This is Part 19 of HorizonDesk's chronological series on Indian history, from the Stone Age to Independence in 1947. It follows Part 18: Science, Art and Literature in the Gupta Age.
By the mid-6th century the Gupta Empire had broken up, and northern India was divided among rival houses: the Maukharis of Kanauj, the Later Guptas of Magadha, the Maitrakas of Valabhi, a new kingdom of Gauda in Bengal and others. Out of this contest rose Harshavardhana (Harsha, c. 590 to c. 647 CE), the most powerful king of the north in the early 7th century.
Harsha is unusually well documented. We have a court biography by the poet Banabhatta, his own inscriptions and seals, three plays in his name, an inscription of his southern rival and, above all, the account of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang), who knew him personally. Each source has its own bias.
The Pushyabhutis of Thanesar
Harsha's family, the Pushyabhuti or Vardhana dynasty, came from Sthanvishvara, modern Thanesar near Kurukshetra in Haryana. Its first important king, Harsha's father Prabhakaravardhana, took the title maharajadhiraja and, according to Bana, fought the Hunas and his neighbours. He married his daughter Rajyashri to Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kanyakubja (Kanauj), a leading city of the Ganga plain.
A family crisis: 605 to 606 CE
Around 605 Prabhakaravardhana died while his elder son, Rajyavardhana, was away fighting the Hunas. Then news came that Grahavarman had been killed by the king of Malwa (usually identified as Devagupta) and Rajyashri imprisoned. Rajyavardhana defeated Malwa's army, but was then killed by Shashanka, king of Gauda, who seems to have been Malwa's ally. Bana says Rajyavardhana was lured to his death with false friendliness, and Xuanzang also blames Shashanka. Both wrote from Harsha's side, and Shashanka's version does not survive.
Harsha, then about 16, succeeded his brother. Bana describes him rescuing Rajyashri in the Vindhya forest just as she was about to enter a fire. He vowed revenge on Shashanka and allied with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa (Assam), on Gauda's eastern flank.
Accession and the move to Kanauj
An era beginning in 606 CE, recorded by the 11th-century scholar al-Biruni, is generally taken to mark Harsha's accession, and his inscriptions are dated in it. Xuanzang says he at first ruled cautiously under the name Shiladitya, without the full title of king. As the Maukhari line had ended, he took over Kanauj, apparently on his sister's behalf at first, and made it his capital. For centuries afterwards Kanauj was the prize of northern Indian politics.
Shashanka was never crushed. He ruled Gauda until about 637, and Xuanzang accuses him of persecuting Buddhists and damaging the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya (see our Mahabodhi Temple guide). Only after his death did Harsha's power reach Magadha and Odisha.
How big was Harsha's empire?
Older textbooks called Harsha "the last great Hindu emperor of northern India". The label is misleading: great northern powers came later, and his religion is hard to label, as we will see.
Xuanzang says Harsha fought for six years to bring "the Five Indias" under his allegiance and then reigned in peace for some 30 years. Historians treat this as hyperbole. His influence reached from Punjab towards Bengal and Odisha, and rulers from Valabhi in Gujarat (whose king Dhruvasena II married Harsha's daughter) to Kamarupa were allies or subordinates. But, as Britannica notes, the area he ruled directly was probably little more than modern Uttar Pradesh with parts of Punjab and Rajasthan.
Romila Thapar and Upinder Singh stress that this was not a centralized state on the Mauryan model. It was held together by samantas, subordinate rulers who kept their thrones in return for tribute, attendance at court and troops, an arrangement typical of early medieval India.
Defeat on the Narmada
Harsha was stopped in the south by the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II of Vatapi (Badami), who defeated him on the line of the Narmada. The main source is the Aihole inscription of 634-635 CE, a Sanskrit poem by Pulakeshin's poet Ravikirti. In a famous pun, it says Harsha's harsha (joy) melted away when he saw his elephants fall. Xuanzang confirms that Shiladitya marched against this king but could not subdue him.
The date is debated: many historians place the battle in the early 630s, while others, citing Chalukya copper-plate grants, argue for about 618-619. Either way, the Narmada became Harsha's southern limit.
Harsha the playwright, Bana the biographer
Three Sanskrit plays are attributed to Harsha: the court comedies Ratnavali and Priyadarshika, about King Udayana's loves, and Nagananda, in which Prince Jimutavahana gives his life to save a serpent from Garuda, a Buddhist theme. The later critic Mammata hinted that a court poet wrote them for pay, but many scholars, including the translator Wendy Doniger, accept Harsha as author.
Bana's Harshacharita (Deeds of Harsha) is an ornate prose masterpiece rather than a neutral chronicle: it flatters its hero and covers only his early years. But its scenes of court, camp, village and forest are a vivid picture of 7th-century India.
Xuanzang's journey
Xuanzang (602-664) wanted to study Buddhist texts, especially Yogacara philosophy, in the original Sanskrit. He left the Tang capital Chang'an in 629 (some sources say 627), defying a ban on foreign travel, and went west along the Silk Road (see our Silk Road guide). He spent over a decade in India, from Kashmir to Bengal, Andhra and the Tamil country, before returning to China in 645 with hundreds of manuscripts.
His Da Tang Xiyu Ji (Records of the Western Regions), completed in 646, and the biography by his disciple Huili are indispensable, but they mix eyewitness detail with hearsay, legend and a Buddhist viewpoint. The classic English versions are by Samuel Beal and Thomas Watters.
Nalanda
The heart of his stay was Nalanda in Bihar, where he studied for years under the aged abbot Shilabhadra. He describes monks studying grammar, logic, medicine and the Vedas as well as Buddhist philosophy. His biography's figure of 10,000 residents is probably inflated; the later pilgrim Yijing speaks of over 3,000. Harsha's seals found at Nalanda confirm his patronage (see our Nalanda Mahavihara guide).
In the south: Pallava Kanchi
Around 640 Xuanzang reached Kanchipuram, capital of the Pallavas. The king was probably Narasimhavarman I (c. 630-668), who sacked Pulakeshin's capital Vatapi around 642 (see Tamil History Part 15). Xuanzang describes brave, learned people, about 100 Buddhist monasteries with 10,000 monks, some 80 Hindu temples and many Digambara Jains, and notes that the Nalanda scholar Dharmapala was born there. He hoped to sail to Sri Lanka but turned back on hearing of unrest there, and then passed through Pulakeshin's Maharashtra, whose people he found proud and warlike.
India through Xuanzang's eyes
- Taxes: light. Cultivators of royal land paid one-sixth of the produce, labour service was moderate and paid, and merchants paid small tolls.
- Officials: ministers and officials were paid with land grants rather than cash, a sign of the changing state.
- Justice: serious offenders were imprisoned for life; others could lose a nose, ear, hand or foot, or be banished. Minor offences were fined, and guilt was sometimes tested by ordeals of water, fire, weighing and poison.
- Society: butchers, fishermen, executioners and scavengers lived outside the city walls, a sign of hardening untouchability, and most people avoided meat, onions and garlic.
- Roads: travel was not safe. He was robbed several times and was nearly sacrificed to a goddess by river pirates on the Ganga.
The Kanauj assembly and Prayag
In about 642-643 Harsha summoned Xuanzang and held a great assembly at Kanauj. Xuanzang's accounts describe some 20 kings, thousands of monks, Brahmins and Jains, and a golden Buddha carried in procession on an elephant, with Xuanzang defending Mahayana doctrine for days unchallenged. They also report a fire and a plot against Harsha, after which 500 Brahmins were banished.
Harsha then took him to Prayaga, at the Ganga-Yamuna confluence, for the sixth of his five-yearly distributions. Over some 75 days, the Buddha, the Sun and Shiva were worshipped in turn, and Harsha gave away five years of treasure until he had to borrow a used garment from Rajyashri. Historians accept that such gift-giving happened, but the scale and Buddhist colouring are probably exaggerated by an honoured guest. Links to the later Kumbh Mela are debated.
Harsha's own religion is also debated. His inscriptions call him paramamaheshvara, a devotee of Shiva, while Xuanzang presents him as a devout Buddhist. Most likely he patronised several traditions and favoured Buddhism more over time.
Embassies to Tang China
In 641 Harsha sent an envoy to the Tang emperor Taizong, the first recorded diplomatic mission between an Indian king and the Chinese court. Taizong replied with an embassy in 643 that included Wang Xuance.
Death and fragmentation
Harsha died around 647, apparently without an heir, and his realm fell apart. Chinese and Tibetan sources say a minister, recorded as Aluonashun and usually read as Arunashva, seized power and attacked Wang Xuance's new mission in about 648. Wang escaped to Tibet, raised Tibetan and Nepalese troops, defeated the usurper and took him to China. Indian records are silent, and the story may have grown in the telling.
Key takeaways
- Harsha of the Pushyabhuti dynasty came to power in 606 CE after Shashanka of Gauda killed his brother, and made Kanauj his capital.
- He was the leading power of the north, but ruled a loose network of subordinate kings, not a centralized empire.
- Pulakeshin II stopped him on the Narmada, as the Aihole inscription records; the date (c. 618-619 or early 630s) is disputed.
- Harsha is credited with Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda; Bana's Harshacharita tells his early life.
- Xuanzang studied at Nalanda, visited Pallava Kanchi and left a vivid, sympathetic and sometimes exaggerated account of Harsha's India.
Next part
In Part 20, we go south to The Pallavas of Kanchi and Mamallapuram: the dynasty that ruled the city Xuanzang visited, fought the Chalukyas for a century and carved some of India's finest monuments by the sea.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Harsha and Xuanzang
- World History Encyclopedia, Harsha and Pushyabhuti Dynasty
- Beal, S. (trans.) (1884), Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, Trubner
- Watters, T. (1904-1905), On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629-645 A.D., Royal Asiatic Society
- Cowell, E. B. and Thomas, F. W. (trans.) (1897), The Harsa-carita of Bana, Royal Asiatic Society
- Harsha (2006), "The Lady of the Jewel Necklace" and "The Lady Who Shows Her Love", trans. W. Doniger, New York University Press
- Kielhorn, F. (1900-1901), "Aihole Inscription of Pulikesin II", Epigraphia Indica 6
- Sen, T. (2003), Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400, University of Hawaii Press
- Devahuti, D. (1998), Harsha: A Political Study, Oxford University Press
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. (1955), A History of South India, Oxford University Press
- Thapar, R. (2002), Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, University of California Press
- Singh, U. (2008), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, Pearson
