Ancient Kashmir: Shaivism, Buddhism and the River of Kings
Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms make Kashmir a centre of Sanskrit learning and Shaiva philosophy, and in 1148–49 the poet Kalhana writes its history in the Rajatarangini.
- Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī: A Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr — Kalhaṇa, trans. M. A. Stein, Archibald Constable (1900)
- Kashmir (Oxford India Short Introductions) — Chitralekha Zutshi, Oxford University Press (2019)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
Long before Islam reached the Himalaya, the Kashmir Valley was a rich, densely farmed basin ringed by mountains, linked to India, Central Asia and Tibet. Buddhism flourished early: Buddhist tradition places a great council under the Kushan emperor Kanishka in Kashmir, and monks from the valley carried texts to Central Asia and China.
- Kashmir (Oxford India Short Introductions) — Chitralekha Zutshi, Oxford University Press (2019)
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
Under the Karkota and Utpala dynasties (from the seventh century) Kashmir became a regional power. King Lalitaditya Muktapida, in the eighth century, built the sun temple at Martand, whose ruins still stand near Anantnag. The valley was famous for Sanskrit poetics and above all for Kashmir Shaivism, a non-dualist philosophy whose greatest thinker, Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016), saw the whole world as the play of Shiva’s consciousness.
- Kashmir (Oxford India Short Introductions) — Chitralekha Zutshi, Oxford University Press (2019)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
In 1148–49 a Brahmin poet, Kalhana, completed the Rajatarangini (“River of Kings”), about 8,000 Sanskrit verses tracing Kashmir’s rulers from mythical beginnings to his own time. Its early parts are legend, but its later books, drawing on charters, inscriptions and older chronicles, are a remarkably frank record of court intrigue, famine and tyranny. It is often called the first real work of history in India.
- Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī: A Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr — Kalhaṇa, trans. M. A. Stein, Archibald Constable (1900)
- Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 — Romila Thapar, Allen Lane / University of California Press (2002)
Why it matters today
Kashmiris of every faith are proud that their valley has a written history older than almost anywhere in South Asia. For Kashmiri Pandits these centuries are the golden age of their ancestors' learning and the root of their identity; for Kashmiri Muslims, whose families mostly converted later, they are still part of the story of "our" Kashmir.