Inscriptions and

UNIT 6 KALHANA* Prashastis

Structure
6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The Rajatarangini
6.3 Kalhana’s Methods
6.4 The Rajatarangini’s Contents in Outline
6.5 Historiographical Assessment
6.6 Recent Approaches
6.7 Poetry as History
6.8 History as Ethical Instruction
6.9 Summary
6.10 Keywords
6.11 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
6.12 Suggested Readings
6.13 Instructional Video Recommendations

6.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, we will discuss Kalhana and his seminal work Rajatarangini. After
going through this Unit, you would be able to:
• know the historical background as well as the idea behind penning down
Rajatarangini by Kalhana,
• underline the methodology adopted by Kalhana in Rajatarangini,
• assess the historiographical importance of the text,
• examine recent approaches pertaining to the study of Rajatarangini by
historians, and
• analyse the importance of poetry as an important genre of history writing.

6.1 INTRODUCTION
In the year 1825, Harold Hayman Wilson, member of the Royal Asiatic Society
of Bengal and translator of works of Sanskrit literature, such as Kalidasa’s
Meghaduta and the Visnu Purana, sat down to translate parts of Kalhana’s
Rajatarangini, the 12th century ‘Hindu History of Cashmir [Kashmir]’, as he
called it. Wilson famously observed about the Rajatarangini that it was ‘the
only Sanskrit composition yet discovered, to which the title of History, can with
any propriety be applied’. This scholarly assessment of Kalhana’s masterpiece
stuck and remained virtually unchallenged for the next two hundred years.

* Dr. Shonaleeka Kaul, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New
Delhi. The present Unit is based on the following writings of the author: The Making of Early
Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini, 2018 (Delhi: Oxford University Press);
‘“Seeing” the Past: Text and Question of History in the “Rajatarangini”’, History and Theory,
53:2, May 2014, pp. 194-211; and ‘Historical Methods’ in Pankaj Jain et al ed., Encyclopaedia
of Indian Religions, Hinduism and Tribal Religions, 2018 (New York: Springer). 97
History Writting Read closely, however, this adulation for the text’s historical qualities was in
in Early India fact indictment of the rest of Indian literary culture and civilisation for its lack
thereof. Just a few years before him, James Mill, the British Imperialist historian,
in his notorious The History of British India (1817), had launched a diatribe
against ‘backward’ Indian literary and cultural traditions for not matching up to
their Graeco-Roman or Judaeo-Christian counterparts, which were famous for
their historical traditions. The result was a downgrading and delegitimising of
indigenous Indian narratives of, and approaches to, their own past.
Comments such as those of Mill and Wilson can be understood as both illustrative
of and foundational in the then-emerging misconception and propaganda that Indian
civilisation, and particularly Sanskrit traditions, were singularly lacking in historical
sense or consciousness, a misplaced notion that has nonetheless enjoyed great
currency ever since. This ‘lack’, in turn, was believed to be on account of other
stereotypes that were developing about India as the British colonial regime
established itself in the early 19th century, namely, a greater proclivity of Indians
to spiritual over material interests on the one hand, and a basic changelessness
and stasis of Indian society itself, on the other. These together were deemed
responsible for the apparent dearth of historical literature in India, especially as
compared to the abundance of scriptures, mythologies, and aesthetic works
produced.
Against this entrenched bias, recent scholarship (Thapar 2014; Kaul 2018a, b)
not only has demonstrated that ancient Indians certainly knew how to write
history, but has documented the range of evidence available of early Indian
societies displaying a distinct regard for time and time-keeping and preserving
and chronicling events for posterity.
Moreover, some scholars have also questioned the positivist Eurocentric basis
on which the modern discipline of history has come to exclude traditional
Indian modes of narrating the past like myth and didacticism. They have
proposed instead that early Indian historical traditions spanned a wide variety
from the highly precise and factual, like the information inscribed and preserved
in public epigraphs, to the ethical and didactic, like the literary representations
of human history as a laboratory of social and political morality and a call to
action (Kaul 2018). It is against this background that Kalhana’s 12th century
masterpiece will be discussed in this Unit as an example of both these trends
in early Indian historiography.

6.2 THE RAJATARANGINI

The Rajatarangini (literally, River of Kings) is an epic poem (mahakavya/prabandha)
composed in the classical language, Sanskrit, in 1148-50 CE in Kashmir. It was composed
by a Kashmiri Pandit, named Kalhana. He is said to have been the son of a former
minister by the name of Champaka in the court of a Kashmiri king, Harsha (r. 1089-1101
CE). Kalhana himself, however, does not seem to have worked for any king.
Running into nearly 8000 verses that are unequally distributed among eight
books or sections, the Rajatarangini is an account of the royal dynasties that
ruled the kingdom of Kashmir from its putative origins to the poet’s own time.
In other words, it narrates nearly two millennia of the ancient and early medieval
98 history of the Kashmir Valley.
 Kalhana
6.3 KALHANA’S METHODS
One of the outstanding features of Kalhana’s Rajatarangini is that it is self-
reflexive. It begins with a prolegomena clearly stating its purpose (prayojana),
its method, and its vision or philosophy of history. To begin with, it tells us that
it was certainly not the first such work of Kashmiri history to have been written.
Indeed, the Rajatarangini based itself on consultation and emendation of at least
eleven similar Sanskrit texts composed before itself. Though only one of these
older texts (Nilamata Purana, 8th century CE) has survived and only the author
of another (Kshemendra 11th century CE) is historically well known, this
indicates a long and well-established premodern tradition of writing history.
Moreover, in shaping its contents and message, the Rajatarangini also draws
extensively on other, pan-Indian Sanskrit literature like shastra (prescriptive
treatises on statecraft and law), niti (political and moral parables), and itihasa
(narratives on the past), even as the basic fact of chronicling dynasties king by
king is in the vamshavali (genealogy) tradition. Indeed the Rajatarangini may
be seen to migrate among these genres and kavya (highly aesthetic poetry and
prose), making it a composite text. All of this suggests a strong intertextuality
at work in this Kashmiri epic which seems to have brought together a number
of Sanskrit literary and philosophical traditions rather than departed from them
or been an exception among them. This is important to note given that the
dominant scholarship on the Rajatarangini has controversially believed it to
be unique among all Sanskrit literature. More on this is given below in the
Section on historiographical assessment.
Another aspect of interest is that the poet Kalhana claims to have consulted
rock and copperplate inscriptions (shasana), that recorded royal land grants
and had evidently survived from ancient times. This is an interesting palimpsest
of sources, giving insight into the materials that went into the making of the
text that is today itself considered a source-material of history. Kalhana used
these epigraphs to record the large number of donations made by kings, queens,
ministers and generals to religious institutions of different affiliations, like
Buddhist, Shaiva (worshippers of Shiva), Vaishnava (worshippers of Vishnu),
and Saura (solar worship).
Regarding the philosophy of history-writing, Kalhana states that ‘shedding both
attachment and aversion, the voice of the poet should be unwavering when
recounting matters of the past’ (Rajatarangini I.7). Modern scholars have read
this as a statement recognising impartiality or objectivity as a virtue in a historian.
It is worth noting however that Kalhana presents this as a poetic virtue and it
may refer to the state of equipoise (vairagya, represented in poetry as the shanta
rasa or the aesthetic of quiescence) that Sanskrit poetic theory (alamkarashastra)
of the times recommended to poets composing certain kinds of works.

6.4 THE RAJATARANGINI’S CONTENTS IN

OUTLINE
Significantly, Kalhana gives a continuous chronology for the region, using
traditional Indian calendars or eras, such as kaliyuga and shaka samvat, to assign
dates to the ascension and end of the reign of every king or queen of every dynasty 99
History Writting that ruled early Kashmir. These dynasties included the Gonandiyas (5th-6th century
in Early India CE), the Karkotas (7th-9th century CE), the Utpalas (9th century CE) and the Loharas
(10th century-12th century CE). Some of the important rulers of Kashmir whom we
know about because of the Rajatarangini are the Mauryan king Ashoka (4th century
BCE), who also presided over an empire that spanned nearly the entire Indian
subcontinent, the Kushana king Kanishka (2nd century CE) and the Huna kings
Toramana and Mihirakula (6th century CE) all of whom also ruled over, and would
seem to have integrated Kashmir into, transregional Indian kingdoms. Hordes of
gold, silver, copper and alloyed coins found in the Valley attest to the presence of
these rulers in Kashmir.
The Rajatarangini also documents some more local but nonetheless powerful
Kashmiri kings chief among whom was Lalitaditya Muktapida (8th century CE)
who reportedly undertook extensive conquests and raids, reaching into eastern
India on the one hand, and central and western Asia (Sinkiang, Iran), on the other.
We also hear of King Avantivarman (9th century CE), famous for undertaking
effective measures to control floods in the Valley, and Didda (10th century CE),
one of the few strong female rulers we get in the ancient world.
Kalhana recounts in detail a host of primarily political events that occurred during
these regimes, and the policies, deeds and struggles of successive rulers and courtiers.
He does not merely describe these; he seeks to explore the general and individual
causes thereof and provide a range of plausible historical explanations for these. In
doing so, Kalhana claims, as we have seen, to be detached in his evaluation.
In fact, however, contrary to his stated dispassion, Kalhana’s style indicates a deep
personal involvement when narrating the good or evil deeds of Kashmiri kings and
queens. We say this because the Rajatarangini is a highly judgmental piece of work
and constantly moralises the events and actions it describes. This takes the form of
praise and adulation for righteousness and denunciation and contempt for
wrongdoing, the latter expressed even in obscene or scatological terms at places,
something that is highly unusual in Sanskrit poetry. Espousing ethics was clearly a
defining part of the Rajatarangini’s textual and historical agenda.
The Rajatarangini is not a tale of only the elites, however. It also dwells centrally
on the condition of the subjects under just and benevolent as well as tyrannical
and exploitative kings, who alternated in Kashmir’s long history. Indeed in this
work, people’s welfare (prajanupalanam) is a frequent refrain and an important
crucible for evaluating the rule of any king.
Check Your Progress-1
1) What were the methods adopted by Kalhana in narrating the history of
Kashmir?
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2) Examine Kalhan’s idea of time and chronology as gleaned from his Rajatarangini.
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100 ........................................................................................................................
3) Do you agree that Rajatarangini is a highly judgemental piece of work? Kalhana
Comment.
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6.5 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ASSESSMENT

In the main, it is for three reasons, namely the text’s deference to chronology,
causation, and (alleged) objectivity, that European Orientalist scholars who studied
the text from the early 19th century onwards, called the Rajatarangini the first and
only work of history proper to emerge from ancient India. They believed that this
late work was a unique exception in three thousand years of Sanskrit literary culture,
which they accused of otherwise completely lacking a sense of history even as it
abounded in scripture and mythology. Scholars who arrived at this characterisation
of the Rajatarangini as the first work of history in India included Harold Wilson
(1825), George Buhler and Marcus Aurel Stein (1892, 1900), the last mentioned
bringing out the critical edition of the Rajatarangini and its full English translation
which is read to this day.
Their (flawed) assessment of the uniqueness and historical character of the text
was embraced and echoed throughout the 20th century by Indologists like Arthur
Lewelyn Basham (1961) and Indian historians of different ideological persuasions,
like the Nationalist scholar Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (1961) and the Marxist
historian Romila Thapar (1983). In perhaps a scramble for coevality with Western
disciplinary parameters, they issued laudatory statements such as the following,
which became canonical for generations of later historians studying or teaching
the Rajatarangini: ‘Even a modern historian should have little hesitation in ranking
Kalhana as a great historian… [for his] correct appreciation of the true ideals and
methods of history’ (Majumdar 1961: 14-25).
In so valorising the empiricist qualities of the text, however, 150 years of influential
scholarship on the Rajatarangini essentially applied post-Enlightenment Rankean
positivism to a 12th century traditional Sanskrit poem. In the process, they bracketed
out and disowned as ‘failures’ and ‘imperfections’ such aspects of the text that did
not fit their idea of what history should be. This included all aspects of figuration,
like myth, rhetoric, and didacticism, that were proper to a poetic discourse and so
prominent in the Rajatarangini’s own scheme of things as a mahakavya.
For example, Marcus Aurel Stein (1900) thought the rhetoric and didactic parts
of the Rajatarangini that were in kavya style were simply unconnected with the
narrative proper, which was historical, while Buhler indicted the resort to legend
and myth as rendering the chronology of a large part of the text ‘valueless’ and
its author suspect. Following suit, despite christening Kalhana ‘a great historian’,
Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (1961: 22-24) spoke of his ‘very defective’ method
consisting in the inclusion of mythical or legendary kings, ‘a blind faith in the
Epics and Puranas (ancient Indian genres narrating the past)’, a belief in
witchcraft and magic, explanation of events as due to the influence of fate ‘rather
than to any rational cause’, a general didactic tendency inspired by Hindu views
of karma, and ‘mere display of poetical and rhetorical skill’. Romila Thapar
101
History Writting (1983) also dismissed Kalhana’s moralism and didacticism.
in Early India
Thus, to be accepted as history, the Rajatarangini had to cease to be traditional
Sanskrit poetry. Though entirely inspired from modern objectivist notions of
history in the West, rather than from any indigenous or ancient approaches to
treating of the past, the underlying belief in the opposition of ‘factual’ (true)
history and ‘fictive’ (false) literature was new even to nineteenth-century Europe,
and belied the practice in Classical (let alone Indian) antiquity where history
was considered but a form of fine literature with no prejudice to its truth value.
The Rankean turn in European historiography imprinted itself on world historians,
additionally through the agency of imperialists like James Mill who, as we noted
above, as early as 1817 attacked Indian literary and historical traditions.
Positivism mingled with imperialism to end up downgrading and delegitimising
indigenous Indian narratives of the past. Ironically, in being isolated as a flawed
exception in all of Sanskrit literature, the Rajatarangini as history was both the
creation and victim of an intellectual approach that sought to simultaneously
appropriate and undermine a traditional Sanskrit text.

6.6 RECENT APPROACHES

In the last couple of decades, a new line of thinking has sought to rehabilitate the
Kalhana’s epic in its own literary culture and thereafter investigate it as a work of
history. In the process, there has been a move away from an empiricist understanding
of the discipline of history towards its literary qualities and to the alternative historical
modes that may spring from texts and genres of premodern India.
Thus, privileging the search for a particular poetic style as a historical marker,
Sanskritist Whitney Cox (2013) has recently argued that the occurrence of Sanskrit
verses in a ‘terse, tense’ register in the later sections of the Rajatarangini ‘is able
to capture the ebb and flow of the world’s congenital instability by rendering itself
dense and rich enough to capture something of it.’ This suggests a formal mimesis,
or imitation of the world, as the substance of Kalhana’s engagement with history.
Perhaps more urgently, other Sanskritists like Walter Slaje (2008) and Lawrence
McCrea (2013) have returned to indigenous Sanskrit categories of generic analysis,
like rasa-kavya, to gauge the nature and purpose of the Rajatarangini. Rasa refers
to the nine aesthetic flavors or essences, like the heroic, the erotic or the
compassionate, with at least one of which every work of Sanskrit poetic composition
was required to be suffused.
Walter Slaje, for example, in his analysis of the preamble/prolegomena of the
poem, has argued for the Rajatarangini’s pursuit of aesthetic and ultimately
soteriological (salvationary), rather than historical, ends. He points to the evocation
of the shanta rasa or state of equipoise that Kalhana claims to have infused his
poem with, and which in turn would facilitate the attainment of moksha or liberation
by the reader. He says that this was Kalhana’s main endeavour via the narration of
the lives of Kashmir’s kings’ past. In other words, the Rajatarangini’s appeal to
historical reality was a necessary means – but merely a means – to enhance, as
only an appeal to verity can, the aesthetic effect. Lawrence McCrea also focuses
on the shanta rasa but suggests that it was Kalhana’s pessimistic belief in moral
decay as the rule of the cycle of time and history that led Kalhana to choose this
102 genre and this literary flavour for his history of Kashmir. Thus while Slaje sees
the historical aspect of the Rajatarangini as subserving and subordinate to aesthetic Kalhana
objectives, McCrea argues for vice versa.
Check Your Progress-2
1) Give a brief account of the historiographical assessment of the Rajatarangini.
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2) What are the recent approaches to study Kalhana’s Rajatarangini?

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6.7 POETRY AS HISTORY

A comprehensive reinterpretation of the Rajatarangini by Shonaleeka Kaul (2014,
2018a) demonstrates that a clear theoretical enunciation of poetry (kavya) as history
is to be found in Sanskrit poetics, which needs to be taken on board when
considering the range of historical modes that flourished in the premodern world.
Further, the practice of this theory may have consisted in developing an ethico-
political discursivity that frames the understanding of historical knowledge and
defines, in a culturally specific yet potentially universal manner, what ‘true’
knowledge of time and human action may be.
Kaul points to kavya’s long-standing and cherished tradition according to which
the poet (kavi) was a seer (rishi), who possessed spiritual omniscience and divine
sight (divyadrishti). With these powers, which arose from his poetic intuition
(pratibha), he could gauge the real nature of things and even apprehend the different
dimensions of time – ‘things that no one before had seen’. This claim to epistemic
authority, however conventional, qualified the poet to speak on matters gone by
and, as one of Kalhana’s successors put it, rendered kavya as ‘a lamp that illuminates
past realities’ (kavyadipam bhutavastuprakasakam).
Echoing this self-understanding of the genre, Kalhana writes that the world would
be in darkness without the illumining work of the good poet (satkavikrityam andham
jagattvam vina) (RT I. 47). Particularly the deeds of kings would be lost forever
were it not for the poet who resurrects, vivifies and embodies their glory. Kalhana
writes:
Renowned [and mighty] kings would not even be remembered without the favour
of the poet’s work, which is sublime and to which we offer salutations. (RT I.46)

There can be no doubt that in these statements we find a concrete assertion of the
epistemic authority of poets. But that’s not all. In a strikingly constructivist approach
to the past and to the pursuit of its knowledge, the poet is understood to be not just
the ‘knower’ but even the ‘creator’ of the past. Hence Kalhana calls him
kavi-prajapati or kavi-vedhas, that is, poet-creator (RT I.4). He writes: ‘Who else
is capable of making visible (pratyakshatam) bygone times except the poet-creator
who can make delightful productions (ramyanirmana)?’ Here again, then, is
103
History Writting Sanskrit kavya’s belief in the poet’s creative ability to make the unobservable past
in Early India perceptible – the quintessentially historical function – and indeed a statement on
the past itself so rendered as a construction or production (nirmana).

6.8 HISTORY AS ETHICAL INSTRUCTION

Kaul argues that the poet’s ontic access to history was inflected by kavya’s didactic
mandate to provide instruction (upadesha) on a range of human goals and affairs, like
piety (dharma), power (artha), and pleasure (kama). For a text like the Rajatarangini,
the area of instruction was specifically political morality (rajadharma). Accordingly,
the primary enterprise of the Rajatarangini was not merely penning a factual record of
Kashmir’s past but representation of Kashmir as a discursive political space mediated
by an ethical paradigm.
Thus governance and kingship in the Rajatarangini are evaluated according to
certain moral principles. Good conduct, righteousness, generosity/liberality,
discriminating intellect that could tell right from wrong and which encouraged
men of merit, character and learning, and the will to enforce justice (dharma) and
absence of fear among the subjects – these constituted the highly prescriptive list
of personal and political values that drew on a conception of moral order to which
the king’s commitment was expected.
Then, these values were plotted through a series of exemplars that Kalhana identified
in Kashmir’s past kings, clubbing them in pairs elucidating their comparative morality.
Thus, the hedonist king Vibhishana was succeeded to the throne by his son, Siddha
the puritan. The violent monarch Mihirakula was followed by the righteous Baka.
The just Chandrapida was assassinated and replaced on the throne by the tyrannical
Tarapida. And the corrupt father and son, Kalasha and Harsha, were followed tellingly
by the high-minded king Ucchala. These were all historical kings separated by
centuries but connected by the poet’s hermeneutical scheme.
Indeed, declaring the organising principle of his textual and historical vision
Kalhana states early in his work:
From time to time, due to the spiritual merit of the subjects, kings appear who organize
a kingdom that is sunk deep in disorder. Those who are intent on harassment of their
subjects perish with their families; on the other hand, fortune waits on even the
descendants of those who reinstate order where there is chaos … this [is] the feature
of each tale (prativrittantam lakshanam)… Rajatarangini I. 187-89

In this way, instead of being interpreted at face value alone for the facts and dates
of history it reported, the entire River of Kings can be understood as a flow of
ethical exemplars. This schematic organisation of the text and of time, articulating
the poet’s ethicised vision of history, is striking. It is here that the Rajatarangini
displays narrativisation or the configuration of historical ‘facts’ around a plot-
structure that endows otherwise random data with a unified structure and meaning,
thereby rising above mere seriality. This reading of the text conforms to Hayden
White’s post-modern theory of history as narrative. Narrativity in the Rajatarangini
embodied the poet’s vision of the past, endowing that past with culturally sanctioned
meanings that etched a profound understanding of historicity in early India.
In this traditional understanding, didactic and historical functions coalesced via
poetry. This in turn meant that the model of epistemic truth generated by the
104 Rajatarangini was both transcendent, in invoking higher ethical ends, and
contingent in so far as it was located in a referentially adduced historical past. Kalhana

Furthermore, didacticism in the Rajatarangini also offered a larger critique of

power by pointing to the impermanence of royal sovereignty and of human life
itself. To give just one example, in a moral and mortal take on the evanescence of
the perquisites and pomp of kingship, the poet writes:
There is perhaps no man who, having been at first shown favour [by Royal Fortune,
the sweetheart of kings], has later not been harassed by her, as by the friendship
of the vulgar… She, who is without affection, has never followed kings in death
when they, without friends or provisions, are en route for the next world… Gold
vessels of the banquet and other articles collected in the treasury rooms? – how
is it that those kings who have departed for the next world [no longer] own
them? … Torn from the necks of those [enemies] about to die … the necklaces,
accursed and unholy, for whom are they an attraction? Predecessors have left
the ornaments behind after defiling them with hot tears of anguish when about to
die; while touching them, who does not have a qualm?

On the same path of death is every individual plunging headlong. I am the slayer
and he the slain? – the notion of a difference [between the two] lasts but a short
while… He who but yesterday exults while slaying his foe, at the end sees an
enemy gloating over him when he is himself about to be killed. How awful! Fie
on this illusion!
Rajatarangini V.6-15, VIII.358-59

The themes of mortality and evanescence of human life and action can be seen as the
Rajatarangini’s deposition on temporality itself and its ever-attendant quality, change.
A recognition of this fundamentally historical character of time frames the text in that
it begins, too, with describing itself as a balancing remedy, an antidote as it were, for
kings who may be seized by change – prosperity or decline – across space and time
(nripanam ullase hrase va deshakalayoh) (Rajatarangini I.21). A certain universality
and inevitability, then, attach to the march of history in this vision.
There is also seen in Kalhana’s masterpiece an understanding of historical truth in
which the sacred and the profane, the transcendent and the contingent, were
intertwined. Indic historical methods have to be grasped and understood in this
larger sense, sensitive to the culturally specific functions and purposes this
civilisation assigned the genre of history. For early India, ‘facts’ alone were not
supreme and certainly did not exhaust truth; moralising reality and transcending
socio-moral and spiritual shortcomings was more the goal of recording and
preserving history.
Check Your Progress-3
1) ‘The primary enterprise of the Rajatarangini was not merely penning a factual
record of Kashmir’s past but representation of Kashmir as a discursive political
space mediated by an ethical paradigm.’ Comment.
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2) ‘History conveys ethical instructions.’ Comment in the light of Rajatarangini.
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History Writting
in Early India 6.9 SUMMARY
The Unit highlights the presence of rich historical tradition in India, as against the
common belief that India had no history of its own. Rajatarangini suggests the
presence of rich historical tradition in India. The present Unit has critically analysed
Rajatarangini which was written in ‘epic poem’ (prabandha) style in Sanskrit.
Kalhana had a clear idea of time as well as chronology. Kalhana has used all
available documents of the time in the form of copper plate inscriptions (shasanas).
He has also acknowledged that his is not the seminal work rather in the past also
at least eleven such similar texts were produced which he himself acknowledged
to have consulted. Kalhana looks events into cause and effect mode. He narrates
both the good and the evil acts of kings with abject neutrality. Rajatarangini not
only discusses the elites but the common masses also find equal pace in his
Rajatarangini. The text also conveys that early historical texts should not be judged
merely on the basis of presenting ‘facts’. Instead it may be understood in a much
larger context, reflecting upon both the sacred and the profane.

6.10 KEYWORDS
Shasana A royal edict or a royal order. These were generally
found in the form of inscriptions/epigraphs engraved
on copper plates or rocks
Kaliyuga Last of the four yugas (ages) in the Hindu Yuga cycle.
It is preceded by Dvapara, Treta, Krita (Satya) yugas
Shaka Samvat The origin of the Shaka era is highly debated. Its
beginning is now widely accepted to the ascension
of King Chashtana (78 CE), who reigned in the
Kutch region of Gujarat.

6.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress-1
1) See Section 6.3
2) See Section 6.4
3) See Section 6.4
Check Your Progress-2
1) See Section 6.5
2) See Section 6.6
Check Your Progress-3
1) See Section 6.7
2) See Section 6.8

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 Kalhana
6.12 SUGGESTED READINGS
Basham, Arthur Lewellyn (1961) ‘The Kashmir Chronicle’ in C.H. Phillips (ed.),
Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: Oxford University Press), pp.
57-65.
Cox, Whitney, (2013) ‘Literary Register and Historical Consciousness in Kalhana:
A Hypothesis’ in Indian Economic and Social History Review, 50, 2, pp. 131-60.
Kaul, Shonaleeka, (2018a) The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity
in the Rajatarangini (Delhi: Oxford University Press).
Kaul, Shonaleeka, (2018b) ‘Historical Methods’ in Pankaj Jain et al. ed.,
Encyclopaedia of Indian Religions, Hinduism and Tribal Religions (New York:
Springer).
McCrea, Lawrence, (2013) ‘Santa rasa in the Rajatarangini: History, Epic, and
Moral Decay’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 50, 2, pp. 179-99.
Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra, (1961) ‘Ideas of History in Sanskrit Literature’ in
C.H. Phillips (ed.), Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: Oxford
University Press), pp. 13-21.
Walter Slaje, (2008) ‘In the Guise of Poetry: Kalhana Reconsidered’ in Walter
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Harrassowitz Verlag), pp. 207-44.
Stein, Marcus Aurel, (ed. & transl.) (1960 [1892, 1900]) Kalhana’s Rajatarangini
or Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir, 2 vols. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
[First edition Bombay]).
Thapar, Romila, (1983) ‘Kalhana’ in Mohibbul Hasan (ed.), Historians of Medieval
India (Delhi: Meenakshi Prakashan), pp. 52-62.
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Wilson, Harold H., (1825) ‘An Essay on the Hindu History of Cashmir’ in Asiatic
Researches, 15, pp. 1-119.

6.13 INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO

RECOMMENDATIONS
Rajataringini - The River of Kings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VUyyuUn-AU

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