Who composed Zainavilas, a history of the rulers of Kashmir, in the time of Zainul Abidin?

Correct — A, Bhattavatara. The Zainavilas is credited to Bhattavatara — Bhatta Avatara — one of the scholars kept at the court of Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, who ruled Kashmir from 1420 to 1470 and whom Kashmiris still call Budshah, the great king. It was a verse history of the rulers of Kashmir on the model of Firdausi's Shahnama, and it survives only as a report: the manuscript is lost, so we know the work through later notices rather than by reading it. What makes the item hard is that all four names sound plausible, because this one reign produced an unusual concentration of historical writing. Jonaraja is the closest call. He did write a history of the rulers of Kashmir in Zain-ul-Abidin's time — but it is a continuation of Kalhana, known as the second Rajatarangini, and it carries its own title, not this one. He died in 1459 with the account unfinished, in the sultan's thirty-fifth regnal year. His pupil Shrivara then took it up as the Jaina-Rajatarangini, the third Rajatarangini, covering 1459 to 1486, and separately turned Jami's Persian romance of Yusuf and Zulaikha into Sanskrit as the Kathakautuka. The court also produced a Zaina-charita and a Zaina-prakasha by other hands, which is precisely why the exact title in the stem has to be matched to the exact author.

• (b)Jonaraja — The strongest wrong answer. Jonaraja did write a history of Kashmir's rulers in this very reign, but it is the second Rajatarangini, the continuation of Kalhana that breaks off at his death in 1459 — a different work with a different title.
• (c)Shrivara — Jonaraja's pupil, who carried the chronicle forward as the Jaina-Rajatarangini for the years 1459 to 1486 and also produced the Kathakautuka. His Kashmir chronicle is the third Rajatarangini, not the Zainavilas.
• (d)Vachaspati — No chronicle of the Kashmir sultans is credited to a Vachaspati. The famous bearer of the name in Sanskrit letters is the philosopher-commentator Vachaspati Mishra, who belongs to an earlier age and to an entirely different kind of writing.

Kashmir is the one region of India with a continuous Sanskrit historical tradition. Kalhana's Rajatarangini of about 1148-49 set the pattern, and later writers extended it in a chain: Jonaraja to 1459, his pupil Shrivara to 1486, then Prajyabhatta and Shuka down to 1597. Zain-ul-Abidin's reign of 1420-1470 sits in the middle of that chain and was the busiest literary moment of the Kashmir sultanate. He funded translation in both directions — the Rajatarangini into Persian as the Bahr-ul-Asmar, Persian and Arabic works into Sanskrit — and several works were written about him personally, of which the Zainavilas is one.

This is a title-to-author item, and the way to get it wrong is to answer the reign instead of the title. Three of the four options are genuine writers of exactly this court, so recognising the period earns nothing; the discrimination is entirely at the level of which book. The reliable anchor is that the Rajatarangini chain is named after itself — Jonaraja's is the second, Shrivara's the third — so any separately titled work of the reign belongs to somebody else. A second point worth carrying away is how much of this literature is lost. The Zainavilas and the Zaina-prakasha are both known only by report, and Prajyabhatta's Rajavalipataka is lost as well, which is a useful corrective to the idea that a named medieval text is a text one can read.

• Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin ruled Kashmir from 1420 to 1470 and is remembered locally as Budshah.
• Bhattavatara, or Bhatta Avatara, composed the Zainavilas in his reign; the manuscript has not survived.
• Jonaraja's continuation of Kalhana, the second Rajatarangini, breaks off at his death in 1459, in the sultan's thirty-fifth regnal year.
• Shrivara, Jonaraja's pupil, wrote the Jaina-Rajatarangini covering 1459 to 1486 and rendered Jami's Yusuf and Zulaikha into Sanskrit as the Kathakautuka.
• The same court produced a Zaina-charita on the sultan's life and a Zaina-prakasha, so more than one 'Zaina' title belongs to the reign.
• The chronicle chain continues past this reign with Prajyabhatta's lost Rajavalipataka and Shuka's fourth Rajatarangini, which ends in 1597.

• Answering with Jonaraja because he is the historian one remembers from this reign — his work is the second Rajatarangini, not the Zainavilas.
• Assuming there was only one book about Zain-ul-Abidin; the reign produced a Zaina-charita and a Zaina-prakasha as well.
• Reading Shrivara's Jaina-Rajatarangini as a Jain text — the name honours Zain-ul-Abidin, Sanskritised as Jaina.

As a title-to-author or author-to-title item on the Kashmir chronicles, or as a statements question on Zain-ul-Abidin's patronage of scholarship and translation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which work continues Kalhana's Rajatarangini and is known as the second Rajatarangini?

  • (a)Shrivara's Jaina-Rajatarangini
  • (b)Jonaraja's Dvitiya Rajatarangini
  • (c)Shuka's Rajatarangini
  • (d)Prajyabhatta's Rajavalipataka

  Answer(b) Jonaraja's Dvitiya Rajatarangini — it carries the account down to Zain-ul-Abidin's reign and stops at Jonaraja's death in 1459.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Kathakautuka, a Sanskrit rendering of a Persian romance by Jami, was the work of which Kashmiri writer?

  • (a)Kalhana
  • (b)Bilhana
  • (c)Shrivara
  • (d)Kshemendra

  Answer(c) Shrivara — the pupil of Jonaraja, who also wrote the third Rajatarangini.