Karkota dynasty

From roughly 625 to 855 CE, the Kashmir valley was ruled by the Karkota kings, a line whose most famous member, Lalitaditya Muktapida, was later remembered as a world conqueror. Under them Kashmir grew richer, reached outward into the plains of north-western India, and became a leading centre of Sanskrit learning, sculpture and temple building. Much of what is known of the dynasty comes from the Rajatarangini, a verse chronicle written by Kalhana in the twelfth century, checked where possible against coins, inscriptions and Chinese records.

The Karkotas came to power after a period of Huna rule in Kashmir, but how exactly is disputed. In Kalhana's account the founder, Durlabhavardhana, was a man of humble birth in the service of King Baladitya, who married him to his only daughter; after Baladitya died, Durlabhavardhana took the throne and claimed descent from the serpent king Karkotaka. The historian Atreyi Biswas rejected this story and argued that the real founder was his son Durlabhaka, who overthrew the last Alchon Hun ruler of Kashmir. Other scholars have questioned her chronology, and the matter remains open.

Kalhana dates Durlabhavardhana's reign from 625 to 661 or 662, and gives his son Durlabhaka a reign of about fifty years. Trade with neighbouring states grew, and a classical Karkota style of sculpture took shape. Durlabhaka's son Candrapida, who ruled from about 712 to 720, sent an embassy to the Tang emperor Xuanzong in 713 asking for help against Arab attacks. No help came, but Kashmir held out, and in 720 the Tang court granted him the title King of Kashmir. The alliance mattered in the struggle against the Tibetan Empire: in 722 Chinese records credit Kashmir with feeding Tang troops stationed in Gilgit.

Lalitaditya Muktapida reigned from about 724 to 760. Kalhana credits him with vast conquests across India, Afghanistan and Central Asia, including victory over Yashovarman of Kannauj. Historians disagree sharply about this: Stein dismissed much of it as legend, while Hermann Goetz accepted it as fact, and later work comparing Chinese and Tibetan evidence has tended to side with Stein. What is clearer is his building: he founded a new capital at Parihasapura and raised the great Martand Sun Temple in today's Anantnag district, now in ruins.

The Karkota kings built many shrines to Vishnu and supported Brahmins with grants of villages, while also allowing Buddhism to flourish; stupas and monasteries stand among the ruins of their capital. A didactic work of the period, the Kuttanimata, pictures a wealthy, unequal society dominated by merchants. Kings collected customs dues, market taxes and other levies, and both coins and cowrie shells were used as money.

Under Jayapida, a grandson of Lalitaditya who ruled for about thirty-one years, the court became a cradle of Sanskrit literary theory. The critics Udbhata and Vamana served him, and the period is seen as the start of a distinctive Kashmiri school of poetics. The poet Ratnakara later wrote the Haravijaya, the longest surviving court epic in Sanskrit, under the patronage of King Cippatajayapida.

From the later eighth century, reigns grew short and violent. Cippatajayapida, crowned as a boy around 837, was dominated by his mother's five brothers, who after his murder around 840 set up puppet kings from the Karkota line while fighting among themselves. Around 855 Avantivarman, grandson of one of those brothers, removed the last Karkota ruler and founded the Utpala dynasty.

Our 700 map shows the Karkota realm as the Kingdom of Kashmir. Its neighbours there are the Tibetan Empire, labelled the Tufan Empire, the Kingdom of Kapisa and a group of Hindu kingdoms, in lands now divided between India and Pakistan.