Person · Pushyabhuti emperor · India
Harshavardhana
Also known as Harsha, Harshavardhan, Siladitya, Harshacharita
The Pushyabhuti ruler who built the last great north Indian empire before the Turkish conquests, from Kannauj, and is unusually well documented: his court poet Banabhatta wrote his biography, Xuanzang lived at his court for years, and three Sanskrit plays are attributed to him personally.
- Date
- 606–647
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 27.050, 79.920
Worth knowing
He is recorded as holding an assembly at Prayaga every five years at which he gave away the whole of his accumulated treasury, down to his own clothes — Xuanzang describes one of them. He was defeated once, by Pulakeshin II of the Chalukyas on the Narmada, and the frontier held there for the rest of his reign.
About the place
Placed at Kannauj, the capital he ruled from for forty-one years and which Xuanzang and Banabhatta both describe.
Connections (4)
- Court associationBanabhatta
Banabhatta wrote the life of a reigning emperor in Sanskrit prose, which nobody had attempted at that length before, and broke off after eight chapters. What survives covers Harsha's accession and his search for his abducted sister, and the parts about the court, the camp and the road are the fullest description of seventh-century north Indian political life that exists.
- PilgrimagePrayāga / Prayagraj/ Allahabad
Xuanzang describes Harsha holding an assembly at the confluence at which he gave away his whole accumulated treasury — the elephants, the gold, the cloth, and finally his own clothes, borrowing a garment from his sister to leave in. Whether or not the display was as total as described, distributive generosity at Prayaga was an instrument of sovereignty and is recorded as one.
- Court associationPrāgjyotiṣapura / Guwahati
Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa was Harsha's ally against the Gauda king Shashanka, and the two courts competed for Xuanzang: Bhaskaravarman summoned him east and Harsha then summoned him back west for the Kanauj assembly. A Chinese monk being passed between two Indian kings as a prestige possession is the clearest measure of what the journey had become by 643.
- OpposedPulakeshin II
Pulakeśin II defeated Harshavardhana’s army on the Narmada around 618 CE, the only time Harsha was defeated in open battle, and fixed the river as the long-running political boundary between northern and peninsular India. Harsha’s expansion south was halted; Pulakeśin took the title Dakshiṇāpatha-paṭika, Master of the Southern Road.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Harsha”. Banabhatta, Harṣacarita; Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji, trans. Samuel Beal; D. Devahuti, Harsha: A Political Study (1970).
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