It is a common notion that historically Kashmir Valley has been isolated. Shonaleeka Kaul, a historian and associate professor at JNU who works with Sanskrit text, talked to Aarti Tikoo Singh on how Rajatarangini, the Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmiri kings, proves otherwise:

You specialize in early India history with a focus on classical Sanskrit literature. Not many among youth of India seem to be inclined towards Sanskrit. In fact, there is a certain aversion to Sanskrit studies, from several sections of society. Why?

Sanskrit has come to be rather misunderstood as merely a language of ritual and scriptures, which is why it is regarded by some either as redundant to the modern, secular world we inhabit or as an instrument of social domination. This is a woefully inadequate understanding of the vast and variegated repertoire of Sanskrit. Name any knowledge system in the world and you will find a Sanskrit text, if not an entire genre, devoted to it. From metaphysics to erotics, from logic to poetics, from statecraft to medicine including veterinary science, from maths and astronomy to painting and architecture, law, ethics, food, the list is endless. Not many know this or have opportunities in modern Indian academies to explore the extraordinary intellectual history that Sanskrit entails.

Why is it important to study Sanskrit literature and ancient Indian history? Do you think Sanskrit should be taught at school level? Isn’t there a danger of Saffronization/Sanskritization of Indian society, which is fundamentally very diverse and heterogeneous?

Sanskrit literature and ancient Indian history are very educative – and a great deal of fun — if taught and studied in the right way. Unfortunately, all sorts of misconceptions abound about both disciplines, associating an obscurantism and archaism with them, which cannot be farther from the truth.

It is important to understand that there is nothing inherently religious or hegemonizing in Sanskrit language and literature. It would be highly simplistic and reductive to equate Sanskrit with Saffronization, whatever that may mean — as objectionable and baseless as equating Arabic or Urdu with Islamization. Languages are not mere instruments of power and politics. In fact, to give examples from my area of specialization, kavya, Sanskrit plays and poetry often expose and stridently critique different forms of power in early India — monarchical, socio-ritual, gender, class. You have only to read a Kalidasa or a Sudraka to hear the Sanskrit litterateur speak truth to power, or a Bilhana and a Kalhana to glimpse the contempt in which they held almighty kings. Considering that poets everywhere in the ancient and medieval world depended on the court for patronage, this was a very brave and risky thing to do, and yet they did it! Similarly, you have texts like the Caturbhani, a set of hilarious, highly satirical monologue plays from the fifth century CE, or Ksemendra’s Desopadesa from the 11th century CE, which lampoon and castigate pompous or conservative brahmanas highly conscious of their status and purity! This is noteworthy given that most Sanskrit poets are believed to have been brahmanas themselves. Clearly, Sanskrit writers were not passive “house birds of patricians” simply mouthing what the political and social elites of the day wanted to hear and complicity reproducing ideologies of hierarchy and domination. But modern intellectuals rather superciliously arrogate to themselves the qualities of radicalism and resistance, whereas I would argue that our ancient counterparts deserve a little more credit!

You have also worked on Kashmir, which some claim does not belong to India, geographically or culturally or historically. Does early history substantiate this claim?

The history of Kashmir suffers from both neglect and misrepresentation. There are more clichés and assumptions about it, in the popular realm and academia alike, than historical truths. It has, for example, been maintained that because of her surrounding high mountain topography, the Valley of Kashmir was historically isolated from the rest of India and therefore developed a cultural insularity and uniqueness. It has also been assumed retrojectively that Kashmiri culture, including the tradition of history- writing, was influenced by West Asia and Central Asia. However, all the cultural markers diagnostic of identity and mobility in early Kashmir from at least the 5th century BCE onwards for another two millennia — material culture, textual representations, foreign accounts, inscriptions, coins, language, art, religion, philosophy — attest overwhelmingly to Kashmir’s Indic and Sanskritic identity and character. They also attest to her deep and extensive connections and mutual involvement not just with neighbouring areas like Punjab and Himachal but with centers of Indic civilization in the deep interiors of India like Patna, Nalanda, Gaya, Banaras, Allahabad, Mathura, Malwa, Gauda (Bengal), till Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the far south. Here was cultural transmission and communication of astonishing reach! Kashmiris looked to these places for politics, trade, education, asylum, employment, art, religion, philosophy, fashion (!), and pilgrimage, while people from different parts of India travelled to and settled in Kashmir for the same reasons. So massive and crucial was Kashmir’s participation and presence in Indic affairs that by the second half of the first millennium CE, she had come to spearhead virtually all intellectual and cultural movements in the Indian subcontinent with trademark erudition and brilliance. This is why in my recent book I have argued for moving away from the paradigm of ‘unique history’ or ‘centre and periphery’ to that of ‘connected histories’ if the birth of Kashmir and all the factors that shaped her emergence as a culture region are to be correctly understood.

Why is Rajatarangini central to Kashmir history? Is Rajatarangini a credible source to understand Kashmir’s ancient history? Does it suffer from, what some allege, a bias in favour of the rulers of the time?

Kalhana’s Rajatarangini (12th century CE), composed in Sanskrit, is the earliest surviving articulation of and engagement with Kashmiri regional identity and selfhood. It elaborates a poetics of place that transforms Kashmir from just another piece of land to a homeland. It maps her geography, her people, her traditions, her folklore, and her history over two millennia.

It is however not just a tale of Kashmir but a tale for Kashmir as well, since it views and evaluates Kashmiri history and Kashmiri kings through a deeply ethical lens. It is a critical commentary par excellence too, therefore. Righteous conduct was central to Kalhana’s worldview: Prajanupalanam (welfare of the subjects) and sat (pure-mindedness) were the supreme duties/virtues of kings while prajapidanam (oppressing the people) and lobha (greed) their greatest vices. Kalhana classified and critiqued Kashmiri kings and their policies, as well as other social and political actors that people his narrative, according to this ethical principle.

As for the Rajatarangini’s credibility, the fact that it gave rise to at least three sequels by other Kashmiris over the next four, tumultuous centuries of Kashmiri history, and was still regarded as the foremost representation of the region by Abul Fazl when the Mughals descended on the Valley in the late 16th century, decidedly attests to the power, prestige and deemed authenticity of Kalhaṇa’s discourse in his own land.

In ancient India history school textbooks, why is there very little mention of Kashmir even as Kashmir is the only region in the Indian subcontinent with a recorded ancient history?

This is a baffling oversight and the reason why people in this country know so little about Kashmir’s true history, her origins and her culture. This ignorance is responsible for the sprouting of all kinds of misconceptions and fabrications about Kashmiri identity, both within and outside the Valley, and patently unhistorical political and academic discourses about it.

That said, school textbooks have limitations of space and Kashmir is not the only region to receive less coverage than ideal. A contributing factor is also the lack of any recent, dedicated and comprehensive history of early Kashmir that would synthesize the entire gamut of historical evidence and present a genuine and complex narrative that school textbooks could draw on. My recent book ‘The Making of Early Kashmir’ tries to redress this lack to some extent.

Kashmir is a place, which is always in news but mostly for wrong reasons. Its present is violent and its future is uncertain. What was Kashmir’s ancient past like? How was it similar or different?

The Rajatarangini represents Kashmir as a very pious land but also, at times, as a troubled land. For Kalhana, this was no contradiction or ambivalence, but a tragic vitiation or travesty of Kashmir’s original nature, which was pristine and spiritual, by its politics and civil wars. In a show of striking prescience, Kalhana stoically describes his country as upaplavapriya desha, a country which delighted in insurrection, and svabhedavidhuram mandalam, a realm unhappy through its own factions. Now, these pithy phrases have an uncanny resonance for present-day Kashmir, calling to mind perhaps the epigram that ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. Of course the demographic composition and what people now resident in the Valley are fighting over have drastically altered from Kalhana’s times.

One of the major factors at the heart of the Kashmir conflict is the identity of its people and demographics. In ancient history of Kashmir, how was the identity of its people defined? How has that identity evolved and transformed over time and become so contentious now?

Research shows that ancient Kashmiri society and culture were open, pluralistic and dynamic. Whereas the identity invoked by separatist groups in the Valley today has a closed and exclusionist character and agenda. That is a big departure, which suggests that the latter ‘identity’ is a construct with little grounding in the long history of Kashmir and its people.

Is there anything in ancient history that can show Kashmir the way out of the turmoil it is in?

Well, Kalhana’s prescription would perhaps have been a return to spirituality and righteous conduct! Indeed, early Kashmir’s many extraordinary accomplishments in every field of intellect and culture do display a correlation with a cosmopolitan, vibrant, spiritual and broad-minded society, which, overall, prioritized the cultivation of the highest pursuits known to man. There may be a lesson in that for all.

A shorter version of this interview appeared in the print edition of The Times of India on February 14, 2018.