NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part I, Chapter 2

Harsha and the Post-Gupta North

After the Guptas, north India broke into regional kingdoms. Harshavardhana, who ruled from about 606 to 647 CE, briefly reunited much of the north from Kanauj. After him, three powers fought for the same city for two centuries.

Rise of Harsha

• He belonged to the Vardhana dynasty of Thanesar; his father was Prabhakaravardhana and his elder brother Rajyavardhana.
• After his brother was killed by the ruler of Gauda, Harsha became king, rescued his sister Rajyashri, and shifted his capital to Kanauj.
• He brought most of north India under his control but was stopped on the Narmada by the Chalukya ruler Pulakeshin II - recorded in the Aihole inscription.
• His reign is known from two main sources - the Harshacharita by his court poet Banabhatta, and the travel account of the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang.

Administration and assemblies

• Administration was decentralised, run through feudatories who paid tribute and supplied troops; officials were often paid by land grants rather than cash.
• Hiuen Tsang describes revenue as light, roughly one-sixth of produce, but also records that roads were unsafe - he was himself robbed.
• Harsha held a great religious assembly at Kanauj in honour of Mahayana Buddhism, and a distribution assembly at Prayag every fifth year, where he gave away the treasury's accumulated wealth.
• He was a patron of Nalanda, which Hiuen Tsang describes in detail as a great monastic university.
• Harsha himself wrote three Sanskrit plays - Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda.

Hiuen Tsang's account

• He travelled in India for about fifteen years in the seventh century and studied at Nalanda.
• He describes a prosperous but less commercial society than Fa-Hien had seen - fewer coins, decayed towns, more self-sufficient villages.
• He records the caste order, the position of chandalas outside towns, and the decline of Buddhism in several regions.
• His account is the single most detailed foreign description of seventh century India.

The tripartite struggle

• Harsha left no heir, and his empire dissolved at his death, showing it had been a personal achievement rather than an institution.
• From the eighth century three powers fought for control of Kanauj, the symbolic key to the Ganga plain.

• The Palas were patrons of Buddhism and founded the Vikramshila monastery in Bihar; Nalanda flourished under them.
• The long struggle exhausted all three and left north India divided when fresh invasions began from the north-west.