From conqueror to connoisseur: Kalhaṇa’s account of Jayāpīḍa and the fashioning of Kashmir as a Kingdom of learning

Abstract

This article is primarily concerned with asking how we can read Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī as historians, other than by mining it for facts and names or using it as a proof of some South Asian given. I conduct my investigation on a relatively small sample, a well-defined narrative sequence of about 100 verses from the fourth chapter, or ‘wave’, of the River of Kings (4.402–502), which narrates King Jayāpīḍa’s first military campaign. I try to demonstrate that this section depicts a dramatic shift in Kashmir’s investment in learning and the arts. Thus I argue that the Rājataraṅgiṇī, despite its unifying poetic and moralistic framework, is acutely attuned to changes in Kashmir’s history, including this region’s special cultural and intellectual history, a topic that is clearly dear to Kalhaṇa’s heart.