Women in Rajatarangini (An Old and Rare Book)

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The purpose of the present work is to reconstruct the position and status of women as depicted in the Rajatarangini of Kalhana, or the history of Kashmir. The work is said to have been written by Kalhana, the son of a high official of state Champaka,¹ and the nephew of another distinguished official Kanaka, in the year 4224 of the Laukika era or A.D. 1148, and completed in the following year. The scope of the work is limited to the Rajatarangini of Kalhana alone and leaves out of account the rest of the later compositions of that name by Jonaraja and others. An English translation of the Rajatarangini, flawless and splendid, has been made available to us by the illustrious savant Sir Aurel Stein, the great discoverer of the Indian settlements in. Central Asia and along the silk-route. His translation is so perfect that it can well replace the original, to the extent an original can be replaced, and can well serve the purpose of research by those who may not know Sanskrit. The pains the great scholar has taken in the collation of manuscripts of the text of the Rajatarangini leaves little to be desired in way of improvements and I propose to use the edition of Sir Aurel for my dissertation. The critical edition of the text was published in 1892 and the translation eight years after and embodied in its notes the results of the researches carried out by scholars like Cole- brook, Wilson, Troyer, Cunningham, Biihler, Hultzsch and others. Sir Aurel's text and translation brought those researches to completion. The present work has drawn on the raw material provided by his commendable text and translation.

Kalhana's composition in the beginning is rather haulting for want of real historical material. There he becomes a victim of the epical or puranic tale telling. The material with the help of which he ventures to depict the distant times is shrouded in oblivion for monumental or archaeological finds are wanting. The latter, however, he declares to have freely and extensively used in course of the composition as it proceeds. He says that he has made use of literary and epigraphical records. How much of this material was available to him can hardly be ascertained but that it was considerable can easily be guessed from the use of its wealth. As the story of his composition grows and he reaches the middle and end of his narrative this material becomes prolific and floods the pages of the 'Stream of the Kings'. The extent to which he opens up the vista of the society, a little blurred in the beginning but bright towards the close, becomes not only a treat to the common reader but proves a mine of information for the historian. The woman in all her aspects, as a maiden, a married wife, a widow, a dowager queen, a mother, has been made to figure and play her role in the historical setting. Prostitutes and courtesans, lovers and paramours, kepts and concubines, procurers and gobetweens recur in the narrative again and again and make the social life of Kashmir colourful, indeed at times ghastly and horrid. The life lived in the context of the Rajatarangini is indeed one of unmitigated, continuous anti-social living and one wonders bow the society actually held. The moral compunction in the sexes is greatly wanting and although there is no reference to polyandry there is ample evidence on record to show that promiscuity and incest, besides adultery, were commonly indulged in.