HUNS, MIHIRAKULA , AND KASHMIR
The Huns, that formidable confederation of Central Asian horsemen, first appeared upon India’s north-western marches in the middle of the fifth century of the Common Era. Their initial foray was utterly routed by the Gupta emperor Skandagupta, whereupon the tide of Hun migration turned westward towards the plains of Europe. Yet in the early sixth century a second wave, the Alchon or “White Huns”, swept through the Hindu Kush under the command of Toramana. Between 510 and 511 CE he overran the Punjab, Rajputana and Malwa, his authority reaching as far as Kashmir and the Gangetic Doab. Upon his death the realm passed to his son Mihirakula, c. 502–530 CE, who ruled from Sakala, the modern Sialkot, as master of an empire stretching from Gandhara to the heart of Central India.
( A coin showing Mihirakula)
Mihirakula, a Hinduised Hun and a fervent devotee of Shiva who styled himself Suryavanshi, “Son of the Sun”, remains amongst the most contentious figures in Kashmir’s early annals. Driven from the plains about 532 CE by a confederacy under Yashodharman of Malwa and Baladitya of Magadha, he was taken prisoner and afterwards released, only to find his younger brother enthroned in his stead. Bereft of kingdom, he sought sanctuary in Kashmir. The prince of the Valley received him with courtesy and bestowed lands upon him; yet within a few short years Mihirakula repaid such hospitality with perfidy. He rose in rebellion, slew his benefactor, and took the Kashmiri crown for his own.
From his seat in the Valley he waged campaigns of retribution into Gandhara, where he is said to have slain the king by treachery, extirpated the royal house, and put multitudes to the sword upon the banks of the Indus. Kalhana, in his twelfth-century Rajatarangini, describes him as “a man of violent acts and resembling Death”, the approach of whose host was foretold by vultures wheeling in anticipation of the slaughter. Chinese pilgrims Song Yun and Xuanzang recount a like terror. Though a munificent patron of Shaiva shrines, his name is rendered infamous by his persecution of Buddhists and Jains. He levelled stupas and viharas, tormented monks, and butchered captives by the Indus. Tradition avers that he commanded a hundred elephants to be cast into a ravine merely to savour their death-cries. R.S. Pandit, in his English rendering of the Rajatarangini, observes that Mihirakula “never laughed” and decreed death for the most trifling offences ,excesses which moved later chroniclers to name him “the Indian Nero”.
His dominion, however, was fleeting. Mihirakula perished of illness in 533 CE, scarce a year after his Gandhara campaign, amidst portents of tempest and earthquake noted by Chinese witnesses. With him the Hun ascendancy in India swiftly waned. He was succeeded in Kashmir by his younger brother Pravarasena II, who laid the foundations of the present city of Srinagar and made it his capital, thus granting the Valley its enduring urban heart. Coins bearing Mihirakula’s name, struck with the legend “Jayatu Vrish” in honour of Shiva’s bull, have been discovered from Bactria to Kashmir, a testament to the compass of his rule. By the close of the sixth century, Turk and Persian arms in Bactria had extinguished Hun dominion altogether. A people who readily assumed the creeds of the lands they subdued – Shaiva in India, Buddhist in certain phases, Christian in Europe , the Huns bequeathed to Kashmir a twofold legacy: the dread memory of Mihirakula’s cruelty, and a dynastic tie to the city that would become the very soul of the Valley.
