A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s6.5

c14.s6.5

Kalhaṇa, therefore, makes no claim to be a scientific investigator, and in complete harmony with this tells us nothing of the divergences in his authorities. It is, in fact, clear that down to the middle of the ninth century with the advent of the Utpala dynasty he had no trustworthy materials to go upon. But, in lieu of sifting what he had and confessing his ignorance, he chose instead to patch up a continuous narrative. The results have already been seen; his chronology for the older period is hopelessly absurd and Kalhaṇa is quite unable to recognize the absurdity. Moreover, he is exactly on the same level as his average fellow-countryman in his attitude to heroic legend and to fact; he accepts without hesitation the ancient legends of the epic as just as real as things of his day; some sceptics went so far as to doubt the magic feats of Meghavāhana and other kings, but Kalhaṇa will have none of them;¹ indeed he takes occasion, when recounting the acts done by Harṣa in his madness, to observe that future generations may on that account doubt their truth as they do the tales of Meghavāhana, apparently wholly unconscious of the vast difference in the character of the two kinds of stories. Inevitably, too, Kalhaṇa’s outlook was dimmed by the narrow limits of his home and its isolation; hence we do not find in him any real appreciation of the relations of Kashmir to the outer world; the invasions of the Kuṣaṇas and Hūṇas are confused and misunderstood. A further Kashmirian trait reveals itself throughout his work; the land was known to Marco Polo² as famous for sorcery and ‘devilries of enchantment’, and Kalhaṇa quite cheerfully accepts witchcraft as a legitimate cause of deaths;³ we may remember the Roman⁴ and medieval acceptance of poison as a natural cause of the dooms of princes. The deplorable chronology was doubtless not invented by Kalhaṇa, but he took it over and never realized its flagrant absurdities and its ludicrously long reigns, though contemporary experience would have shown how absurd they were.