Post-Gupta North India

Between the Gupta collapse around 550 CE and the Turkish invasions, north India had no single paramount power except briefly under Harshavardhana (606-647 CE). The period is defined by regional kingdoms, the growth of land grants, the decline of towns and trade, and the shift of political gravity from Pataliputra to Kannauj.

Successor kingdoms

Harshavardhana

Harsha came to the throne of Thanesar at sixteen after his brother Rajyavardhana was killed by Shashanka, and later united Thanesar and Kannauj, shifting his capital to Kannauj. His empire covered the Ganga plain, Punjab, parts of Rajasthan and Odisha, but his southward advance was stopped on the Narmada by the Chalukya ruler Pulakeshin II, an event recorded in the Aihole inscription.

• Two main sources: Banabhatta's Harshacharita, the first Sanskrit historical biography, and Hiuen Tsang's Si-Yu-Ki
• Harsha held a grand assembly at Kannauj honouring Mahayana Buddhism and a quinquennial distribution at Prayag
• He was a Shaiva by upbringing who became a patron of Buddhism, and wrote Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda
• Administration was less centralised; officers were paid in land, and Hiuen Tsang notes low taxation of about one-sixth
• Hiuen Tsang also records the decline of Buddhism in many areas and the poor condition of roads and towns

The tripartite struggle for Kannauj

After Harsha, Kannauj became the prize in a three-cornered contest through the eighth and ninth centuries between the Pratiharas of western India, the Palas of Bengal and Bihar, and the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan. Kannauj mattered because it commanded the fertile upper Ganga plain and the routes linking the Gangetic heartland with the west.

Tripartite struggle = Pratiharas + Palas + Rashtrakutas, all contesting Kannauj

✗ The tripartite struggle was fought over Delhi  |  ✓ The contest was for Kannauj, the political centre of north India after Harsha

The long struggle exhausted all three. The Pratiharas fragmented into Rajput houses, the Palas gave way to the Senas, and the Rashtrakutas fell to the Kalyani Chalukyas. That fragmentation is precisely why north India was politically divided when Mahmud of Ghazni raided in the early eleventh century.

Society and economy

Towns decline, coinage becomes scarce, and trade contracts after the fall of Roman and Sassanian demand. Land grants multiply, creating a layered society of grantees and dependent cultivators. Caste proliferates into numerous jatis, untouchability hardens, and practices restricting women spread. This is the material basis of what D. D. Kosambi and R. S. Sharma described as Indian feudalism, though scholars such as Harbans Mukhia have contested the label.

FAQ

Who were the two main sources for Harsha's reign?

Banabhatta's Harshacharita, a court biography in ornate Sanskrit prose, and the Si-Yu-Ki of the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who spent years in India during Harsha's reign. The first is eulogistic and the second is observational, so historians read them against each other.

Why was Kannauj so important?

Kannauj controlled the fertile upper Ganga doab and the trade and military routes linking eastern India with the west and north-west. Holding it conferred both revenue and prestige, which is why the Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas fought over it for more than a century.

What is the Indian feudalism debate?

R. S. Sharma argued that from the Gupta period land grants transferred revenue and administrative rights to intermediaries, causing urban decline, a scarcity of coins and a closed village economy. Critics such as Harbans Mukhia argue that Indian agriculture was based on free peasant production and that European feudal categories do not fit.