Past as tradition,past as history: The Rajatarangini narratives in Kashmir’s Persian historical tradition

Abstract

Kalhana’s Rajatarangini and its Sanskrit continuations are usually regarded as sui generis—unique historical compositions in a landscape otherwise barren of historical production in Kashmir and South Asia. As a result, the Persian tarikhs that followed them are dismissed as unhistorical imitations of these texts. This article approaches the Persian historical tradition in Kashmir from the perspective of the multilayered engagement between Persian tarikhs and their Sanskrit predecessors. Through an examination of three Persian tarikhs composed in seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century Kashmir, it argues that far from blindly translating the Rajatarangini narratives, the tarikhs were in active dialogue with the Sanskrit texts as they articulated their own ideas about the meaning and purpose of historical narration. By placing themselves within a long tradition of historical composition in Kashmir, the Persian narratives not only acquired legitimacy, but also redefined the tradition itself.