Studia Indolgica Universitatis Halensis

From the Pen of Jonaraja, Court Pandit to Sultan Zayn al-‛Abidin

Commissioned by Sultan Zayn al-Abidin to carry on Kalhana’s Rajatarangini Pandit Jonaraja was the first to compose another Rajatarangini in continuation. Jonaraja’s work covers the period of Hindu rule in Kasmir from AD 1148 until its decline in AD 1339 (Kota Devi) and the transition to Islamic sovereignty exercised by the Sah Mir dynasty. His account, couched in poetical language, breaks off in AD 1459, the year of his death. The latter half of Jonaraja’s chronicle focuses on the three Sul?ans of Kasmir, Sikandar Sah and his sons Ali Sah and Zayn al-Abidin, whose lives he had recorded for the most part as an eyewitness. The causes and circumstances accompanying the Islamization of the valley from AD 1339 onward are accordingly depicted in a comparatively detailed manner. The present critical edition of Jonaraja was prepared mainly from Sarada manuscripts, which have only recently emerged, and from the pool of variant readings reported by Srikanth Kaul (1967). It comprises all additional and substitutional stanzas of Pseudo-Jonaraja and is accompanied by an annotated translation that also includes a rendering of Pseudo-Jonaraja’s text, translated here for the first time.The book comes with a Rajatarangini research bibliography, comprehensive indexes of contemporary personal names and toponyms along with their geographic coordinates. An image of Sultan Zayn’s founding stone of his artificial island (Lanka) in the Volur Lake and four maps with historical sites of central importance to events and personalities as portrayed by Jonaraja conclude the volume.