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A History of Sanskrit Literature c14: VII. Historical Kāvya

A History of Sanskrit Literature c14

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English

Contents

VII. Historical Kāvya

1. Indian Historical Writing

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TO the old complaint that India has no historians and no historical sense it has recently been objected, doubtless with a measure of truth, that there is a certain amount of writing and a number of facts attesting a degree of sense for history. In view of the antiquity and the developed character of Indian civilization it would indeed be ridiculous to expect to find India destitute of historical sense, but what is really essential is the fact that, despite the abundance of its literature, history is so miserably represented, and that in the whole of the great period of Sanskrit literature there is not one writer who can be seriously regarded as a critical historian. We have as the nearest approach to a true historian a poet of no mean ability, much industry, and a desire to tell the truth, who had for recent history very fair sources of information, but the most ardent admirer of Kalhaṇa would not for a moment claim for him that he could be matched even with Herodotos, and it must be remembered that no other writer approaches even remotely the achievement of Kalhaṇa.

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The causes of this phenomenon must lie in peculiarities of Indian psychology aided by environment and the course of events, and it is idle to hope to give any explanation which will be entirely satisfying. We may remember that India produced no oratory, despite the distinct power often displayed both in the epics and in Classical Kāvya of the rhetorical presentment of a case by opposing disputants. Oratory doubtless, as history proves, has flourished best where there has been political freedom; Athens is as celebrated for oratory as Sparta was deficient in it, and Rome produced its best orators when there still was a Republic in which certain classes at least had effective political rights. It may be that India failed to produce historians because the great political events which affected her during the period up to A. D. 1200 did not call forth popular action in the sense in which the repulse of the Persian attacks on Greece evoked the history of Herodotos.¹ The national feeling, which is at least a powerful aid to the writing of history, was not evoked in India in the same manner as it was when democratic states formed the most serious element of resistance to the Persian attack at a time when more oligarchic governments were apparently far less deeply moved by any sentiment of nationalism.²

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¹ Another side of Greek mentality, the criticism of tradition, is seen in Hekataios of Miletos, whose patriotism, like his history, was marked by caution and weighing of evidence. Cf. J. B. Bury, *Ancient Greek Historians* (1909).

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² Stein, *Rājataraṅgiṇī*, i. 28 ff.; Oldenberg, *Aus dem alten Indien*, pp. 65 ff.

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It may be admitted that the foreign attacks on India in the period of the first four centuries B. C. were probably not such as to excite deep national feeling. Alexander's invasion was followed by the early loss of the most Indian of the territories won to Candragupta, apparently without any such struggle as would induce a sense of national danger and national triumph. The Greek, Parthian, Çaka, and Kuṣaṇa successes were possible in large measure because such a sentiment did not exist, and the process of assimilation went on so steadily that, when the Gupta revival came, it can hardly have been felt as a national revival, however much it seems so to us *ex post facto*. Thereafter, until the eleventh century, the wars of India were merely struggles between rival dynasties, wars of crows and kites, in which no deep signification could lie.³ The Mahomedan invaders found India without any real national feeling; their successes were rendered possible largely because the chiefs disliked one another far more than they did the Mleccha. It is characteristic that even in the ballads evoked by the struggle the sense of nationality is only in process of development.

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³ Contrast Lucan's prophetic words (vii. 432 f.):

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From the standpoint of psychology it is not difficult to understand that the view that history had any meaning or value was one unlikely to receive acceptance in India. The prevailing doctrines told distinctly against any such estimate of events. In

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quod fugiens civile nefas redituraque nunquam
Libertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque recessit.

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the strict logical sense of the doctrine of Karman all men's actions were the outcome of actions done in previous births; they were, therefore, wholly uncalculable, for no one could tell what deed in the remotest past might not spring up to work out its inevitable end. Beside this belief, and evidently in full strength in many minds, was the view that all things were brought about by fate, working in a manner wholly unintelligible and beyond all foresight. To these more rational views, which might be combined and even reconciled by exercise of a little ingenuity, was added the acceptance by the Indian mind of the miraculous in the shape of divine intervention, magic, and witchcraft.¹ The scientific attitude of mind which seeks to find natural causes for events of nature is not normal in India, and the conception that nature is not capable of being affected by divine or demoniac instrumentalities would have seemed ludicrous to the vast majority of its people; Buddhists and Jains were as little inclined to abandon popular superstitions as were Brahmins. Nay, all three religions favoured the belief in the habit of sages by asceticism to attain magic powers; the doctrine that these powers can be acquired by regular forms of process is inculcated in their philosophies, and persons who were able to achieve these results were capable of affecting the processes of nature, so that to ascribe similar powers to superhuman beings was perfectly natural. Moreover, the philosophies of every kind taught that there was no progress in our sense in the world; things had happened age after age in precisely the same way; the doctrine of the periodical creation and destruction of the world of the Brahmanical post-Vedic texts is on the same plane as the theory of the Buddhists of the existence of innumerable earlier Buddhas and the long line of Jain Tīrthakaras.

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¹ Cf. Lucan on the Thessalian witches, vi. 415 ff.

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Nor were the Indians without what seemed to them an excellent substitute for history in our sense. To the average Indian now, and doubtless of centuries ago, the heroes of the past and those historical kings who had been converted by their imagination into heroic figures were quite as real as, if not more real than, their local princes of the present time. Nor was it merely that they were as real; they possessed the great advantage of being recognized and admired over wide areas of India. It is hardly wonderful, therefore, that even those chronicles and panegyrics which were composed in honour of contemporary princes were soon no longer copied by scribes or studied, preference being accorded in lieu to works like the epics, which were certain to be of abiding interest. It has been well remarked¹ that, while the Paṇḍits have copied and commented with eagerness on the *Naiṣadhīya* of Çrīharṣa, they have allowed to sink into oblivion the *Navasāhasāṅkacarita*, which he wrote to celebrate the deeds of his patron.

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¹ Bühler, *Vikramāṅkadevacarita*, p. 2. His other panegyrics are lost, and we are not certain of his patron.

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Something too must be allowed for the tendency of the Indian mind to prefer the general to the particular, which is shown in widely different spheres of knowledge. We hear, for instance, in Buddhist texts of certain definite heresies, but we are equally faced with schematic lists of unsound philosophical views which are asserted to have been held by others, but which in large measure are obviously mere inventions. Throughout the history of Indian philosophy the same thing is seen; no one seems to be in the least interested in the history of doctrines, no one writes a history of philosophy as contrasted with summaries of opposing doctrines; no one even attempts a real history of politics or medicine. What interests writers is not questions of the opinions of predecessors as individuals, but the discussion of divergencies of doctrine all imagined as having arisen *ex initio*. The names of some great authorities may be preserved, as in the case of the schools of philosophy, but nothing whatever with any taint of actuality is recorded regarding their personalities, and we are left to grope for dates. This indifference to chronology is seen everywhere in India, and must be definitely connected, in the ultimate issue, with the quite secondary character ascribed to time by the philosophies.

2. The Beginnings of History

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The Purāṇas, as we have them, contain amidst vast masses of other matter, religious and social, some traces of the activity of court poets who made genealogies, but the value of these notices is of the most limited description; the lists of names and dates alone which is what they normally contribute are regularly, when compared with our more reliable evidence, hopelessly inaccurate, showing that at the time when they came into being the interest of genealogists was rather edification by constructing pleasing ancestries than accurate record of facts. It may indeed be doubted whether with the most critical care anything could be retrieved of substantial value additional to other sources of information; hitherto they have been treated only without critical judgement or acumen.¹ Beside them may be put the lists of teachers which occasionally are recorded in later Vedic texts, but which are anything but free from suspicion of interpolation and exaggeration, though they prove, what was hardly dubious in any event, that there prevailed the practice of remembering series of teachers and pupils. The Buddhists made some more serious approach to history in their legends of the Buddha, but, valuable as is the matter which they have preserved, it remains clear, from their greatest creation,² the *Mahāvaṁsa* of Mahānāman in the fifth century A. D., that during the passage of the centuries the monks had not acquired any real historical sense. A king like Açoka was, of course, a model of pious deeds, but not the slightest attempt is made to treat his life and efforts in an historical spirit; instead, we learn of the courteous action of the wild beasts and birds who come to the royal kitchen and die there, to prevent the sin of slaying them for food, of miracle-performing snakes, and sages who come down to earth to cleanse the community of heretics. Even in contemporary times the poet is untrustworthy; all is looked at merely from the point of view of the attitude of the king for the time being towards the special community of monks among whom the author lived. Still less, of course, do we find history among the Jains; their Paṭṭāvalis, kept doubtless from early times but only recorded rather late, preserve lists of pontiffs, they had a stereotyped life of their Tīrthakaras, and endeavoured to attach Jain legends to such names as that of Candragupta,³ but serious history was repugnant to them. Eulogies of saints are common to the sects, but serious historical work is quite unknown.

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¹ To ascribe authority for the period 1000–500 B. C. to works that know nothing of the 3rd cent. A. D. is foolish. See Keith, EHR. 1922, pp. 607 f.

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² Geiger, *Dīpavaṁsa und Mahāvaṁsa*; Oldenberg, *Aus dem alten Indien*, pp. 77 ff.

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³ Smith's acceptance (EHI. p. 154) of the legend of his resignation is quite unconvincing.

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Poetic merit of a modest kind, however, may be found from time to time in the inscriptions which are the most substantial early contribution to Indian history. The most valuable in this regard are the encomia, Praçastis, of which we have already noted specimens of the Gupta age. The typical Praçasti¹ is simple in structure; after a benediction, it proceeds to describe the donor, and, when the two are not identical, the reigning prince, giving in either case some genealogical information, then it sets out the donation and enumerates any conditions or privileges accompanying it, such as freedom from interference by the royal officers or remission of taxation, invokes the favour of heaven for the maintenance of the memorial, utters imprecations on any person interfering with the donation, and sets out the name of the architect who constructed it, the priest who consecrated it, the poet, and the scribe who engraved the letters, with in many cases the date. The form, of course, varies with the nature of the object on which it is engraved, temple, public building, copper plate, memorial of the dead, &c., but the historically interesting part is normally the genealogy and account, if any, of the deeds of the dedicator, if a king. These Praçastis may be quite short, ten or twelve lines, or they may even exceed a hundred lines, and their value as history and poetry differs enormously. What is fairly certain is that the genealogies are frequently 'faked'; the kings for whom they were composed desired to be connected either with fabled heroes and royal lines of old, or, especially in the south, desired to make out that they were scions of the great royal houses of the north. As poetry they do not normally merit admiration, for they are decidedly elaborate in form, if at all pretentious, and we are not favourably impressed by the self-confidence of that Rāma who in the eighth century calls himself Kaviçvara, lord of poets, and asserts that the goddess of eloquence dwelt in his childish mouth ere he had forgotten the taste of his mother's milk. His skill is of the type admired in India but less attractive to western taste; he composes a Stotra, hymn of praise, in which each of the fourteen stanzas applies equally well to Pārvatī as to her consort Çiva, and he exhibits by his choice of recondite constructions and rare words that he had studied diligently both grammar and lexica. The same curious device of including a Stotra in an inscription is seen in the case of Lalitasuradeva in the ninth century.¹ It is fair to say that not rarely there is found a poetical idea happily expressed in a panegyric both early and late, but in the main they are rather dreary and hackneyed documents.² And, what is vital, they represent merely a first step towards history.

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¹ See Bühler, WZKM. ii. 86 ff.; EI. i. 97 ff. Their form as a blend of prose and poetry is recognized in the later writers on poetics as a Biruda; *Sāhityadarpaṇa*, vi. 570. For a collection see *Prācīnalekhamālā*, KM. 34, 64, 80.

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¹ IA. xxv. 177 f.

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² Harṣa has some spirited lines; Jackson, *Priyadarśikā*, pp. xliii f.

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We can hardly say that we are carried further into the region of history by the *Harṣacarita* of Bāṇa, for, beyond a very few facts about his immediate predecessors, we are given merely a confused glimpse of a very small part of the deeds of Harṣa of Thānesar, and the work may best be treated as a romance, which it is in all essentials. As a nearer approach to history may be ranked the *Gaüḍavaha*³ of Vākpatirāja, which was written to celebrate the defeat of a Gauḍa prince by the poet's patron, Yaçovarman of Kanauj, who himself, however, was overthrown and killed not much later (*c.* 740) by Lalitāditya of Kashmir. Possibly this fact explains the curious condition of the poem, which contains as little history as possible, but expatiates instead in the wonted Kāvya manner in descriptions of scenery and the seasons, and of the amusements of kings, and does not scruple to relate myths. It may be that the poet, after his patron's death, left unfinished the poem which thus is merely a torso. The alternative is to suppose that we have in it as it stands a series of excerpts dealing with those topics which Paṇḍits liked, omitting tedious historical details. No certainty is possible; it may be that the poem is all that Vākpati ever intended to write. It is in Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, and, though it does not aim at plays on words and double meanings, it affects far too long compounds in the Gauḍa manner, nor does it normally reach any high standard of merit, though it contains some vivid pictures of village life—Māhārāṣṭrī poetry has always clung close to the soil—and the description of a southern temple of Kālī where human sacrifices are offered has the grim horror which attracts Indian taste. Uncertainty attends its date; it is characteristic of the poem that we do not even hear the name of the Gauḍa king; if written after Yaçovarman's fall it may be placed about A. D. 750.

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³ Ed. S. P. Pandit, BSS. 34, 1887; cf. Bühler, WZKM. i. 324 ff.; ii. 328 ff.; Smith, JRAS. 1908, pp. 765-93. Hertel's views (*Asia Major*, i) on Bhavabhūti and Vākpati carry no conviction.

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We are still far from serious history in the *Navasāhasāṅkacarita*¹ of Padmagupta, also called Parimala, whose work, in eighteen cantos, was written about 1005. It relates the mythical theme of the winning of the princess Çaçiprabhā, but is intended at the same time to allude to the history of king Sindhurāja Navasāhasāṅka of Mālava; we have by the hand of Bilhaṇa a similar example of this curious treatment in the drama *Karṇasundarī* in which he celebrates, under the guise of the marriage of a Caulukya prince to the daughter of a Vidyādhara king, an actual wedding of his patron to a princess. Obviously the method does not tend towards historical treatment or results. But the poet is by no means without the power of graceful expression, however impossible it may be to treat seriously his poem as a whole. Thus he has quite a happy conception in:

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¹ Ed. V. S. Islāmpurkar, BSS. 53, 1895; G. Bühler and Th. Zachariae, *Über das Navasāhasāṅkacharita* (1888). On his use of the Udgatā metre see Jacobi, ZDMG. xliii. 467; SIFI. VIII. ii. 110.

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*citravartiny api nṛpe tattvavegena cetasi*
*vrīḍārdhavalitaṁ cakre mukhendum avaçaiva sā.*

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‘As the truth pierced the soul of the king, though 'twas only his picture, the maiden made his moon-like forehead half-wrinkled with shame.’

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*āhāraṁ na karoti nāmbu pibati straiṇaṁ na saṁsevate*
*çete yat sikatāsu muktaviṣayaç caṇḍātapaṁ sevate*
*tvatpādābjarajaḥprasādakaṇikālābhonmukhas tan marau*
*manye Mālavasinha Gūrjarapatis tīvraṁ tapas tapyate.*

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‘He eats not nor drinks water; women he frequents not; he lies on the sand, indifferent to things of sense he courts the burning heat; surely, o Lion of Mālava, the lord of Gūrjara performs thus a dread penance there in the desert that he may become worthy to be honoured by touching the dust of thy lotus feet.’ Pretty is the following:

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*tatra sthitaṁ sthitimatā varadeva daivād: bhṛtyena te cakita-*
*cittam iyanty ahāni*
*utkampini stanataṭe hariṇekṣaṇānām: hārān pranartayati yatra*
*bhavatpratāpaḥ.*

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‘There, my noble liege, as fate willed, thy servant won a footing and abode for many days with troubled heart, where thy valour makes to dance the necklaces on the quivering breasts of the deer-eyed ladies.’ A more elaborate effort to depict the plight of the Gūrjara queen in her husband’s defeat is less successful:

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*magnāni dviṣatāṁ kulāni samare tvatkhaḍgadhārākule*
*nāthāsminn iti vandivāci bahuço deva çrutāyām purā*
*mugdhā Gūrjarabhūmipālamahiṣī pratyāçayā pāthasaḥ*
*kāntāre cakitā vimuñcati muhuḥ patyuḥ kṛpāṇe dṛçau.*

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‘As she wanders in terror in the forest, o King, the simple queen of Gūrjara’s lord gazes ever at her husband’s blade in her craving for water; has she not heard many a time the minstrels chant, “The hosts of the foe, o lord, have been drowned in the whirlpool of battle raised by the torrent of thy glaive”?’ The unfortunate lady is misled by the ambiguity of the term *magnāni* and of *dhārā*, which means both torrent and edge of a sword.

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We have only the name of Çaṅkuka, who wrote the *Bhuvanābhyudaya*, in which Kalhaṇa¹ tells us he described the dread battle of Mamma and Utpala (*c.* A. D. 850)

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¹ iv. 704 f. Cf. Peterson, *Subhāṣitāvali*, p. 127; Quackenbos, *The Sanskrit Poems of Mayūra*, pp. 50–2.

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*ruddhapravāhā yatrāsīd Vitastā subhaṭair hataiḥ*

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‘where the current of the Vitastā was stemmed by the bodies of the slain.’ The anthologies ascribe to a Çaṅkuka certain verses, but it is quite uncertain whether he is to be identified with this author; in the case of one verse the ascription is to Çaṅkuka Mayūra’s son, and it has been conjectured that the Mayūra meant may be the contemporary of Bāṇa (*c.* A. D. 630), though this is mere surmise. A Çaṅku figures in the list of jewels of Vikramāditya’s court; he may represent the tradition of one or other of these poets, if indeed they are to be identified.

3. Bilhaṇa

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It is to Kashmir that we must look for the first more serious contribution to history, for Bilhaṇa—the form of name is Kashmirian—was born there, though he left his home perhaps under Kalaça’s reign and wandered far and wide visiting Mathurā, Kanauj, Prayāga, and Kāçī, and staying for a time at the court of a prince Karṇa of Ḍāhala,¹ perhaps also with the Caulukya Karṇadeva Trailokyamalla (1064–94) of Aṇhilvāḍ, before he was received as Vidyāpati, master of the sciences, by Vikramāditya VI, Cālukya king of Kalyāṇa (1076–1127), who bestowed upon him the gifts of a blue parasol and an elephant and chained him to his court. When at Karṇa’s capital, he defeated in a literary competition the poet Gaṅgādhara and appears to have written a poem on Rāma, and he hints that the famous Bhoja of Dhārā² would have been glad to welcome him to his court. At any rate he rewarded his patron by composing in his honour his epic in eighteen cantos, the *Vikramāṅkadevacarita*.³ The date of that work appears to fall before 1088, because it passes in silence the great expedition of the king to the south which took place then, and because it mentions as prince, not king, Harṣadeva of Kashmir who became king only in that year, and we know from Kalhaṇa⁴ that Bilhaṇa actually lived to hear of Harṣadeva’s accession. Of his parentage we know that his immediate ancestors Muktikalaça, Rājakalaça, and Jyeṣṭhakalaça, his father, were Brahmins, students of the Veda, who performed the Vedic Agnihotra (fire-oblation) sacrifice; his mother was Nāgadevī, his brothers were Iṣṭarāma and Ānanda, both scholars and poets, while he himself was taught the Veda, grammar up to the *Mahābhāṣya*, and poetics.

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¹ Presumably of Cedi, and different from the Karṇa of the *Karṇasundarī* (Konow, *Das indische Drama*, p. 112). The Cedi king was seemingly of long life and many vicissitudes (Duff, *Chronology*, pp. 120, 121, 135).

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² This suggests that Bhoja was alive later than 1060; so also Kalhaṇa, vii. 259, treats him as alive in 1062.

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³ Ed. G. Bühler, BSS. 14, 1875. Cf. A. V. V. Ayyar, IA. xlviii. 114 ff., 133 ff.

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⁴ vii. 936–8.

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The *Vikramāṅkadevacarita* is essentially an application of the normal recipe for making an epic to a historical theme, and it begins, therefore, with the usual application, in this case to Brahman, to create a hero for the safety of the world; the god agreed, and from his waterpot (*culuka*) sprang the founder of the Cālukya dynasty, whose first home in Ayodhyā was abandoned by later kings who extended their conquests to the betel palms of the south, 'where the hooves of their horses wrote the record of their victories on the sands of the ocean shore which witnesses the secrets of the Colas.' This purely imaginary origin for the family is followed by a long break in the tradition, and Bilhaṇa passes to Tailapa (973–97) whose victory over the Rāṣṭrakūṭas is recorded but not his defeat by the king of Mālava. The kings following are, with one exception, mentioned, and then the poet concentrates on Āhavamalla (1040–69), the father of his hero. This victorious king has no son; he and his wife serve humbly in Çiva's temple, and he is promised in reward by the god two sons as the reward of his penance, but one more as a special boon. Three sons are born, Someçvara, Vikramāditya, and Jayasiṅha, the birth of the second being preceded by remarkable portents presaging his future greatness. When the boys grew up, Āhavamalla pressed on Vikramāditya the duty of fulfilling the purpose of Çiva and accepting the heir-apparentship, but the virtuous prince declined to oust his brother.

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He proceeded, however, to win many victories which greatly delighted his father, but in the midst of his rejoicing he was attacked by a malignant fever. Greatly distressed, he decided to end his life, and, his ministers giving reluctant consent, journeyed to the Tuṅgabhadrā, the Ganges of the south, and there perished in the water, setting his heart on Çiva. Vikramāditya was deeply distressed by the news, was with difficulty induced to remain alive, but ultimately returned to the capital where his brother for a time lived peaceably with him. But suspicions arose between the two, and Vikramāditya retired with his brother Jayasiṅha, and took up a position on the Tuṅgabhadrā. He effected then an alliance with the Cola king, but after his ally's death the throne, despite efforts on his part, fell into the hands of Rājiga, who concerted an alliance with Someçvara against Vikramāditya. The result, however, was fatal to the allies; Çiva urged the reluctant Vikramāditya to do battle, and, when he had captured his brother, angrily compelled him to abandon his intention of allowing his brother to resume the royal power. He then made Jayasiṅha viceroy in Vanavāsa and effected more conquests. At this point the poet introduces the usual diversion from serious matters. The king hears of the Svayaṁvara of a Rājput princess, Candaladevī, and wins her as his bride;

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this gives Bilhaṇa the opportunity of describing the effect of the spring on the passions, and the beauties of the maiden in minute detail (viii). The wedding over, the king and his bride disport themselves; he swings her with his own hand, they pluck flowers, bathe together, and a carousal at which the Rājput ladies drink deep follows (ix–xi). The king now returns to Kalyāṇa, but merely to occupy a canto with fresh bathing scenes (xii) and an ode to the breaking of the monsoon (xiii). Jayasiṅha, however, gave trouble; he had to be overcome but pardoned (xiv, xv), and the king then engaged in hunting, slaying lions, hunting boars with dogs, and shooting arrows at deer (xvi). Sons were born to him, and he built a city Vikramapura, and erected a temple to Viṣṇu Kamalāvilāsin. But the Colas, having apparently been defeated rather in the poet’s imagination than in reality, gave more trouble. Vikrama has to defeat them again and occupy for a time Kāñcī. The last canto is refreshingly interesting, for it gives an account of Bilhaṇa’s own family and his life as a wandering Paṇḍit, attesting a practice which prevailed down to the most recent times.

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It is difficult to say much for Bilhaṇa as a historian. We may justly suspect his impartiality; Çiva intervenes in the affairs of his hero with suspicious promptitude, and the impression conveyed is certainly that the poet is trying by stressing the supernatural intervention in his favour to explain away the awkward fact that he fought with both his brothers. We have no real character-drawing, but merely the reflex of the epic; Āhavamalla and Vikramāditya are as heroes necessarily paragons of virtue, the others vicious. It is quite in keeping with the epic manner that the Colas, so often rooted out, are at the end of the poem still perfectly capable of worrying the ruler. Again, the artificial style leaves often difficulty as to the precise sense; it is not even certain whether while at Karṇa’s court Bilhaṇa wrote a poem on Rāma or made a journey to Ayodhyā. Chronology is utterly lacking, as it is in Bāṇa; ‘after some days’ or ‘after many days’ are expressions quite worthless, and while the inscriptions generally confirm Bilhaṇa’s narrative, there remain much vagueness and inaccuracy, or at least exaggeration as in the case of his alleged Gauḍa conquests. An irritating but epic vagueness prevails; there is dubiety about the identity of the two Karṇas whom he mentions,¹ and he frequently leaves out the names of minor personages, leaving us to guess their identity. The descriptions of the usual pleasures of a royal court are doubtless generically true, but they are clearly out of place, and the Svayaṁvara is too obviously based on Kālidāsa to give us any confidence in its existence, in anything like the form in which it is pictured, though we know that Rājputs long kept up the practice. There is also only too much ground for accepting as true to life the scene of drunkenness, for the Rājputs have long found delight in romping, equivoke, debauchery, and drinking.

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¹ i. 102 f.; xviii. 93.

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Bilhaṇa, however, is more satisfactory as a poet. He affects the Vaidarbha style and avoids long compounds; his language is normally simple and clear, and he does not overdo alliterations or plays on words. His masterpiece is admittedly the picture of the death of Āhavamalla in Canto iv; it is a fine piece of simple pathos, and the dignity and courage of the dying king are effectively portrayed. Nor is Bilhaṇa without skill in more elaborate effects, as in his plea for poets:

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*svecchābhaṅgurabhāgyameghataḍitaḥ çakyā na roddhuṁ çriyaḥ*
*prāṇānāṁ satataṁ prayāṇapaṭahaçraddhā na viçrāmyati*
*trāṇaṁ ye 'tra yaçomaye vapuṣi vaḥ kurvanti kāvyāmṛtais*
*tān ārādhya gurūn vidhatta sukavīn nirgarvam urvīçvarāḥ.*

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‘Ye lords of earth, prosperity, the lightning of the cloud of fate that moves at its own will, cannot be chained; ever soundeth the drum that doth proclaim the hour of man’s departure; honour, therefore, and take as your guides, laying aside all pride, those skilled poets whose poems provide the drink of immortality to your bodies of fame.’

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*he rājānas tyajata sukavipremabandhe virodhaṁ*
*çuddhā kīrtiḥ sphurati bhavatāṁ nūnam etatprasādāt*
*tuṣṭair baddhaṁ tad alaghu Raghusvāminaḥ sac caritraṁ*
*kruddhair nītas tribhuvanajayī hāsyamārgaṁ daçāsyaḥ.*

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‘O kings, cease to obstruct the true poet’s attachment; it is to them that is due the refulgence of your pure fame; by them in gratitude was composed the great, the noble tale of Rāma, by them in anger was Rāvaṇa, conqueror of the universe, made a laughing-stock.’ The advent of winter is depicted quite prettily:

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*çaratkālātapaklāntakāntavakrenduvallabhaḥ*
*athājagāma hemantaḥ sāmantaḥ smarabhūpateḥ.*

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‘Then came the winter, feudatory of our Lord, Love, himself beloved by the crescent moon dear to those aweary of autumn’s heat.’ Pretty is the description of Khonamukha, his ancestral home:

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*brūmas tasya prathamavasater adbhutānāṁ kathānāṁ*
*kiṁ çrīkaṇṭhaçvaçuraçikharikroḍakīlālalāmnaḥ*
*eko bhāgaḥ prakṛtisubhagaṁ kuṅkumaṁ yasya sūte*
*drākṣām anyaḥ sarasasarayūpuṇḍrakacchedapāṇḍum.*

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‘What shall I sing of that spot, the fountain-head of wonder-tales, that shone as a playful embellishment on the crest of the mountain god, Çiva’s father-in-law? One part bears the saffron in its natural perfection, the other the grape, pale as a slice of juicy sugar-cane from Sarayū’s banks.’ We may suggest that the reference to wonder-tales is an effort to ascribe to his native place the honour of being the source of works like the *Bṛhatkathā*. Āhavamalla’s last words are perfect in their elegant simplicity:

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*jānāmi karikarṇāntacañcalaṁ hatajīvitam*
*mama nānyatra viçvāsaḥ Pārvatījīviteçvarāt.*
*utsāṅge Tuṅgabhadrāyās tad eṣa Çivacintayā*
*vāñchāmy ahaṁ nirākartuṁ dehagrahaviḍambanām.*

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‘I know that my life, tremulous as the tip of an elephant’s ear, is gone; no other hope have I save in the lord of Pārvatī’s life. In the bosom of Tuṅgabhadrā I desire to lay aside this deception of human life, my heart set fast on Çiva.’

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Bilhaṇa’s diction is normally accurate, and for his occasional lapses he can plead precedent. Metrically he is simple; six cantos are of Indravajrā type, three of Vaṅçasthā, two of Çloka¹ and Rathoddhatā; one in Mandākrāntā, one in Puṣpitāgrā, and one in Svāgatā. Çārdūlavikrīḍita and Vasantatilaka are not rare as change metres; Mālinī is occasional, and Aupacchandasika, Pṛthvī, Çikhariṇī, Sragdharā, and Hariṇī are just used, while Vaitālīya dominates Canto xv.

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¹ He has Vipulās I–III 20, 10, and 7 times respectively, and a weak caesura in Sandhi in Vipulā III in iv. 93 (IS. xvii. 444) in 428 half-stanzas.

4. Kalhaṇa's Life and Times

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Kalhaṇa of Kashmir¹ is not merely the one great Indian chronicler who has come down to us; but, though we have little direct information about him, we can gather from his poems a far more definite impression of his personal character than is usual with Indian poets; compared with Kālidāsa, who is a mere name, the subject of anecdotes clever and stupid, Kalhaṇa stands out as a very definite and rather attractive personality. We owe his activity as a chronicler in all probability to the internal struggles of Kashmir. His father Caṇpaka, doubtless a Brahmin, was a faithful adherent of king Harṣa (1089–1101); he remained, unlike the average Kashmirian, true to his sovereign in adversity, and was on an important mission entrusted to him by the king when the latter was assassinated; the details of the murder are known to us because Mukta, one of his servants, was with the king at the last, escaping in a manner which the poet fully relates. Caṇpaka seems to have lived long after his master's death, but seemingly he ceased to take active part in political affairs, for which, if we accept his loyalty, he can hardly have been well fitted, and thus young Kalhaṇa, who may have been born about 1100, was cut off from the possibility of ministerial office and political life. His uncle, Kanaka, was also deeply attached to Harṣa, who rewarded his complaisance in taking singing lessons from the music-loving king by presenting him with a lakh of gold coins. He restrained the king in his madness from destroying the image of the Buddha at Parihāsapura, probably the home of Kalhaṇa's family, and retired to Benares on his patron's death. Like his father, Kalhaṇa was a devotee of Çiva, but though he knew and respected the Çaivaçāstra, the recondite system of Çaiva philosophy for which Kashmir was famous, he seems to have had a poor opinion of the devotees of the Tantric rites of Çaivism. But he is markedly respectful in his attitude to Buddhism, and approves the practice of non-destruction of life (*ahiṁsā*) enjoined and enforced by some kings. Buddhism, it is clear from his account, had long since accommodated itself to Hinduism; Kṣemendra had celebrated the Buddha as an Avatār of Viṣṇu, and married monks were known long before Kalhaṇa's day.

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¹ M. A. Stein, *Kalhaṇa's Chronicle of Kaśmīr* (1900), and ed. (1892).

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Debarred from politics, Kalhaṇa must have conceived the idea of rewriting the chronicles of Kashmir, perhaps at the instigation of Alakadatta, the patron of whom we hear only from the *Çrīkaṇṭhacarita*¹ of Maṅkha, who mentions him under his more elegant appellation of Kalyāṇa, of which his name is a vernacular equivalent. It is clear that he studied deeply the great poems of the past, such as the *Raghuvaṁça* and *Meghadūta* of Kālidāsa, and naturally the *Harṣacarita* of Bāṇa, as a model of romance based on a historical kernel. Bilhaṇa he knew well and used his work, and Maṅkha expressly tells us that Kalhaṇa's style had become so polished that it could reflect as in a mirror the whole perfection of Bilhaṇa's muse. But he studied also deeply the epics, as his constant references to the heroes of the *Mahābhārata* and his familiarity with the *Rāmāyaṇa* prove. He was naturally interested in literary history, and studied the science of astrology, as his references to Varāhamihira's *Bṛhatsaṁhitā* attest.

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¹ xxv. 78–80.

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Contemporary history was stormy and bloody. Harṣa's death left his foes Uccala and Sussala to divide the kingdom; Sussala received the territory of Lohara. Uccala had to keep in power by playing off one of the turbulent Ḍāmaras, a feudal body of landholders, against another, Gargacandra of Lahara proving his chief support. In 1111 he was assassinated by a plot of his officials, one of whom, Raḍḍa, occupied the throne for a day. Gargacandra then ruled through a *roi fainéant* for four months, but Sussala patched up friendship with him and became king. His reign was one mass of trouble; the Ḍāmaras, when Gargacandra was removed by murder, rose under Bhikṣācara, a grandson of Harṣa who ruled from 1120 to 1121, but Sussala regained power, and civil war raged until he was murdered in 1128 as the result of a plot he had contrived to assassinate his rival. His son Jayasiṁha succeeded and kept the throne, not by his father's reckless valour, but by cultivating the feudal grandees and by Machiavellian diplomacy. Bhikṣācara was murdered two years later, but a new pretender appeared, and, although there was peace for a time after 1135, a new trouble arose in 1143, when prince Bhoja supported by the Dard tribes rose in revolt. Diplomacy at last quelled this outbreak, and in 1149 Kalhaṇa began and in the next year finished his great poem. He had clearly stood apart from the struggle; though he wrote under Jayasiṁha, his remarks regarding him are utterly opposed to the wholesale panegyric of the normal court poet; he condemns severely the deeds of Sussala, and is equally severe to Loṭhana and Mallārjuna, the earlier pretenders of Jayasiṁha's reign. His account of Bhikṣācara is more favourable, and that this was not induced by personal motives is established by the fact that his record shows clearly that he and his family gained nothing by the brief period of that prince's power. Bhoja he evidently both knew and liked, and much of his information regarding the tedious negotiations and manœuvres which preceded his reconciliation with the king in 1145 must have been derived from him personally, when with the other pretenders he was living in amity at Jayasiṁha's court.

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Kalhaṇa's detachment enabled him to envisage dispassionately the demerits of his own countrymen, and his testimony is abundantly confirmed by history. Fair and false and fickle is a perfect description of the Kashmirian as seen by Kalhaṇa. The disorderly and cowardly soldiery receives his wholehearted contempt; they are prepared to fly at a rumour, and, if a few resolute men murder the king, a *sauve qui peut* of guards, attendants, and courtiers follows at once. Fidelity is unknown to the vast majority of the court, and Kalhaṇa notes it with special care, even when its object is a rebel. Contrasted with this is the courage and loyalty of the Rājaputras and other foreign mercenaries on whom the kings had largely to rely for serious fighting. The city populace is presented as idle, pleasure-loving, and utterly callous, acclaiming a king to-day and welcoming another to-morrow, and their passions raise disdain in the aristocratic Brahmin's mind. Against the Ḍāmaras he is extremely bitter; his family had doubtless suffered greatly at the hands of these cruel and brutal men, who oppressed the peasants and plundered when they could the estates of the officials and the Brahmins of the capital; their boorishness and crudeness, traces of their humble origin, are also a source of offence. But he has no illusions regarding the official classes; their greed, peculations, oppressions, and disloyalty are frankly exposed. The priests are not spared; Kashmir was cursed then by activities of the Purohitas, who, in possession of costly endowments, sought by their solemn fasts (*prāyopaveça*), intended to proceed to death if their demands were not granted, to influence the progress of events. Kalhaṇa ridicules their ignorance of affairs and their arrogance in intervention in matters beyond their skill. He is not, however, all compact of dislikes; he mentions appreciatively the minister Rilhaṇa and Alaṁkāra, whom we know from Maṅkha as a patron of poets; Maṅkha himself is only mentioned as a minister, not as a poet; for Udaya, commander of the frontier defences, he seems to have had a warm regard, and personal relations are obvious both with Bhoja and with Rājavadana, another of the pretenders who attacked Jayasiṁha. All that we have points, therefore, to a mind very busily in contact with reality, observing intently the process of current events in lieu of becoming a mere book-worm, and endeavouring to find satisfaction for a keen intellect in recording the events around him and those of earlier days in lieu of the participation in affairs traditional in his family and congenial to his tastes.

5. The Rājataraṅgiṇī and its Sources

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Kalhaṇa tells us himself that he was not the first to seek to write a chronicle of the kings of Kashmir from the earliest days; it appears that extensive works of ancient date contained the royal chronicles, but these had apparently disappeared in his time through the energy of one Suvrata in composing a poem embodying them, evidently written in the Kāvya style, and, therefore, difficult to follow. He consulted also, he says, eleven works of former scholars as well as the still extant *Nīlamatapurāṇa*. The polymath Kṣemendra had written a *Nṛpāvali* which Kalhaṇa censures for want of care, but which probably was a careful summary of his sources and, therefore, is a real loss. From Padmamihira Kalhaṇa took eight kings beginning with Lava who come first after the gap of thirty-five lost kings in Book I; Padmamihira's source was a certain Pāçupata Helārāja whose work must have been extensive but which Kalhaṇa did not know. From Chavillākara, whose text he cites, he derived some really historical information in the shape of Açoka's name and his devotion to Buddhism. If the other authorities he used carried their work from the beginnings to their own times, or were mere chronicles of recent events, we do not know. Kalhaṇa probably used some writers of this kind, as he emphatically disclaims this sort of work as worthy of him, and insists on covering the whole history of Kashmir so far as his sources allow.

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But Kalhaṇa used much more original sources to check his literary authorities. He tells us that he inspected inscriptions of various kinds, those envisaged recording the construction of temples, memorials, or palaces, records of land grants or privileges (usually on copper plates), Praçastis, eulogies engraved on temples and other buildings, and manuscripts of literary works, which often record names of rulers and dates. The claim is borne out by the precise details of facts as to the foundation of sacred edifices, land grants, &c., which abound in his text, and by his precise assertions as to literary history, which are of great value. He studied also coins and inspected buildings, while he was clearly a master of the topography of the valley. Further, he used freely local traditions of all kinds, and family records, while from his own knowledge and from that of his father and many others he culled the minute details which mark his treatment of the events of the fifty years preceding the date of his work.

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Kalhaṇa frankly admits that the first fifty-two kings, evidently a traditional number, whom he recognizes were not recorded by his predecessors as chroniclers; the first four he took from the *Nīlamata*, the next eight from Helārāja frankly come after a gap of thirty-five kings, then follow five from Chavillākara. The first king Gonanda is of special importance because he is made to have come to the throne in the same year 653 of the Kali era in which Yudhiṣṭhira was crowned, and on this absolutely groundless synchronism is built up the whole fabric of Kalhaṇa's chronology. Gonanda is made to attack Kṛṣṇa in Mathurā and to be slain by Balabhadra, Kṛṣṇa's brother. His son Dāmodara I sought to avenge him, but perished, Kṛṣṇa placing his wife, then pregnant, on the throne, so that Gonanda II, his son, was a babe who could take no part in the great war. It must be noted that in Book III we find Gonanda III virtually treated as the real head of the dynasty, nor can we deny that these fabulous kings were merely invented by a pious fraud to give Kashmir a place in the heroic legends of India. Of the other kings recorded in Book I Açoka is given a son Jalauka, elsewhere unknown, and a reminiscence of the Kuṣaṇas is seen in the names Huṣka, Juṣka, and Kaniṣka, recognized as Buddhists, though their order is exactly the reverse of the historical.

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They were followed by a Brahmanical Abhimanyu, who is stated to have favoured the study of the *Mahābhāṣya*, but whose historical character is unverifiable. Under him a pious Brahmin with the aid of Nīlanāga purifies Kashmir from Buddhist contagion and saves the land from snow, the tale being a mere *réchauffé* of the legend of the *Nīlamata* which makes Piçācas the sinners. The line of Gonanda kings after Gonanda III has little appearance of authenticity, and in Book II we find a new line of kings, unconnected with the old, and apparently with no claims to historicity. Book III gives the history of the restored Gonanda dynasty under Meghavāhana. In the new list Mātṛgupta's short reign figures, and possibly in him and his patron Vikramāditya Harṣa we have a reference to Çīlāditya¹ of Mālava, giving us a date in the sixth century. As a member of the Gonanda line figures Toramāṇa, who can hardly be other than the Hūṇa king of that name, and it is not enough to discount the fact that his father Mihirakula is given at a date 700 years earlier, for Kalhaṇa recognizes a reign of 300 years for Raṇāditya, who was the third last king of the dynasty and whose date would fall in quite historical times. A romantic tale ends the dynasty;

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the last king, Bālāditya, in order to avoid the fulfilment of a prophecy that his son-in-law would succeed him, married his daughter to a minor official Durlabhavardhana, but the son-in-law became a favourite of the king, and, having the wisdom if not the honour to pardon the minister Khaṅkha for an intrigue with his wife, was on the king's death elevated to the throne as first of the Kārkoṭa dynasty, the name being explained as due to the fact that he was really the son of a Nāga Kārkoṭa. With this dynasty in Book IV we approach historical reality in the seventh century A.D., as Durlabhavardhana may have been the king who ruled contemporaneously with the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang. The first date in the Laukika era of Kashmir (3076–5 B.C.) is given in the case of Cippaṭa Jayāpīḍa or Bṛhaspati, whom he assigns to A.D. 801–13, but this can definitely be proved wrong from the fact that the poet Ratnākara, author of the *Haravijaya*, distinctly tells us that he wrote under the patronage of that prince, while Kalhaṇa assures us that he was prominent under Avantivarman, who certainly began to reign in 855. There is clearly an error of at least twenty-five or even fifty years. The dynasty ended in usurpation by Avantivarman, son of Sukhavarman and grandson of Utpala, an able man of humble origin who had become virtual ruler of the realm. With Avantivarman we are in the full light of history;

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Book V carries the dynasty down to 939, and Book VI completes it to the death of queen Diddā in 1003 and the peaceful accession of her nephew, the first prince of the Lohara dynasty. Book VII ends with the tragedy of the death of Harṣa, and Book VIII deals at great length (3449 stanzas) with the events of the half-century from the accession of Uccala. One curious omission of importance can be proved; Kalhaṇa records in an interesting manner the aid sent vainly under Tuṅga to the Ṣāhi king Trilocanapāla in his effort to stay the Mahomedan invasion under Maḥmūd Ghaznī, the Hammīra of the Indian texts; but he does not mention the actual onslaught about 1015 of the Mahomedan forces directed against Kashmir, which was stayed by the resolute resistance of the castle of Lohara, and as a result of the narrow outlook of the people of Kashmir in their inaccessible valley he appreciates hardly at all the significance of the new storm bursting over India.

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¹ Cf. EHI. p. 344.

6. Kalhaṇa as a Historian

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To understand Kalhaṇa's outlook on history we must not, of course, think of Thucydides or Polybios; we must, as has been well said, remember that, with these great works before them, Roman opinion was still content to see in history the opportunity for displaying command of rhetoric and of inculcating moral maxims. Kalhaṇa's aim is to produce a work which shall conform to the demands not of rhetoricians—of whom India had none—but of writers on poetics, and at the same time to impress on his readers moral maxims. The first of his aims he frankly admits at the outset: ‘Worthy of praise is the strange power of true poets which surpasses in value even the drink of immortality, since by it not only their own bodies of glory, but also those of others, are sustained. It is the creative genius of the poet alone which by its power of the production of beauty can place past times before the eye of men.’ He admits¹ the difficulty which he has to face; the amplitude of his task forbids the development of attractive variety (*vaicitrya*), which means that, having so much to narrate, he could not follow Bhāravi and Māgha in filling up his poem with descriptions of the poet’s stock-in-trade. There are indeed digressions but modest in kind, and it is only in them that we find the constant occurrence of the ornaments which mark the true poetic style. Nothing, however, shows his self-imposed moderation better than comparison with Bāṇa’s *Harṣacarita* or Bilhaṇa’s poem.

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¹ i. 6.

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The influence of the epic combines with that of poetics to produce the second mark of Kalhaṇa’s chronicle, its didactic tendency. Poetics requires that each poem should have a dominant sentiment, and that of the *Rājataraṅgiṇī* is resignation;² it is definitely so asserted, and based on the impression produced on the mind by the sudden appearance of human beings who last for a moment alone. It is reinforced by insistence on the tales of kings who by renunciation or otherwise come to a pathetic end, and Books I–III and VII are deliberately brought to a close with the occurrence of such episodes. Stress is ever laid on the impermanence of power and riches, the transient character of all earthly fame and glory, and the retribution which reaches doers of evil in this or a future life; the deeds of kings and ministers are reviewed and censured or commended by the rules of the Dharmaçāstra or Nītiçāstra, but always with a distinct moral bias. In this we certainly see the influence of the *Mahābhārata* in its vast didactic portions and its general tendency to inculcate morality, but we cannot say whether it was original in Kalhaṇa or had already been noted in the works of one or more of his predecessors.

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