Kalhaṇa
A figure from the books
#Kalhana
Kalhaṇa · fl. 1148–1150 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
History — and poetry, in that order for the first time in India: author of the Rājataraṅgiṇī, the "River of Kings," the one sustained work of source-critical history that pre-thirteenth-century India produced.
“When someone says ancient India wrote no history, the honest answer is one name long — Kalhaṇa — and the honest footnote is that he was very nearly alone, which is exactly why this chapter has to explain both the man and the loneliness.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“The past should be told the way a judge delivers a verdict — checked against documents, and free of love and hatred. Kalhaṇa stated that standard in his opening verses, listed the archive he had assembled, admitted what he could not recover, and then wrote three thousand years of his valley's kings to show it could be done.”
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