Imagined Landscape: Myth and Memory in Early Kashmir

Speaker: Dr. Shonaleeka Kaul, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, University of Delhi; and author of Imagining the Urban: Sanskrit and the City in Early India (Permanent Black, 2010)

Chair: Shri A.N.D. Haksar, former Indian Ambassador and translator of Sanskrit classics

The talk revisits Kalhana's Rajatarangini, the celebrated 12th century Sanskrit classic, a saga of the kings of Kashmir that has traditionally been understood as political history. Among the themes covered in the talk are origins of Kashmir, the nagas or tutelary deities, snow and water motifs, Buddhism, ritual, and a deeply spiritual sacred geography