History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c13.s1.21

c13.s1.21

Thus though according to the *Life* the programme was gone through successfully to the utter confusion of all heretics and the joy of the Mahāyānists, the account preserved in the *Si-yu-ki* avers that the convocation terminated by startling incidents. It is stated that on the day of separation a great fire suddenly broke out in the tower and the pavilion over the gate of the hall erected at an immense cost. They were partly destroyed by the flames; when at the prayerful intervention of the king the fire was extinguished and the smoke disappeared making pious hearts thereby recognise a miracle.² Harṣa then ascended the top of the great tower in company with the assembled kings to survey the scene. As he was coming down the steps a fanatical heretic, knife in hand, suddenly tried to attack him. The attempt, however, was frustrated by the alertness of the king, who promptly seized the culprit. The princely train demanded the would-be assassin’s immediate death, but Harṣa, instead of giving any such decree, with unruffled countenance questioned his assailant about his intentions. At the royal interrogation the criminal openly confessed, “Great king! you have assembled the people of different countries, and exhausted your treasury in offerings to the Śramaṇas, and cast a metal image of Buddha; but the heretics who have come from a distance *have scarcely been spoken to*. Their minds, therefore, have been affected with resentment, and they procured me, wretched man that I am! to undertake this unlucky deed.”³ Five hundred Brahmans, “all of singular talent,” were then arrested on the strength of this confession, and being “straitly questioned” by the king they admitted that, inspired by jealousy against the Śramaṇas, whom he “had reverenced and exceedingly honoured,” they had fired the tower by shooting into it burning arrows, and had purposed to kill him in the resulting confusion. Their attempt having miscarried, they had hired this miscreant to lay in wait for the king in a narrow passage to assassinate him.¹ Although the ministers and the kings “demanded the extermination of the heretics”, Harṣa punished only the alleged principals in the plot, sending the five hundred Brahmans into exile and extending his royal mercy to the rest.