Indian Epigraphy c15.t18.3

Language: English

c15.t18.3.1

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.

c15.t18.3.2

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.

c15.t18.3.3

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.

c15.t18.3.4

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.