Kulūta

The evidence

A short series of copper coins carries a bilingual legend in Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī naming the Kulūta king Vīrayaśas, and is dated on stylistic grounds to the first or second century CE. The use of both scripts is characteristic of the western Himalayan polities of the period, which lay between the Kharoṣṭhī-using northwest and the Brahmi-using plains.

The Kulūtas are named in the Mahābhārata and in Sanskrit geographical literature, and Xuanzang describes the country in the seventh century as a mountain kingdom with monasteries and a mild king. The valley's later history belongs to the Pāl dynasty of Kullu, which is documented from the medieval period and is not demonstrably connected to Vīrayaśas.

The continuity that can be claimed with confidence is of the name and the place, not of the state.