History at the end of history : Śrīvara's Jainataranginī
Résumé
This article focuses on the relationship between Śrīvara’s fifteenth century Jainataraṅgiṇī and Kalhaṇa’s twelfth century Rājataraṅgiṇī. Writing in the court of Sultan Zayn ul-‘Ābidīn, Śrīvara relies on Kalhaṇa’s work as the literary and theoretical model for the Jainataraṅgiṇī, but proceeds to adapt the form to reflect needs specific to a sort of biography of Zayn. I show that Śrīvara carefully orders and rearranges the events of the Sultan’s life in order to create a narrative that largely follows the aesthetic and moral expectations articulated in Kalhaṇa’s earlier Rājataraṅgiṇī. Yet despite Śrivara’s attempts to make his own work philosophically conformable to that of his predecessor, the historiographical background implicit in the Jainataraṅgiṇī shows subtle shifts in conceptions of royal representation and the agency of fate. I argue that these shifts provide important clues to understand the specific moment in Kashmiri political and literary history made possible by a unique relationship between patron and poet. Śrīvara’s Jainataraṅgiṇī shows the elastic possibilities of the Rājataraṅgiṇī form as it operates in the vastly changed political and social circumstances of Sultanate Kashmir.