Indian Epigraphy c15.t18: 6. Harṣa Era

Indian Epigraphy c15.t18

Language: English

c15.t18.3 — 4 parts

6. Harṣa Era

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There are certain seemingly conflicting traditions regarding the date of the accession of king Harṣa of Thanesar and Kanauj. Hiuen-tsang says : “As soon as Śīlāditya (Harṣa) became ruler, he got together a great army and set out to avenge his brother’s murder and to reduce the neighbouring countries to subjection. Proceeding eastwards, he invaded the states which had refused allegiance and waged incessant warfare until in six years he had fought the Five Indias. Then, having enlarged his territory, he increased his army bringing the elephant corps upto 60,000 and the cavalry to 100,000 and reigned in peace for thirty years without raising a weapon.”⁵ Watters points out in this connection, “We find two dates given for the death of king Śīlāditya, Chinese history placing it in the year A.D. 648 and the *Life* [of Hiuen-Tsiang by Hwui Li] in 655. Taking thirty-six years as the duration of his reign, we thus have 612 or 619 as the date of his accession. The latter date agrees with a Chinese statement that the troubles in India which led to Śīlāditya’s reign took place in the reign of T’ang Kao Tsu (A.D. 518 to 627). But the date 648, or rather 647, is perhaps the correct one. It must have been in 641 or 642 that, in conversation with our pilgrim as given in the *Life*, Śīlāditya stated that he had been sovereign for above thirty years. This also gives 612 for the year of his accession, and the addition of six years to the thirty gives 648 as the date of his death. But the Chinese envoy despatched in the early part of that year found, on his arrival in the country, the king dead and a usurper on the throne. Moreover, it was in 648 that Yuan Chwang submitted his records to T’ai Tsung, and Śīlāditya must have been dead before this work was drawn up in its present form.¹

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¹ Op. cit., pp. 346-47.

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The statement of the *Life* that Harṣa Śīlāditya died in 655 A.D. and another Chinese statement that the king’s reign followed some date in 618-27 A.D. have rightly been rejected, though Watters’ supposition that Hiuen-tsang knew the date of Harṣa’s death before submitting his *Records* to the Chinese emperor in 648 A.D. seems to be entirely unwarranted.² There is no reason to think that anybody in China knew the date of Harṣa’s death before the return of Wang Hiuen-tse’s mission considerably after that event. It seems therefore that the thirty-six years given by Hiuen-tsang as the duration of Harṣa’s reign covers actually the period from his accession to 642 A.D. when the Chinese pilgrim was staying with him and not the period from his accession to this death. It thus appears that, according to Hiuen-tsang’s statement in question, Harṣa ascended the throne thirty-six years before 642 A.D., i.e. in 606 A.D. According to the *Life*,³ Harṣa told Hiuen-tsang on the eve of the religious assembly at Prayāga (Allahabad) about the beginning of 643 A.D. that he had ‘been lord of India for thirty years and more' and further that he had 'completed five of these assemblies' and was 'about to celebrate the sixth'. As the assembly was celebrated every five years, it has to be seen whether these statements agree in placing Harṣa's accession thirty years before 643, i.e. about 612 or 613 A.D. At his accession, neither was Harṣa a 'lord of India' (i.e.

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a *cakravartin* or *sārvabhauma* monarch, an emperor) nor did the Allahabad region, where Harṣa's conversation with the Chinese pilgrim is said to have taken place, form a part of his dominions. With the death of his elder brother Rājyavardhana, only the small kingdom of Thanesar about the eastern part of the Punjab came into Harṣa's possession. The dominions of the Maukharis covering the major part of U. P. and Bihar were then under the occupation of the king of Mālava (Devagupta) and his ally Śaśāṅka of Gauḍa. Harṣa came to free the dominions of his Maukhari relatives from the Mālava and Gauḍa enemies, which work may have taken him no less than six years as suggested by a statement of Hiuen-tsang quoted above. That he formally declared himself lord of the erstwhile Maukhari dominions in U.P. and Bihar a few years later seems to be clear from the following statement in Hiuen-tsang's *Records*: "The Bodhisattva promised him secret help but warned him not to occupy the actual throne and not to use the title *Mahārāja*. Thereupon Harṣavardhana became king of Kanauj (i.e. the former Maukhari capital) with the title *Rājaputra* and the style *Śīlāditya*."¹ It is clear that Harṣa of Thanesar offered to drive the Mālavas and Gauḍas out of the Maukhari dominions at first as a relative and ally of the late Maukhari king Grahavarman, but that he formally declared himself master of the Maukhari empire after having freed it from the Mālava and Gauḍa enemies.

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A confused statement of Hiuen-tsang (who seems wrongly to represent Harṣa's elder brother Rājyavardhana as a king of Kanauj) says that 'the statesmen of Kanauj', on the advice of their leading man Bāṇi or Vāṇī, invited Harṣavardhana to become their sovereign and that the prince at first ‘modestly made excuses and seemed unwilling to comply with their request’.¹ This at least shows that the formal occupation of the Maukhari throne by Harṣa took place some time after he had become king of Thanesar on his brother’s death. This formal occupation of the Maukhari empire and the attainment of imperial dignity by Harṣa appear to have followed his success against the Gauḍas and Mālavas in a protracted war lasting for about six years. Hiuen-tsang says that Harṣa ‘waged incessant warfare until in six years he had fought the Five Indias (or had brought the Five India’s under allegiance)’, that is to say that he became ‘an emperor’ six years after his accession. As he got the throne of Thanesar in 606 A.D., he thus seems to have obtained imperial dignity in 612 A.D. This is corroborated by the *Life* according to which Harṣa had ruled as ‘lord of India’, i.e. as an emperor, for over thirty years by 643 A.D. The first quinquennial assembly at Prayāga, the sixth of which took place about the beginning of 643 A.D. could have been celebrated only after Harṣa had become formally anointed as the emperor of the erstwhile Maukhari realm covering U.P. and Bihar, in which Prayāga was situated.

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As a king of the small kingdom of Thanesar about the eastern part of the Punjab, he had nothing to do with the Allahabad region.

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² The *Records* were compiled from Hiuen-tsang’s notes with the help of Pien-chi. The first draft of the work was presented to the Chinese emperor in 646 A.D. though the book as we have it was not completed until 648 A.D. See IHQ, Vol. XXIX, p. 72.

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³ See Beal’s trans., pp. 183-84.

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¹ Watters, op. cit., p. 343.

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² Sachau, *Alberuni’s India*, Part II, p. 5.

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According to Al-Bīrūnī,¹ ‘an era of Harṣa is used in Mathurā and the country of Kanoj. Between Śrī-Harṣa (i.e. the Harṣa era) and Vikramāditya (i.e. the Vikrama era) there is an interval of 400 years as I have been told by some of the inhabitants of that region. However, in the Kashmirian calendar, I have read that Śrī-Harṣa (i.e. the Harṣa era) was 664 years later than Vikramāditya (i.e. the Vikrama era). In face of this discrepancy, I am in perfect uncertainty which to the present moment has not yet been cleared up by any trustworthy information.” The passage clearly says that Al-Bīrūnī heard of one Harṣa era with its epoch 400 years before the start of the Vikrama era (i.e. in 457 B.C.) and of another Harṣa era having its epoch 664 years after the commencement of the Vikrama-saṃvat (i.e. in 606 A. D.). He refers to the two conflicting traditions regarding the epoch of the Harṣa era as well as to his doubts about them and apparently rejects, at least tentatively, the 606 A.D. epoch in favour of the 457 B.C. tradition, even though he had found corresponding years of both the Vikrama era of 58 B.C. and the Harṣa era of 606 A.D. in the Kashmiri an almanac. The passage unquestionably shows that Al-Bīrūnī knew of a Harṣa era starting from 606 A.D., no doubt the year of accession of an Indian monarch named Harṣa. Now the combined strength of the statements of Hiuen-tsang and Al-Bīrūnī discussed above supports the conclusion that king Harṣa, a contemporary of Cālukya Pulakeśin II (610-42 A. D.) and the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-tsang who travelled in India in 629-45 A. D., ascended the throne in 606 A.D. and that an era, later called the Harṣa era, was counted from that date.

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¹ Watters, op. cit., p. 343.

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Harṣa’s regnal reckoning, continued by this erstwhile feudatories who became independent rulers after his death, developed into an era. This is suggested by the inscriptions of the so-called Later Guptas. That the Later Gupta prince Mādhavagupta, son of Mahāsenagupta, was a subordinate of Harṣa is suggested by Bāṇa’s Harṣacarita, according to which the Mālava princes Kumāragupta and Mādhavagupta (sons of Mahāsenagupta) took shelter at the Thanesar court during the rule of Harṣa’s father Prabhākaravardhana (apparently after Mahāsenagupta’s death when the throne of Mālava was usurped by Devagupta) as also by verse 18 of the damaged Aphsad inscription of Mādhavagupta’s son Ādityasena, king of Magadha.¹ It is not impossible that Ādityasena, who later claimed imperial dignity,² began his life as a feudatory of Harṣa. Thus the use of the Harṣa era in the Shahpur inscription¹ of the year 66 falling in Ādityasena’s reign is easily explained. Magadha formed a part of Harṣa’s empire and was no doubt using the regnal reckoning of that monarch during his reign. The Shahpur inscription shows that the Later Gupta successors of Harṣa in that country continued to use the same reckoning at least for some years after the end of Harṣa’s rule.

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¹ CII, Vol. III, p. 204. The fact that Mahāsenagupta was a Mālava-rāja while his grandson Ādityasena flourished in Bihar with the title ‘lord of Magadha’ seem to suggest that Harṣa had placed his protégé, Mādhavagupta, over some parts of Bihar. See JRASB, Letters, Vol. XI, 1945, pp. 69-74; Ep. Ind., Vol. XXX, pp. 295 ff.

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² CII, Vol. III, p. 211.

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¹ Ibid., p. 210.

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Among other inscriptions dated in the Harṣa era, the following are well known : (1) Kot (Bharatpur District, Rajasthan) inscription of year 48;² (2) Tasai (Alwar District, Rajasthan) inscription of year 183;³ (3) Punjab inscription of year 184;⁴ (4) Khajuraho inscription of year 218;⁵ (5) Ahar inscription containing dates between the years 258 and 298;⁶ (6) Pehoa (Karnal District, Punjab) inscription of year 276;⁷ and (6) Pinjaur inscription of year 563.⁸ None of these records can be reasonably assigned to any other era.⁹ To the inscriptions dated in this era, we have now to add : (1) Dungarpur (Rajasthan) plates of Bhāvihita, dated year 48;¹⁰ (2) Dhulev (Udaipur Division, Rajasthan) plate of Bhetti, dated year 73;¹¹ (3) Dungarpur plates of Bābhaṭa, dated year 83;¹² and (4) Khandela (Jaipur Division, Rajasthan) inscription of year 207.¹³

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² Bhandarkar’s List, No. 1392.

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³ Ibid., No. 1405; *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 49 ff.

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⁴ Bhandarkar’s List No. 1406.

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⁵ Ibid., No. 1408.

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⁶ Ibid., No. 1410.

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⁷ Ibid., No. 1412.

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⁸ Ibid., No. 1421.

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⁹ Some scholars do not believe in the existence of the Harṣa era (cf. *IHQ*, Vol. XXVII, pp. 183 ff.; Vol. XXVIII, pp. 280 ff.). They will indeed find it extremely difficult to explain the dates of these epigraphs.

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¹⁰ *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 171 ff.

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¹¹ Ibid., Vol. XXX, pp. 1 ff.; 5 ff.

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¹² Ibid., Vol. XXXIV, pp. 174 ff.

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¹³ Ibid., Vol. XXXIII, pp. 161 ff. For the dates in the Kaman inscriptions ranging between the years 180 and 279, see Vol. XXXVI, pp. 52-53.

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According to the Nepalese *Vaṃśāvalis*, ‘immediately before the accession of Aṃśuvarman, Vikramāditya came to the country (Nepal) and established his era there’.¹ It has been suggested that by Vikramāditya the chroniclers meant Harṣa Śīlāditya as at this period there was no other Indian monarch capable of extending his influence in Nepal. This suggestion could be supported by the fact that, in Indian tradition, Harṣa Śīlāditya was persistently confused with the legendary Śakāri Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī, probably because Harṣa was the founder of an era like the traditional originator of the Vikrama-saṃvat.² Thus Indian tradition seems to speak of Harṣa indirectly as the founder of an era exactly as the celebrated Vikramāditya.

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¹ Tripathi, *History of Kanauj*, p. 94.

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² Note that the *Bhāvabodhini* of the 17th century author Madhusūdana says, *Mālava-rājasy=Ojjayinī-rājadhānikasya kavi-jana-mūrdhanyasya Ratnāvaly-ākhyanāṭikā-kartur=mahārāja-śrī-Harṣasya* (*Ind. Ant.*, Vol. II, pp. 127-28; Tripathi, op. cit., p. 184). That the confusion is much earlier than the seventeenth century is proved by Kalhaṇa’s *Rājatarangiṇī* composed about the middle of the twelfth century. Cf. III, verses 125, 128; also ibid., II. 7.

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Some inscriptions of the Nepalese rulers Aṃśuvarman (years 34, 39 and 45), Jiṣṇugupta (year 48), Śivadeva II (years 119 and 143) and Jayadeva Paracakrakāma (year 153) are thus supposed to be dated in the Harṣa era.³ But the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-tsang mentions Aṃśuvarman as a past ruler in 637 A.D. whereas the Harṣa years 34-45 would place his period in 640-51 A.D.⁴ As indicated above, the said records of Aṃśuvarman and those of his successors probably bear dates in the Śaka era minus 500, so that Śaka 501 = year 1 of Aṃśuvarman’s regnal reckoning.⁵

Linked texts (6)

Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit
Harṣacarita — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
تحقيق ما للهند من مقولة مقبولة في العقل أو مرذولة — Arabic
Khajuraho
Dungarpur
Khandela