Traditional scholarly opinion has regarded Kalhaṇas Rājataraṅgiṇī, the twelfth-century Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmiri kings, as a work of history. In this talk I propose a reinvestigation of the nature of the iconic text from outside the shadow of that label. I first closely critique the positivist 'history hypothesis', exposing its internal contradictions over questions of chronology, causality, and objectivity as attributed to the text. I then argue that more than an empiricist historical account that modern historians like to believe it isin the process bracketing out integral rhetorical, mythic, and didactic parts of the textthe Rājataraṅgiṇī should be viewed in totality for the kāvya (epic poem) that it is, i.e, as representing a specific language practice that sought to produce meaning and articulated the poets vision of the land and its lineages. The talk thus urges momentarily reclaiming the text from the hegemonic but troubled understanding of it as historyonly to restore it ultimately to a more cohesive notion of historicality that is sensitive to the literary and consistent with textual contents. Toward this end, it highlights the concrete claim to epistemic authority that is asserted both by the genre of Sanskrit kāvya generally and by the Rājataraṅgiṇī in particular, and their conception of the poetic production of the past that bears a striking resonance with constructivist historiography. It then traces the intensely intertextual and value-laden nature of the epistemology that frames the Rājataraṅgiṇī into a narrative discourse on power and ethical governance. It is in its narrativity and discursivityits meaningful representation of what constitutes 'true' knowledge of time and human actionthat the salience of the Rājataraṅgiṇī may lie.

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