Rājataraṅgiṇī

▪ historical chronicle of India

      (Sanskrit: “River of Kings”), historical chronicle of early India, written in Sanskrit verse by the Kashmir Brahman Kalhaṇa in 1148; it is justifiably considered to be the best and most authentic work of its kind. It covers the entire span of Kashmir history, from the earliest times to the date of its composition.

      Kalhaṇa was excellently equipped for the work. Uninvolved personally in the maelstrom of contemporary politics, he, nevertheless, was profoundly affected by it and stated the following to be his ideal: “That noble-minded poet alone merits praise whose word, like the sentence of a judge, keeps free from love or hatred in recording the past.” His access to minute details of contemporary court intrigues was almost direct: his father and uncle were both in the Kashmir court. For the events of the past, Kalhaṇa's search for material was truly fastidious. He delved deep into such model works as the Harṣacarita and the Bṛhat-saṃhitā epics and used with commendable familiarity the local rājakathās (royal chronicles) and such previous works on Kashmir as Nṛpāvali of Kṣemendra, Pārthivāvali of Helārāja, and Nīlamatapurāṇa. He displayed surprisingly advanced technical expertise for his age in his concern for unconventional sources. He looked up a variety of epigraphic sources relating to royal eulogies, construction of temples, and land grants; he studied coins, monumental remains, family records, and local traditions. But his traditional conceptual framework, accommodating uncritical assumptions and belief in the role of the poet as an exponent of moral maxims, makes the idealizing content in his narrative, particularly for the early period, rather dominant.

      Rājataraṅgiṇī, which consists, in all, of 7,826 verses, is divided into eight books. Book I attempts to weave imaginary tales of Kashmir kings into epic legends. Gonanda was the first king and a contemporary and enemy of Krishna. Traces of genuine history are also found, however, in references to Aśoka and Jālauka, the Buddhist Kushān kings Hushka (Huviṣka), Jushka (Vājheṣka), and Kanishka (Kaniṣka), and the Hūṇa Mihirakula. Book II introduces a new line of kings not mentioned in any other authentic source, starting with Pratāpāditya I and ending with Āryarāja. Book III starts with an account of the reign of Meghavāhana of the restored line of Gonanda and refers to the brief reign of Mātṛgupta, a supposed contemporary of Vikramāditya Harṣa of Mālwa. There too, legend is mixed with reality, and Toramāṇa Hūṇa is incorporated in the line of Meghavāhana. The book closes with the establishment of the Karkoṭa Nāga dynasty by Durlabhaka Pratāpāditya II, and it is from Book IV on that Rājataraṅgiṇī takes on the character of a dependable historical narrative. The Karkoṭa line came to a close with the usurpation of the throne by Avantivarman, who started the Utpala dynasty in 855. In Books V and VI the history of the dynasty continues down to 1003, when the kingdom of Kashmir passed on to a new dynasty, the Lohara. Book VII brings the narrative down to the death of King Harṣa (1101), and Book VIII deals, on the level of extremely dependable details, with the stormy events between the death of Harṣa and the stabilization of authority under Kalhaṇa's contemporary Jayasiṃha (reigned 1128–49).

      In style the Rājataraṅgiṇī narrative is sometimes considered as versified prose on a massive scale, yet its strong structural appeal made it a model for later historians. In fact, the history of Kashmir was continued, along Kalhaṇa's line, down to some years after the annexation of Kashmir by Akbar (1586) in the following works: Rājataraṅgiṇī (by Jonarāja), Jainataraṅgiṇī (by Śrīvara), and Rājāvalipatākā (by Prājyabhaṭṭa and Śuka). Neither in style nor in authenticity do these works approximate the quality of Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī.

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