The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s4: IV. Kashmīr
The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s4
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IV. Kashmīr
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A detailed account of the history of Kashmīr would fill a volume; in this place a brief notice of some of the leading passages will suffice. The valley had been included in the Maurya empire in the time of Asoka, and again in the Kushān dominion in the days of Kanishka and Huvishka. Harsha, although not strong enough to annex Kashmīr, was yet able to compel the king to surrender a cherished relic, an alleged tooth of Buddha, which was carried off to Kanauj. The authentic chronicles of the kingdom begin with the Karkota dynasty, which was founded by Durlabhavardhana during Harsha's lifetime. Hiuen Tsang spent two years in Kashmīr, from about May 631 to April 633, and was received with distinguished honour by the unnamed reigning king, presumably Durlabhavardhana. That prince and his son Durlabhaka are credited with long reigns.
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The latter was succeeded by his three sons in order; the eldest of whom, Chandrāpīḍa, received investiture as king from the Emperor of China in 720; by whom the third son Muktāpīḍa, also known as Lalitāditya, was similarly honoured in 733. This prince, who is said to have reigned for thirty-six years, extended the power of Kashmīr far beyond its normal mountain limits, and about the year 740 inflicted a crushing defeat upon Yasovarman, king of Kanauj.² He also vanquished the Tibetans, Bhūtias, and the Turks on the Indus. His memory has been perpetuated by the famous Mārtānda temple of the Sun, built by him, and still existing. The acts of this king, and all that he did, with something more, are set forth at large in Kalhana’s chronicle.
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² Between 736 and 747 (Lévi and Chavannes, 'Itinéraire d'Oukong,’ in *J. A.*, 1895, p. 353). See V. A. Smith, ‘The History of the City of Kanauj and of King Yaśovarman’ (*J. R. A. S.*, 1908, pp. 765–93).
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THE MĀRTĀṆDA TEMPLE OF THE SUN, KASHMĪR
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Jayāpīda, or Vinayāditya, the grandson of Muktāpīda, is credited with even more adventures than those ascribed to his grandfather. Probably it is true that he defeated and dethroned the king of Kanauj, apparently Vajrāyudha. But the romantic tale of his visit *incognito* to the capital of Paundravardhana in Bengal, the modern Rājshāhi District, then the seat of government of a king named Jayanta, unknown to sober history, seems to be purely imaginary. The legend of his expedition against a king of Nepāl, with the strange name Aramudi, of his capture and imprisonment in a stone castle, and of his marvellous escape, equally belongs to the domain of romance. The details of the acts of cruelty and oppression, due to avarice, which disgraced the later years of his reign, read like matters of fact, and unhappily are quite in accordance with the low moral standard of most of the rulers of Kashmīr. The chronicler closes his narrative with the following quaint comment :
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‘Such was for thirty-one years the reign of this famous king, who could not restrain his will. Princes and fishes, when their thirst is excited by riches and impure water respectively, leave their place and follow evil ways, with such result that they are brought into the strong net of death—the former by changes which fate dictates, and the latter by troops of fishermen.’
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The substantial existence of Jayāpīda is testified by the survival of multitudes of exceedingly barbarous coins inscribed with his title Vinayāditya.¹
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¹ Stein, *transl. Rājatar.*, Bk. iv ; *Catal. Coins I. M.*, vol. i, pp. 266, 269.
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The reign of Avantivarman, in the latter part of the ninth century, was notable for his enlightened patronage of literature, and for the beneficent schemes of drainage and irrigation carried out by Suyya, his minister of public works.¹
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¹ Stein, *transl. Rājatar.*, Bk. v, vv. 2–126.
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The next king, Saṅkaravarman, distinguished himself in war; but is chiefly remembered as the author of an ingenious system of fiscal oppression, and the plunderer of temple treasures. The details of his exactions are worth reading as proving the capacity for unlimited and ruthless extortion of an Oriental despot without a conscience.²
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² Ibid., 128–227.
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During his reign the last of the Turkī Shāhiya kings, the descendants of Kanishka, was overthrown by the Brahman Lalliya. The Turkī Shāhiya kings had ruled in Kābul until the capture of that city by the Arab general Yaḳūb-i-Lāis in A. D. 870 (A. H. 256).³ After that date the capital was shifted to Ohind, on the Indus. The dynasty founded by Lalliya, known as that of the Hindu Shāhiyas, lasted until A. D. 1021, when it was extirpated by the Muhammadans.⁴
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³ Raverty, *Notes on Afghanis-tan*, pp. 63, 64.
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⁴ Stein, *Zur Geschichte der Çāhis von Kābul* (Stuttgart, 1893).
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In the reign of the child-king Pārtha and his father Paṅgu, the regent, an awful famine occurred in the year A. D. 917–18, thus described by the Brahman historian of a Hindu government:—
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‘One could scarcely see the water in the Vitastā (Jihlam), entirely covered as the river was with corpses soaked and swollen by the water in which they had long been lying. The land became densely covered with bones in all directions, until it was like one great burial-ground, causing terror to all beings. The king’s ministers and the Tantrins (Praetorian guards) became wealthy, as they amassed riches by selling stores of rice at high prices. The king would take that person as minister who raised the sums due on the Tantrins’ bills, by selling the subjects in such a condition. As one might look from his hot bath-room upon all the people outside distressed by the wind and rain of a downpour in the forest, thus for a long time the wretched Paṅgu, keeping in his palace, praised his own comfort while he saw the people in misery.’⁵
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⁵ Stein, *transl. Rājatar.*, Bk. v, vv. 271–7.
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This gruesome picture may give cause for reflection to some critics of modern methods of famine relief.
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Pārtha chastised his people with whips, but his son Unmattāvanti, 'who was worse than wicked,' chastised them with scorpions. 'With difficulty', sighs the chronicler, 'I get my song to proceed, since from fear of touching the evil of this king's story it keeps back like a frightened mare.' Parricide was one of his many crimes. The details of his brutalities are too disgusting for quotation. Happily his reign was short, and he died the victim of a painful disease in A. D. 939.¹
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¹ Stein, *transl. Rājatar.*, Bk. v, vv. 414–48.
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During the latter half of the tenth century, power was in the hands of an unscrupulous queen, named Diddā, the granddaughter of a Shāhiya king, who, first as a queen-consort, then as regent, and ultimately as sovereign for twenty-three years, misgoverned the unhappy state for half a century.
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In the reign of her nephew, Saṅgrāma, the kingdom suffered an attack from Mahmūd of Ghaznī; and, although its troops were defeated by the invader, preserved its independence, which was protected by the inaccessibility of the mountain barriers.
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During the second half of the eleventh century, Kashmīr, which has been generally unfortunate in its rulers, endured unspeakable miseries at the hands of the tyrants Kalasa and Harsha. The latter, who was evidently insane, imitated Saṅkaravarman in the practice of plundering temples, and rightly came to a miserable end. Few countries can rival the long Kashmīr list of kings and queens who gloried in shameless lust, fiendish cruelty, and pitiless misrule.
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A local Muhammadan dynasty obtained power in 1339, and the religion of Islam gradually spread in the valley during the fourteenth century; but the natural defences of the kingdom effectually guarded it against the ambition of the sovereigns of India, until Akbar conquered it in 1587, and incorporated it in the Moghal empire.²
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² Full details of Kashmīr history will be found in the text and commentary of Stein's translation of the *Rājātaraṅgiṇī*.