled troops during heavy snowfall, when people were not moving outside, and surrounded the palace. The weather is part of the account of the opportunity he exploited; it does not establish an exact modern calendar date or a general climate pattern.

The minister Ratnavardhana resisted with his son Buddha. Kalhana says Ratnavardhana was killed in the fighting. The passage names the son’s participation but does not separately state his fate, so his death should not be added to a casualty list without further evidence.

Samgramadeva’s killing and Parvagupta’s accession

Kalhana reports that Parvagupta forcibly removed Samgramadeva from the throne, killed him in another hall and had his body cast into the Vitasta at night with a stone attached. This was a killing of the child after the palace assault, not simply a change of ruler or a documented death in open battle.

The source also gives Samgramadeva the epithet Vakranghri, translated by Stein as crooked-footed. The epithet should not be turned into a retrospective medical diagnosis, a precise description of his mobility or an explanation for the violence against him.

Parvagupta then occupied the throne armed and wearing armour. Kalhana dates his accession to the tenth day of the dark half of Phalguna in Laukika year 4024, conventionally 949. Yasaskara’s death and Parvagupta’s accession fall within the same numbered traditional year but on opposite sides of a modern year boundary in the chronology used here.

The traditional date is preserved without an unverified conversion to a Gregorian day or month. The combined topic therefore begins under 948 and records its continuation into 949. The date of Parvagupta’s accession should not be mistaken for the original installation date of either Varnata or Samgramadeva.

What survives of the two reigns

Varnata’s brief position and Samgramadeva’s dependency left little room in the narrative for an independent programme of government. The examined passages give no securely attributable building project, administrative reform or military campaign directed personally by either ruler. They also do not establish Samgramadeva’s birth date or exact age.

The account does preserve people often lost in abbreviated king lists: the first nominee’s attendant Devaprasada, the unnamed grandmother, the resisting minister Ratnavardhana and his son Buddha. Their roles show that the transition involved a household, officials and divided military loyalties, rather than only a succession of names.

Kalhana treats the outcome as an example of betrayal by officials whom Yasaskara had trusted. That moral interpretation shapes the telling. A careful history retains the reported violence and the child’s vulnerability while distinguishing the sequence of events from disputed parentage, supernatural explanation and details that remain unknown.