Queen Didda rules Kashmir

Didda was the daughter of Simharaja, ruler of Lohara in the hills south-west of the Kashmir valley, and through her mother a granddaughter of Bhima, the Shahi king of Udabhanda. Already under Kshemagupta (950–958) she dominated her husband: his coins bear the syllable Di before his name, which M. A. Stein, following Alexander Cunningham, read as an abbreviation of Didda, and Kalhana says that the king was nicknamed Diddakshema. When Kshemagupta died of a fever caught on a jackal hunt, their son Abhimanyu II was a child, and Didda governed in his name. She drove the chief minister Phalguna into exile, bought off a rising of the nobles and, when a second rebellion besieged her in her palace, was saved by the minister Naravahana, after which she had the captured rebels executed and their families wiped out.

After Abhimanyu’s death in 972 his young sons followed one another on the throne. Kalhana dates to the years after her son’s death the foundation of temples and other buildings meant to preserve the memory of Didda and her family; one of them, the Diddamatha, gave its name to the Didmar quarter of Srinagar. He also accuses Didda of doing away with Nandigupta (972–973) and Tribhuvanagupta (973–975) ‘by witchcraft’; and in 980/981, sure of the support of Tunga — a Khasa from Parnotsa (Punch) who had begun life as a herdsman of buffaloes, came to Kashmir as a letter-carrier and became her lover — she had the last grandson, Bhimagupta, tortured to death and ascended the throne herself. As prime minister Tunga defeated repeated revolts and conspiracies, helped by the queen’s bribes and diplomacy, and led a successful expedition against Rajapuri (Rajauri), whose ruler was forced to pay tribute.

She died in 1003, still in peaceful possession of the throne, having made her nephew Samgramaraja, son of her brother Udayaraja of Lohara, heir apparent; he succeeded without contest, founding the Lohara dynasty, which still ruled Kashmir in Kalhana’s day. Kalhana, who wrote his chronicle in 1148–1150, paints Didda as cruel, licentious and greedy for power; his translator Stein nevertheless credited her with the statesmanlike instinct and political ability that kept her in power for close on half a century.