Rajatarangini’s Haunted and Supernatural Kashmir Traditions

Record summary

Kalhana’s Rajatarangini combines dynastic history, legend, moral exempla, temple traditions, dreams, curses, and supernatural interventions. Several episodes involving uncanny signs, spirits, or extraordinary deaths can be examined as evidence of how a medieval South Asian historian integrated inherited marvel material into a chronicle. The work is more historically oriented than a pure tale collection but is not uniformly documentary by modern standards. Manuscript transmission, chronology of early kings, and the boundary between source tradition and authorial shaping are important uncertainties.