and the statement that he turned from the vanities of this world to pure knowledge, slow that he completed the Vikramankadevacharita in his old age.
Bilhana's literary career and his wanderings over India fall in the third and fourth quarters of the eleventh century. To this period point his connexion with Vikramaditya-Tribhuvana- malla who reigned at Kalyana from 1076-1127 and his statements about the kings of Kashmir.
Bilhana mentions two kings of Kashmir, Ananta and Kalas'a. From the expression "there was" (ûsit) used by him,[१] it would appear that, at the time when the Vikramânkadevacharita was written, Ananta was dead.
Now we know from the Rajatarangini[२] that Ananta, after a reign of thirty-five years caused his son Kalas'a to be crowned king and that, though having nominally abdicated, lie continued to hold the reins of government for fifteen years longer. At the end of that period he retired, disgusted with the wickedness of his son, to Vijayakshetra. Two years and six months Iater, when the hostility of the unnatural Kalas'a had reduced him to the last extremity of misery, he committed suicide and his queen Saryamati or Subhatâ became a Sati shortly afterwards.
According to General Cunningham, whose dates of the later Kashmirian kings are more trustworthy than those given by Troyer and Wilson, Ananta's accession to the throne falls in the beginning of the year 1028 A. D.,[३] and his death in 1080. Kalna'a's rule lasted from 1080-1088, while his coronation and the nominal beginning of his reign full in 1062. If I am right in my interpretation of the word dsit, it is clear that the Vikramânkadevacharita must have been composed in the eighth decade of the eleventlh
