Karkoṭa dynasty

Kashmir as a power

The Karkoṭa dynasty was founded by Durlabhavardhana in the early seventh century and made Kashmir, for the first and only time, a state that projected force well beyond the valley. Its history is known in unusual detail because Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī, written in the twelfth century, is the one sustained dynastic chronicle produced in premodern India — a work of history in a recognisable sense, with sources cited and judgements offered.

Kalhaṇa is not a neutral witness and his early books are legendary, but from the Karkoṭas onward the chronicle becomes a genuine narrative source.

Lalitāditya

Lalitāditya Muktāpīḍa, ruling in the eighth century, is described by Kalhaṇa as having campaigned across northern India and into Central Asia, defeating Yaśovarman of Kannauj and reaching, in the chronicle's account, far beyond any plausible frontier. The digvijaya, the conquest of the directions, is a literary convention and the geography should be discounted; the defeat of Kannauj and a real ascendancy in the north are corroborated in outline.

He also sent embassies to the Tang court seeking alliance against the Tibetans and the Arabs, which is recorded in Chinese sources and shows Kashmir operating within a wider Asian diplomacy.

His building is his most tangible legacy: the sun temple at Mārtaṇḍ, on a plateau above the Kashmir valley, built of grey limestone in a colonnaded court, is the greatest surviving monument of Kashmiri architecture even as a ruin. His city of Parihāsapura, with its enormous Buddhist and Brahmanical foundations, is now foundations only.

End

The dynasty declined after Lalitāditya into a period of court intrigue and factional rule that Kalhaṇa describes at length, and was replaced in 855 by the Utpalas.