Harsha

Harshavardhana, usually called Harsha, was the most powerful ruler in northern India in the first half of the seventh century. Coming to the throne as a teenager in 606, he built a large realm in the Ganges plain, ruled from the city of Kanyakubja, now Kannauj, and became known as a generous patron of religion and learning and as a playwright in his own right. Much of what is known of him comes from two admiring contemporaries: his court poet Banabhatta and the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang.

By the middle of the sixth century the Gupta Empire, whose rulers had included Chandragupta II, had broken apart into many smaller states. One of these was Thanesar, in present-day Haryana, where Harsha's father, Prabhakaravardhana of the Pushyabhuti family, built up a regional power. Harsha was born on 4 June 590, the younger son of the king and Queen Yasomati, probably at Thanesar.

When Prabhakaravardhana died in 605, Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana succeeded him. Their sister Rajyashri was married to Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kanyakubja, who was killed by King Devagupta of Malwa, and Rajyashri was taken prisoner. Rajyavardhana marched out and defeated Devagupta, but was then murdered by Shashanka, king of Gauda in Bengal, who had posed as his friend while secretly allied with Malwa. Harsha, about sixteen, now took the throne. According to Banabhatta's account, he rescued his sister in the forest just as she was about to burn herself to death. His campaign of revenge against Shashanka ended without a decisive result.

In April 606 an assembly crowned Harsha as overlord, with the title of great king of kings. He brought many of the small states between the Punjab and central India under his authority and made Kanyakubja his capital. Xuanzang wrote that within six years he had brought "the Five Indias" under his allegiance, but historians regard this as exaggeration: Harsha fought for many more years, and although he was the strongest king in the north, he never controlled all of it. His attempt to expand south ended in defeat on the Narmada river at the hands of the Chalukya emperor Pulakeshin II, dated to the winter of 618 to 619. The river then became the boundary between the two powers.

Like many Indian kings, Harsha drew on more than one tradition. His seals call his ancestors worshippers of the sun god and himself a devotee of Shiva. Xuanzang, who visited his court, presented him as a devout Buddhist who banned the killing of animals for food, built monasteries and stupas, and set up rest houses for travellers and the poor. The pilgrim also described a great assembly every five years at which the king gave away alms, and a festival at Kanyakubja centred on a golden statue of the Buddha. Some modern historians think Harsha remained a Shaivite and that his generosity towards Buddhists led Xuanzang to overstate his Buddhism. Harsha is also traditionally credited with three Sanskrit plays, Ratnavali, Priyadarsika and Nagananda, though some old writers claimed a court poet wrote them for him.

Harsha had sent an envoy to the court of Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty, and in 648 the Chinese official Wang Xuance arrived in India in return, only to find that Harsha had died in 647. The new king, recorded in Chinese sources as Aluonashun and possibly the Arunasva of Indian tradition, attacked the mission. Wang escaped to Tibet, came back with Tibetan and Nepalese troops, defeated him in 649 and carried him to China as a captive.

Our 600 map shows northern India shortly before Harsha's rise, divided among the successor states of the Guptas in present-day India; the 700 map shows the region half a century after his death.