History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c12.s6: Kanauj under Harṣa

History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c12.s6

Language: English

Kanauj under Harṣa

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The prosperity and importance of Kanauj, so well begun during the time of the Maukharis, grew tremendously under Harṣa; and it now easily became the premier city of Northern India supplanting Pāṭaliputra, the older centre, through which the main currents of political life had flowed since the days of the Buddha. To the observant eyes of a foreigner it must have appeared as a great cosmopolitan town, whose inhabitants were equally divided between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. There were one hundred Buddhist monasteries with more than 10,000 brethren who were students of both the “Vehicles.” The Deva-temples amounted to more than two hundred, and the non-Buddhists were several thousands in number.³ The town itself had grown to enormous proportions. With the river Ganges flowing down its western base Kanauj was above twenty *li* in length and four or five *li* in breadth (i.e., about five miles long and 1¼ miles broad). According to the traditional practice the city was very strongly defended by quadrangular walls, broad and high, and had lofty structures everywhere. "There were beautiful gardens and tanks of clear water, and in it rarities from strange lands were collected".¹ Yuan Chwang is silent regarding further details of the appearance of the metropolis, but the following general description of the system of town-planning then in vogue may be of some interest in this connection: "The thoroughfares are narrow tortuous passages. The shops are on the highways and booths (or, inns) line the roads. Butchers, fishermen, public performers, executioners, and scavengers have their habitations marked by a distinguishing sign. They are forced to live outside the city and they sneak along on the left when going about in the hamlets".² Thus people following certain occupations were segregated, and these regulations must have doubtless been galling to them. As to the construction of houses in Kanauj, we must here refer to the general character of Indian buildings described by Yuan Chwang. "Their halls and terraced belvederes have wooden flatroofed rooms, and are coated with *chunam*, and covered with tiles burnt or unburnt. They are of extraordinary height." But the more modest dwellings "thatched with coarse or common grass are of bricks or boards; their walls are ornamented with *chunam*; the floor is purified with cow-dung and strewn with flowers of the season."³ They were onthe whole comfortable and simple, or in the words of Yuan Chwang “sumptuous inside and economical outside.” The houses of the rich were probably decorated and whitewashed on ceremonious occasions. Bāṇa at any rate informs us that at the time of Rājyaśrī’s marriage painters “painted auspicious scenes” and workmen “mounted on ladders, with brushes upheld in their hands and plaster pails on their shoulders, whitened the top of the street wall of the palace”¹ at Thanesvar.

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³ Watters, I, p. 340; Beal, I, p. 207

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¹ Watters, I, p. 340; Beal, I, p. 206.

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² Watters, I, p. 147; Beal, I, pp. 73-74.

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³ Watters, I, p. 147; Beal, I, p. 74.

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¹ Hc. C. T., p. 124.

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The wealth and prosperity of Kanauj was further manifest in the people who “had a refined appearance and dressed in glossy silk attire.”² There were families with great wealth. Fruit and flowers were abundant. Yuan Chwang describes the usual clothing of the Indians thus: “The men wind a strip of cloth round the waist and up to the armpits and leave the right shoulder bare. The women wear a long robe which covers both shoulders and falls down loose.”³ It is, however, remarkable that the inner and outer dress had no tailoring. As to colour, the people preferred fresh white garments and did not at all esteem motley or embroidered. The inhabitants varied in their personal tastes. Some clipped their moustaches; others adopted fantastic fashions. They wore garlands on their heads and necklaces on their bodies.⁴

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² Watters, I, p. 340; Beal, I, p. 207. Yuan Chwang mentions four kinds of cloths, viz., Kiao-shê-ye (Kauseya) or silk; Ch‘u-mo (Kṣauma) or linen; Han (Kan)-po-lo (Kambala) or woollen texture; Ho-la-li (Ral ?) being a texture made from the wool of a wild animal (‘-atters, I, p. 148; Beal, I, p. 75). Bāṇa speaks of soft textures of linen, cotton, bark-silk, spider’s thread, muslin, and shot silk(Hc. C. T., p. 125).

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³ Watters, I, p. 148; Beal, I, p. 75.

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⁴ Ibid. Bāṇa mentions jewelled rings, earrings, necklaces, armlets etc. as ornaments (Hc. C. T., pp. 92, 97).

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Lastly we are told that the citizens were given to learning and the arts, while they were clear and suggestive in discourse. Thus says Yuan Chwang in praise of the people of “Mid India” (which term probably stands for Kanauj and adjacent territories) at this time: “They are pre-eminently explicit and correct in speech, their expressions being harmonious and elegant, like those of the Devas, and their intonation clear and distinct serving as rule and pattern for others.”¹ The monasteries also at Kanauj were far-famed as repositories of learning. One such college was the Bhadravihāra, where Yuan Chwang stayed for three months studying under the direction of Viryasena, a celebrated doctor of the Three Piṭakas.² In short, Kanauj was under Harṣa the centre of culture and crafts, power and politics, religion and riches; while its grandeur was apparently so great that according to the *Cach-Nāma* long afterwards the expression “you want Kanauj” passed into a proverb, meaning “you want the impossible.”³

Linked texts (2)

Harṣacarita — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
Chachnāma — ʿAlī b. Ḥāmid al-Kūfī