Kalhana writes the Rajatarangini

Kalhana tells us in his introduction that he was writing ‘at present, in the twenty-fourth year’ of the Laukika era, when 1,070 years of the Shaka era had passed — AD 1148/1149 — and at the end he names the following year, 1149/1150, when twenty-two years of King Jayasimha’s reign had passed; M. A. Stein, his translator, saw in this interval the least time that a work of nearly 8,000 verses could have taken. Kalhana was the son of Champaka, who commanded the frontier defences of King Harsha (1089–1101) and was among the few officials who stood by him in his last struggle, and his vivid account of Harsha’s end evidently came from the only surviving witness, a servant of his father’s household.

At the outset Kalhana declares that only that poet deserves praise whose word, ‘like that of a judge’, stays free of love or hatred in relating the past, and he lists his materials: eleven earlier chronicles that he had inspected, the Nilamata Purana, and inscriptions recording the consecration of temples and royal grants, eulogies and other writings. Of the eight books (tarangas), the first three are largely legendary and assign impossible lengths to some reigns; from the Karkota dynasty of Lalitaditya onwards the narrative agrees more and more with other evidence, and the long seventh and eighth books describe in great detail the Lohara kings of the 11th and 12th centuries, down to Kalhana’s own day. Historians note his belief in fate and witchcraft, but also his care with sources and his readiness to criticise even his own patron.

The chronicle was continued by Jonaraja in the 15th century and by Shrivara, Prajyabhatta and Shuka after him. M. A. Stein’s critical edition (1892) and annotated English translation (1900) made the Rajatarangini the foundation of the history of Kashmir.