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

Early Sanskrit–Persian Literary Interactions

While tazkiras (biographies) of Sufi saints and their orders written in sixteenth-century Kashmir clearly display knowledge of and engagement with its Sanskrit texts, it was during the Mughal period that the act of historical composition in Persian became firmly linked to its Sanskrit tradition. ⁵ Abul Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari played a significant role in legitimising Kashmir’s Sanskrit texts as sources for Kashmir’s past while utilising them as a tool of political legitimacy for the Mughal conquest of Kashmir in the late sixteenth century. At the outset of his discussion of Kashmir’s past in the Ain-i Akbari, Abul Fazl noted that:

When the Imperial standards were for the first time borne aloft in this garden of perpetual spring, a book called Raj Tarangini (sic) written in the Sanskrit tongue containing an account of the princes of Kashmir during a period of some four thousand years, was presented to his Majesty. It had been the custom in that country for its rulers to employ certain learned men in writing its annals. His Majesty who was desirous of extending the bounds of knowledge appointed capable interpreters in its translation which in a short time was happily accomplished. ⁶

The Ain’s discussion of Kashmir and its past, which drew heavily on its Sanskrit texts, unmistakably incorporated Kashmir into the Mughal imperial narrative. It became, in a sense, a means of acquiring spiritual merit to rule over Kashmir, which, as noted by Kalhana in the Rajatarangini, ‘may be conquered by the force of spiritual merits, but not by forces of soldiers’. ⁷ At the same time, however, not only did Mughal rule institutionalise the process—that had begun under Sultan Zain al-Abidin’s rule—of rendering Persian as the literary language in Kashmir, but equally significantly, texts such as the Ain set the stage for complex interactions between Kashmir’s Sanskrit and Persian narrative traditions. As Kumkum Chatterjee rightly notes, while Persian was ‘the integrative mechanism’ that brought disparate regions of the Mughal Empire together, Mughal cosmopolitanism embodied elements drawn from a variety of regional, religious and linguistic traditions, interacting synergistically with Sanskrit cosmopolitanism to influence art, literature and historical composition. ⁸

It is worth discussing the Ain’s description of Kashmir and its history here to get a sense of the nature and extent of its influence on the Persian historical tradition in Kashmir. The text’s section on the Kashmir sarkar is subdivided into three sub-sections—the first is a general discussion of Kashmir’s geographical location and attributes, including its prominent sacred sites; the second is a statistical account of its parganahs (districts) and the revenue yielded from each; and the third is a historical account, which includes a chronological table of successive sovereigns of the region as well as their dates of rule. In the first section, Abul Fazl places the Kashmir sarkar as part of the subah (province) of Kabul, which was situated in the third and fourth climes and also comprised Pakhli, Bhimbar, Swat, Bajaur, Qandahar and Zabulistan. ⁹ In this context and in the second section, Kashmir is presented as a purely territorial entity with defined borders and clearly demarcated revenue subdivisions.

The first section, however, goes on to describe Kashmir as a more discursive space, ‘a garden of perpetual spring surrounding a citadel terraced to the skies and deservedly appropriate to be either the delight of the worldling or the retired abode of the recluse’. ¹⁰ Invoking the descriptions of the land and its attributes in the Sanskrit narratives, Abul Fazl presents Kashmir as both a spiritual and worldly paradise created through the combination of its geographical attributes and natural beauty that had led to it being ‘regarded as holy ground by the Hindu sages’. ¹¹ The emphasis placed on the uniqueness of Kashmir’s geography and the nature of the land is apparent in the text’s lengthy description of the wondrous places and springs of the Valley, alongside the popular traditions attached to each. So for instance, Abul Fazl noted the existence of the pool near the town of Brang, which remained dry during eleven months, but during the divine month of April, two springs bubbled forth from it, sometimes only for a second and other times for three hours. In another description, a spring in the village Biruwa restored lepers to health if they bathed in it during the early hours of the first day of the week. ¹²

Although the Ain clearly drew the idea of Kashmir as an especially blessed land from the Sanskrit and indigenous Persian traditions, it did not present its constituent sacred spaces as central to the historical narrative of its past. While for the Sanskrit and Persian narratives, these spaces were the sites on which the very drama of Kashmir’s past was played out, the Ain disentangled the sacred spaces and presented them as ‘awe-inspiring’ sites that were external to its historical narrative. The Ain’s narrative of Kashmir’s past likewise borrowed liberally from Sanskrit texts, with minor differences. Significantly, it begins with Kashmir’s origin from the lake Satisar, albeit in brief and goes on to describe its rulers since the habitation of the land by Brahmans. ¹³

Unlike the Sanskrit or Persian texts, it comments little on Kashmir’s transition to Islam, other than to note, drawing on Jonaraja’s Rajatarangini, that the Muslim, Shah Mir (the founder of the Sultanate in Kashmir), was a descendant of ‘Arjun the Pandava’. ¹⁴ Sultan Sikandar, who is lauded by most Persian historical texts from Kashmir as the propagator of Islam, is labelled ‘a rigid follower of religious tradition and a bigot’, ¹⁵ again following from the continuations of Rajatarangini composed during Sultan Zain al-Abidin’s rule. Very much along the lines of the Sanskrit chroniclers, Sultan Zain al-Abidin is described by the Ain as a saint and philosopher, but unlike the Sanskrit texts, Abul Fazl states that the Sultan was able to divest himself of corporeal form and foretold the transfer of the sovereignty of Kashmir from the Chaks to the Mughals. ¹⁶

The foregoing discussion illustrates that Mughal literary interactions with Kashmir’s Sanskrit narrative tradition legitimised it as the prime source for recording the region’s historical past. They did so, however, with the primary purpose of politically validating the Mughal conquest of the region by presenting Akbar as the culmination of ideal kingship in Kashmir. While drawing to an extent on the Ain-i Akbari, which served as a significant literary model for successive generations of writers in Persian, Kashmiri Persian tarikhs’ interaction with the Rajatarangini narratives went beyond their recognition as mere sources for a record of Kashmir’s past. Rather, the engagements of Persian tarikhs with the Sanskrit narrative tradition embodied by the Rajatarangini corpus were complex attempts to define the very meaning and purpose of historical composition that ultimately endowed the space of Kashmir itself with a variety of meanings. The Rajatarangini narratives took on the status of a genre that was accorded the status of originary narration even if one diverted from its strictures to fit the needs of historical composition in the present. The rest of the article examines these interactions from the perspective of the three aforementioned Persian tarikhs as they wrestled with the issues of authority and legitimacy, the purpose of historical composition and the content of the narrative of Kashmir’s past as well as the definition of Kashmir itself.

Origins and Genealogies: Tarikh-i Haider Malik Chadurah

Haider Malik Chadurah, a member of the Chadurah clan of Kashmiri nobles, was the Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s governor in Kashmir at the time he composed his tarikh in 1620–21. For him, composing the history was a means of discovering and tracing origins and genealogies—of his family, of the land to which they belonged, of its historical tradition and ultimately, of his text itself. The early part of the text is devoted to uncovering these origins, which reveals their deep imbrications. The Rajatarangini narratives were critical to this endeavour, but rather than simply translating their contents into Persian, the tarikh places the narrative of Kashmir’s early past in a much more universal context by interspersing it with events and incidents from the history of Islam. Moreover, it is replete with tropes from the Sufi tazkiras of Kashmir. The text thus reads as simultaneously local and universal, both in terms of its own origin and the content of its historical narrative. The text’s sources of legitimacy and historicity, thus, went far beyond the bounds of the Mughal imperial historical imagination.

Sudipta Kaviraj argues that temporality was ‘fuzzy and approximate’ within the conception of past as literary tradition, allowing texts to be placed ‘in a common horizon of literary contemporaniety, or better, atemporality’. ¹⁷ Within the idea of the past as literary tradition, temporality was immaterial because it was not so much historical events that mattered as originary moments and genealogies. Thus, Chadurah firmly placed himself within the tradition of historical composition in Kashmir by acknowledging the Rajatarangini as his literary predecessor, without noting the dates of its composition or its author. According to him, Jahangir had commissioned Muhammad Hussain to translate the Rajatarangini, written ‘by the wise men of Kashmir’ and then deputed Chadurah to utilise it to investigate the lives of his own ancestors by composing a narrative of Kashmir’s past. For Chadurah, the writing of the past was a commemoration of the acts of predecessors and bygone rulers ‘who spent their lives in building cities for the welfare of the people and have won praise from people of the same status’. ¹⁸

The past of the land could not, however, be merely a record of its political figures, as in the Rajatarangini texts and the Mughal tarikh tradition, but rather had to include the genealogies of the Sufi mystics and their marvelous actions that shaped its landscape:

Let it not remain a secret to the intelligent recorders of unique events that in historical works it is essential to include biographies which may be of a strange nature for the sake of events, even though they may not be found in the original works. ¹⁹

The text thus ends with a detailed account of ‘the mendicants, ascetics and men of God who gave up personal desires and greed as they viewed the world as non-permanent and have, through their spiritual efforts and experiences, become knowledgeable of the truths relating to this world’. ²⁰ This section serves up a warning to the ‘illustrious and glorious family of Gurgan’ that the power of monarchs was transitory. ²¹ The narrative thus stitched together the literary, political and spiritual genealogies of the land.

Significantly, the text begins the narrative of Kashmir’s past not with the advent of Islam on its landscape, but rather with the stories of its very inception as a habitable land. It is here that the multiple influences on the text, including the indigenous Sanskrit and Persian traditions as well as more universal Islamic histories, becomes quite apparent. The stories, as narrated in the text, begin with the classical tale of Kashmir’s origin from the lake Satisar, as related in the Rajatarangini. The lake Satisar, the tarikh relates, was named after Mahadev’s wife, Sati, who promenaded on the lake. In the lake lived a demon called Jaladev, who wrecked havoc on the surrounding lands by kidnapping and consuming people at his leisure. On witnessing this havoc while travelling through the region, sage Kashyap, Brahma’s son, called on Mahadev to destroy him. Mahadev deputed the task to Vishnu, who was unable to slay the demon for a thousand years, since Jaladev was invincible in his own element. Ultimately, Vishnu went to the vicinity of Baramulla, where he lifted the mountain that was blocking the water from escaping, thus allowing the lake to be drained, Jaladev to be slain and the land of Kashmir—‘the mountain of Kashyap’—to emerge. Kashyap then brought Brahmans from Hindustan to populate and settle the land. ²²

The story continues as Chadurah notes that the authors of the history of Islam had also written their accounts of the origin of Kashmir, which needed to be recorded. According to this tradition, on God’s orders, the prophet Sulaiman (Solomon) visited Kashmir on one of his journeys and one leg of his throne came to rest on top of the mountain now known as Koh-i Sulaiman (mountain of Solomon). At that time, except for the mountains, all low-lying land in the region was submerged under water. Since the prophet found the climate of the place pleasing, he called on the two jinns, Kashf and Mir, to remove the water from the low-lying regions and make the place habitable. Kashf and Mir set about their task and the land that emerged as a result of their efforts came to be called Kashf-Mir after the two jinns, a name that then changed through usage to Kashmir. On orders of the prophet, people from the surrounding regions migrated to Kashmir, taking to agriculture and settling the land. ²³ The land of Kashmir, thus, was not only a product of the activities of personalities such as Sage Kashyap and Prophet Solomon, but quite as much the Sanskrit and Persian narratives that recounted the efforts of these personalities in creating it. In the tarikh, then, the genealogies of the land and the genealogies of its multiple narrative traditions were clearly intertwined.

Having thus placed his tarikh within Kashmir’s literary genealogy and established the land’s origin, Chadurah moves on to locate the royal genealogies of his own family within the political narrative of Kashmir’s early past. In this, the text is much more concerned with the past as history rather than tradition, thus utilising the Rajatarangini narratives as historical sources. In this case too, however, the text is far more than a mere imitation and continuation of the Sanskrit texts. While much like the Sanskrit texts, the tarikh lauds Kashmiri rulers of yore as conquerors of realms far beyond the borders of Kashmir, it also places these events in the larger context of universal history. In discussing the reign of a Hindu king, Raja Achal, Chadurah celebrates his deep sense of justice as being on par with Emperor Alexander’s before him,

…if anyone attempted to take his life, he did not cause any injury to his life. It is stated in authentic histories that a rebel whose enmity against Alexander had become persistent was brought before Alexander….He wrote down in his report that he should be forgiven and his blood should not be shed. ²⁴

In yet another instance, in relating the story of Raja Pravarsena’s founding of Srinagar, clearly considered an important moment in Kashmir’s early past by the Sanskrit chroniclers, Chadurah draws a parallel with Abu Jafar al-Mansur’s (the second Abbasid Caliph) founding of Baghdad. He notes that just as Pravarsena had divine guidance (in a dream) in choosing the location of the new city, so too al-Mansur was given direction by a holy man in deciding to build the city of Baghdad. ²⁵ In addition, the text points out notable events from Islamic history that occurred during the reigns of Kashmir’s Hindu monarchs, such as the migration of the prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Medina during the reign of Raja Ziyadat, from which, as the text notes, the Islamic calendar began. ²⁶

Moreover, the author utilises the political narrative of Kashmir’s past, as noted earlier, to trace the emergence of his family, the Chands (Chadurahs), on its political landscape. He writes that he was the descendant of Raja Prithichand, the son of the Raja of Nagarkot (Jammu), who hailed from a Rajput race that:

…was related to Raja Badar, who according to the sages of Hindustan was an avatar….This Prithichand is the grandfather of the author of this book….Thus to this day, the kings of Jammu and Kashtwar write Chand as their title…When Emperor Nuruddin Jahangir Padshah alighted in Jammu for hunting, I explained the meaning of this word to him. Having come to know the truth about my ancestors, the Emperor out of his magnanimity, gave me as reward five lakhs of dam out of the (revenue) of the government. ²⁷

According to Chadurah, Raja Prithichand was adopted by the ruler of Kashmir, Raja Shankarvarman and raised as his own son. On the ruler’s death, he inherited the throne and ruled for a brief period of two years before his death in 432 AH (1040AD).

There is a detailed discussion of another ancestor of the author, Malchand (Raja Prithichand’s descendant), during the rule of Raja Sahamdev, when he performed certain services for the rulers of Kashmir, which, according to Chadurah, ‘have left an everlasting stamp on history’ and ‘have no parallels in history’. ²⁸ The text presents Malchand as a man of courage, statesmanship and justice. Malchand entered the enemy camp alone at night to collect information, where despite discovering the enemy commander unguarded, he did not kill him. More significantly, according to the text, he also acted as regent to the young prince after the ruler’s death and restored the throne to the prince after he came of age as its rightful occupant, despite his own exemplary rule. ²⁹ Chadurah draws parallels between these stories about his ancestor, which he states are mentioned in the Rajatarangini and similar stories and characters from Islamic history, thus linking himself and the land of which his story formed a part, to indigenous traditions as much as narratives from the wider world of Islam. The author’s ideas on ideal kingship were drawn not just from the Indo-Persian Mughal tradition represented by texts such as the Ain-i Akbari, but as much from the indigenous Sanskrit narrative traditions as well as Islamic histories that placed these kings in a larger context.

Tradition, for Chadurah, was clearly defined in terms of identifying origins and genealogies. As he noted in a couplet at the beginning of the text, ‘Pure origin is the basis of greatness and good fortune/Base origin is not deserving of scepter and crown’. ³⁰ The Rajatarangini narratives provided the text with its own origin and placed it within the established tradition of historical production by the court chroniclers of Kashmir. At the same time, however, as evident in its narration of Kashmir’s origin stories and its political past, the text interwove the information from the Sanskrit texts with tropes from Kashmir’s Sufi tazkiras and more universal Islamic histories to locate Kashmir within sacred geographies that went beyond the bounds of the Mughal historical imagination. Kashmir thus emerged within the text as not merely a sarkar within a subah of the Mughal Empire and a ‘holy ground’ for the Hindu sages, but also an Islamic sacred space, or Bagh-i Sulaiman (Garden of Solomon). The past as history, however, was equally important, as the Rajatarangini provided factual evidence to establish Chadurah’s own royal genealogy and thus his right to govern Kashmir as well as record its past.

Redefining Tradition: Waqiat-i Kashmir

For the author of the Waqiat-i Kashmir (1746), Khwaja Muhammad Azam Dyadmari, the tradition of historical composition in Kashmir began with the Rajatarangini narratives, but also included the Persian tarikhs. However, this tradition had clear shortcomings that needed to be rectified and the Waqiat was an attempt to redefine the very meaning and purpose of historical narration through an engagement with the Sanskrit and to an equal extent Persian historical narratives. In the dramatically altered socio-political scenario of mid-eighteenth century Kashmir, with the Mughal imperial entity in decline and the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority askew, the text sought to restore balance through an entwined narration of Kashmir’s spiritual and political pasts. Dyadmari’s own location outside of the court—he was the son of a shawl trader and attached to a number of Sufi shrines throughout his life during which time he composed several treatises on Islam and Sufi mysticism ³¹ —was critical, as we shall see, to his rethinking of the nature of the historical project.

At the very outset of the Waqiat, in its preface, the reader is struck by the author’s self-conscious recognition of the historian’s craft and his placement in a long tradition of historical composition in Kashmir, from which at the same time he clearly distinguishes himself. According to Dyadmari, the most significant limitation of Kashmir’s historical tradition was that it was carried out by historians attached to royal courts who had ignored the most critical, and hence legitimate, subjects of history—Sufi mystics and their role in shaping the land of Kashmir:

Since ancient times, the history of Kashmir from one era to another, entitled Rajatarang, was composed by Hindu historians, who received a pension from rulers in return. When these pensions were discontinued due to political unrest, historical composition ceased altogether until later Muslim historians wrote continuations of these histories. The authors of Sanskrit and Persian chronicles, such as Haider Malik Chadurah, recorded historical events selectively, writing in praise of kings and their ancestors. They ignored the lives of spiritual personages, such as Sufi mystics and friends of God. ³²

Indeed, the Waqiat stitches together the sacred and political pasts of Kashmir so closely that they appear indistinguishable. Dyadmari notes at the outset that not only was he recording events that had taken place since the composition of earlier histories, but he was also including a discussion of the deeds of Sufi mystics and religious divines of Kashmir, since his text was to serve as a memorial to their activities. ‘Just because earlier historians did not focus on these individuals and I am interested in doing so’, argues Dyadmari, ‘does not necessarily render this focus against the principles of history writing’. ³³

What was important to the task of historical composition, thus, was not the establishment of the royalty of the author’s lineage (as in Chadurah’s case), but rather the genealogies of the Sufi mystics who had shaped the land. The ultimate goal of history, in part, for Dyadmari, much as for the authors of the Sufi tazkiras of Kashmir, was seen as spiritually transformative—for the readers and listeners as much as the author himself—through the act of narrating and transmitting Sufi ethical values.

In his discussion of Kashmir’s political past, Dyadmari further distinguished himself from earlier Sanskrit narratives by claiming an authorial distance from exaggeration. Unlike earlier Persian narratives such as the Tarikh-i Haider Malik, the Waqiat’s discussion of Kashmir’s early past is very brief. Dyadmari notes at the outset of this discussion that since these kings ruled in the distant past, he was interested merely in recording the dates of each ruler’s reign rather than the embellished descriptions of their reigns found in Hindu histories. ³⁴ In fact, Dyadmari’s description of Sultan Sikandar’s rule not only hails the sultan’s policies to strengthen Islam in Kashmir, but specifically lists one of his main achievements as the destruction of the books of Hindus, which included texts on idol worship, astrology and histories that exaggerated the powers of the Hindu rajas. ³⁵ There is no doubt that Dyadmari was expressing his discomfort with the attribution of miraculous powers to Hindu kings by Sanskrit chroniclers, while at the same time asserting his right, as a historian no less, to attribute the very same powers to spiritual as opposed to temporal authorities.

Besides the spiritual personages, the central subject of the Waqiat is the mulk (country) of Kashmir itself. In this regard, the text is replete with descriptions of the land drawn from the Sanskrit narratives, especially Kalhana’s Rajatarangini. Instead of writing in praise of the author’s patron, or the contemporary ruler, which usually followed the hamd in praise of God and the prophet in most Persian tarikhs, the Waqiat launches into a lengthy encomium to Kashmir’s peerless nature amongst all the countries of the world. It describes Kashmir’s sweet springs, its lush meadows, blooming gardens, pure climate and naturally delineated boundaries. ³⁶ Echoing Kalhana, Dyadmari states that Kashmir was an especially blessed land: ‘Mountains and forests surround this mulk like the walls of a fort and until the people of the land themselves invite in invaders and join them, no one dare conquer it’. ³⁷ The section ends with a note that Kashmir was so beautiful that people from outside the region came to enjoy its pleasures and poets had penned more verses in its praise than in praise of any other land. ³⁸ The history of Kashmir, the mulk, moreover, had to begin with its origin. The first chapter of the text thus begins with the familiar description of the emergence of Kashmir from Satisar, as recorded, according to Dyadmari, by Hindu historians (tarikh-navis). Here the story follows the Rajatarangini quite closely, except when the author states that the land emerged and was settled by Brahman families after Noah’s flood. ³⁹

Dyadmari clearly saw his text as part of the long tradition of historical composition in Kashmir, which included both Sanskrit and Persian narratives. In doing so, however, he sought to revise that tradition and rethink the goal of historical composition itself. For him, history writing was not a personal endeavour designed to reveal the origins of the author’s genealogy and thus establish his legitimacy and that of his text, but rather an attempt to delineate the contours of the mulk and the divine individuals who had shaped it, for a wider audience. In a sense, the historical narrative and the mulk were indistinguishable. In some ways, then, the Waqiat is a much more local narrative than the Tarikh-i Haider Malik Chadurah. It narrates not just the political and spiritual history of Kashmir, but also the events that shaped its physical and social landscape, such as earthquakes, fires, famines, epidemics, riots and so on. In the process of rethinking the indigenous historical tradition, thus, Dyadmari cemented the idea of Kashmir as a distinct entity forged by this very tradition and the significance of the individual tarikh-navis in defining both.

Balancing Past and Present: Tarikh-i Hassan

The historical method was very much on the mind of the author of the Tarikh-i Hassan, Pir Ghulam Hassan Shah Khuihami, when he composed his tarikh in the 1880s. Not only was this the period of Indological research into Kashmir’s Sanskrit manuscripts, but it was also the moment when the Rajatarangini narratives were submitted to an intense scrutiny with reference to their historical value and qualities based on the post-Enlightenment definition of history. Hassan himself was a pir hakim (religious preceptor and healer) closely linked to several Sufi orders, who also served as a guide to Walter Lawrence, the Settlement Commissioner of Kashmir. ⁴⁰ To an extent, therefore, Hassan’s engagement with the Rajatarangini narratives was influenced by certain ideas drawn from the European historical method. Nonetheless, he recognised the Rajatarangini genre as the font of the indigenous tradition of historical composition and firmly placed himself within this continuous tradition. Thus, for Hassan, the Rajatarangini continued to represent both a tradition of writing about the past as much as serving as a source for constructing the narrative of that past.

The longest and most comprehensive text discussed thus far, the Tarikh-i Hassan is divided into four volumes, like most nineteenth-century tarikhs from Kashmir: volume one is devoted to Kashmir’s geography, volume two is the narrative of its political past, volume three is a collective hagiography of its Sufi saints and elders, and volume four is a brief discussion of the Persian poets of Kashmir. Hassan displays a preoccupation, from the outset, with legitimising his text as ‘historical’ according to the prevailing definition of true, authentic history as based on reliable sources. He states that he, (Hassan, son of Shaiwa), ‘desired to undertake the task of writing Kashmir’s history but did not do so because he did not want to be criticised by those who disparaged without any purpose. However, since the elders of the community and his respected friends put pressure on him, he began the task’. ⁴¹ Before he began composing the text, he notes, he researched earlier histories of the ancients to ensure that the resultant text was reliable. Rather than lamenting the paucity of sources available for a reconstruction of Kashmir’s past, Hassan writes that he had to sift through multiple texts to choose the 30 books that ‘illuminated the conditions of Kashmir’, which he utilised to compose his text. ⁴² He then proceeds to list these sources, including the Tarikh-i Haider Malik Chadurah and Waqiat-i Kashmir as well as Baharistan-i Shahi (anonymous, c. 1614); Muntakhab al-Tawarikh (Narayan Koul Ajiz, 1710); Bagh-i Sulaiman (Saadullah Shahabadi, 1778); Kashmir Handbook (John Ince, 1867); and The Northern Barrier of India (Fredric Drew, 1877), among others, and discusses briefly the negative and positive qualities of each. ⁴³

The list of indigenous histories reappears later in the same (geography) volume of the text and is presented as one of the many attributes of the land of Kashmir, much like its meadows, mountains, rivers and lakes. The Rajatarangini, which is described as Kashmir’s ‘foundational history’, occupies a pride of place in these lists, which also mention other ‘well-known’ Sanskrit histories by Kshemendra, Jonaraja and Srivara. ⁴⁴ For Hassan, however, the most significant text was Kalhana’s Rajatarangini, which no longer merely represented an amorphous historical tradition, but rather a specific text written by one author at a particular historical moment (during Raja Jaisingh’s rule) that could be used as a repository of historical facts—a source. ⁴⁵ As a result, his primary concern was to locate the original text and fill the lacunae within its historical narrative. He takes care to note that he had acquired an authentic manuscript of the text against which he had compared the Persian translation in his possession. Echoing orientalists such as Georg Buhler, he states that this was necessary due to scribal errors in copying manuscripts and the alterations to the original text made by scribes and translators through the ages. ⁴⁶

Rather than questioning the motivations of the authors of Sanskrit and Persian narratives for composing the text and through it, rethink the purpose of historical narration, as in Dyadmari’s case, Hassan presents himself as correcting the factual historical record presented in the Rajatarangini. He claims that he had filled the lacunae in Kalhana’s text by introducing, for the first time in a history of Kashmir, a discussion of the reigns of 35 kings that Kalhana had been unable to unearth due to the destruction of relevant records. Hassan had drawn this list from a manuscript of the Persian translation of the Ratnakar Purana entitled Waqia-i Kashmir that he had acquired in the Punjab, a text not available to earlier historians of Kashmir. Further displaying his concern with precise dating, he notes that his history was unique in relating a variety of dating methods to each other and providing dates in Hijri (Islamic calendar), Iesvi (Gregorian calendar) and Bikrami (Hindu calendar used by the Dogra rulers). The resultant text, according to him, was ‘devoid of prejudice, hubris, and safeguarded everyone’s respectability’. ⁴⁷

Hassan undoubtedly presented his tarikh as an objective history that met the standards of the rationalist, positivist historical method. At the same time, however, he defended the picturesque and marvellous style of recounting the past that, for him, rendered Kashmir’s historical tradition unique:

While it is a crime to include these impossible exaggerations about past kings from the perspective of critics, I did not think it appropriate to ignore them and have included some for the edification of those of my friends who have a taste for the wondrous and awe-inspiring. I am pointing this out at the outset for readers to be aware that the earlier periods of Kashmir’s history are filled with such hyperbolic stories regarding rulers. ⁴⁸

It is clear that for Hassan, the storytelling idiom did not necessarily preclude an objective narration of the past. Thus, the numerous stories regarding the rulers of Kashmir, told in the Rajatarangini and later Persian histories, coalesce in the Tarikh-i Hassan’s political narrative. At times Hassan notes the stories (kisse) he is about to relate sound unbelievable and incredible, but includes them in the text anyway to give his readers/listeners a sense of the character of the ruler that would not have been apparent from merely detailing his policies. The narrative is also peppered with anecdotes and jokes that perform similar functions and which are included in the text for purposes of edification and entertainment.

From the earlier discussion it is clear that the Tarikh-i Hassan was composed for a local Kashmiri readership. Indeed, Hassan placed the completed manuscript as a waqf (trust) at the shrine of Sayyid Ali Hamadani in Srinagar a few years before his death. ⁴⁹ However, it is also clear that he wanted the text to be more widely recognised and read as a history by colonial officials, professional historians and Indologists. Thus the text combined a factual idiom with the literary features of a distinct Kashmiri historicity. This is particularly apparent in the text’s geography volume, which echoes Kalhana’s and Dyadmari’s poetic descriptions of the land, while at the same time using the language of geography to locate Kashmir within a global context. ‘Kashmir’, wrote Hassan, ‘is jannat-i nazir’ (paradise on earth), with cool breezes that restore life to the dead, stunning vistas and pure streams and a sacredness that had attracted the sages of Hinduism and the seers of Islam. ⁵⁰ At the same time, it was a specific mulk located in Asia, with China to its east, Central Asia to its North and Hindustani Asia to its west and south. In addition, the text notes Kashmir’s precise latitude, longitude, length and width. ⁵¹

Reverting then to the origins and settlement of the land as described in Kashmir’s Sanskrit texts, the narrative notes in detail the stories about its emergence from the lake Satisar through the intervention of Sage Kashyap:

According to the Nilamata Purana, Kashmir was a lake named Satisar in which lived a dev named Jaladev, who was a cannibal. He was a devotee of Brahma, from whom he had received a boon that he would be undefeated in the water. Once, Brahma’s grandson, Kashyap Rishi, was wandering by the lake and was surprised to find no humans near such a beautiful place. Then he learned of Jaladev’s atrocities, and determined to vanquish the demon, prayed to Brahma for one thousand years. Finally, Brahma agreed to help him and along with the other gods, attempted to kill Jaladev. Since Jaladev hid in the water from the gods’ attacks, Sri Kishanji use the Sudarshan chakra to create a breach in the mountain from which the water flowed out, and a bird took a piece of the mountain in its beak and dropped it on Jaladev. Once the water receded, land appeared, and streams and gardens were created. The gods selected portions of this beautiful land for their own habitation and these places still remain pilgrimage spots. Then Kashyap Rishi inhabited this beautiful land with Brahmans from all over the world and called it KashyapMar, or the home of Kashyap. ⁵²

It goes further to record the story of Kashmir’s settlement throughout the year through the efforts of Brahman Chandradev, who was left behind one year when the rest of the population departed for the plains during the winter. As a plaything of the jinns and devs (divine beings) who inhabited the region during the winter season, he was thrown into a lake within which dwelt the king of the Nagas (original inhabitants of Kashmir), Neelnag. The Brahman received a copy of the Nilamata Purnana from Neelnag, who advised him to follow its rituals so as to be able to gain control over the divine beings that would allow him and his fellow Brahmans to make Kashmir their home during all the months of the year. ⁵³ It ends with the note that one only had to look around Kashmir to recognise the signs that proved that the land must indeed have been submerged under water. ⁵⁴

Besides the origins of the land, the Tarikh-i Hassan was also interested in locating the antecedents of its literary tradition. In its volume on Persian poets, the text placed the origins of Kashmir’s literary past in the Sanskrit language during the Aryan period, when Kashmir was a renowned centre of Sanskrit literary production. According to Hassan, ‘the unique literary sensibilities nurtured by the Sanskrit litterateurs left a deep imprint on the Persian language and allowed it to flourish in Kashmir. It was because of this that Kashmiri Persian poets produced verses of high caliber that could rival poetry from Persia itself, not just in terms of style, but also content’. ⁵⁵ Here the entity—Kashmir—that had thus far been imagined through its narrative tradition, was now imagining its own literary past, the distinctness of which was rooted in the continuous thread between the Sanskrit and Persian literary traditions.

The Tarikh-i Hassan was a literal amalgamation of Kashmir’s historical tradition. While it presented itself as occupying a space that was far more objective and factually accurate than earlier histories, it is a patchwork of earlier texts, from which Hassan lifted many sections verbatim. ⁵⁶ This should not be dismissed as ‘unimaginative borrowing’, but rather, as argued by Stephen Berkwitz with reference to Sri Lankan vamsas, ‘a deeper layering of material in the text, wherein the narrative at hand is shown to resonate with the accounts of other authoritative texts’. ⁵⁷ Sanskrit and Persian texts belonging to the indigenous historical tradition and local Kashmiri oral and textual narratives as well as Indo-Persian texts, Urdu narratives and even English textbooks, were seamlessly knit together within the Tarikh-i Hassan, as it sought to inform its readers not just about Kashmir’s past, but quite as much the past and present of its literary tradition.

Conclusion

The preceding discussion illuminates the multiple and layered engagements between Kashmir’s Persian historical tradition and the Rajatarangini narratives. Far from being digested summaries or mere imitations of earlier Sanskrit narratives, Kashmirʼs tarikhs adopted fresh authorial voices to self-consciously endow historical production with new meanings in the context of Kashmir. And they did so primarily through a conversation with their Sanskrit predecessors. All the texts examined here illustrate that the Sanskrit chronicles were regarded as a genre of historical narration as well as sources for constructing the narrative of Kashmir’s past, as each tarikh located itself within a longer continuum of historical composition. This does not mean, however, that tradition itself was to remain unchanged. Indeed, what makes the dialogue between the Persian tarikhs and their literary predecessors so compelling is precisely that it reveals the changing meanings attributed to tradition and history through the centuries of historical composition in Kashmir. To an extent, these transformations can be understood in terms of the different historical moments during which the texts were composed, contexts that shaped the texts even as the texts sought to remold the contexts for particular purposes.

The Tarikh-i Haider Malik Chadurah’s engagement with the Rajatarangini was very much in the tradition of Mughal court chronicles such as the Ain-i Akbari. The Ain clearly played a significant role in legitimising Kashmir’s Sanskrit narratives as well as lending territorial coherence to the idea of Kashmir. As such, the Tarikh-i Haider Malik drew its line of descent from the Rajatarangini and thus proceeded to establish the author’s family’s as well as its own royal genealogy. At the same time, however, by placing the historical narrative discussed in the Rajatarangini, including the land’s origins, within the universal context of Islamic histories, the text claimed its right to create an autonomous space for historical production within which Kashmir could be imagined as an entity that was more than a mere unit of the Mughal Empire.

The Waqiat-i Kashmir asserted its individuality by distancing itself from the tradition of court chronicling and attempting to redefine the goal of historical composition in Kashmir. No longer to be written merely as a testament to its political rulers, such as in the Rajatarangini narratives, history could become a broader enterprise that comprised a record of the land’s spiritual stalwarts and their contributions towards defining its landscape. In some ways, de-linking history from the court and tying it to Sufi shrines by entwining Kashmir’s spiritual and political pasts was a means to affirm the status of Kashmir itself as an autonomous entity in narrative and symbolic, if not actual, terms. This move becomes especially meaningful given the context of mid-eighteenth century Kashmir, when the Mughal authority had all but declined and Kashmir was on the cusp of being incorporated into the Afghan Empire.

The Tarikh-i Hassan was heir to a well-established, multilingual historical tradition which embodied significant continuities while at the same time registering considerable shifts with reference to the nature and purpose of the historical enterprise over the centuries. It was also located in the context of the settled fact of Kashmir as a princely state ruled by the Dogras, the orientalist preoccupation with Kashmir’s Sanskrit manuscripts, and the introduction of the European historical method to Kashmir. Despite these dramatic transformations, the text comfortably balanced the modern strictures of historical narration with the tropes—such as the origins of the land and its literary tradition—so entrenched within Kashmir’s narrative corpus. For the text, tradition may no longer have been marked by an amorphous temporality, but it was nonetheless located within a distinctly Kashmiri historical mode that was simultaneously picturesque/literary and factual/historical. In this case, the narrative tradition, of which the Tarikh-i Hassan was the literal embodiment, was meant to stand in for the region itself.