Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s4: 4. Kalhaṇa's Life and Times

A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s4

Language
English

4. Kalhaṇa's Life and Times

c14.s4.1

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.

c14.s4.2

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

c14.s4.3

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.

c14.s4.4

¹ xxv. 78–80.

c14.s4.5

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.

c14.s4.6

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.

Cites (7)