Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s3.t9: Harṣacarita

Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s3.t9

Language: English

Harṣacarita

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Harṣacarita is a biographical novel written by Bāṇa, a famous Classical Sanskrit writer in India, which tells the story of Siladitya before and after he became an emperor.

Bāṇa was born in the 7ᵗʰ century, and apart from Harṣacarita, he also created the Kādambarī. Harṣacarita was completed between 612 and 627 AD, with eight chapters in total; and before the main content, there are 21 prologues mainly praising Lord Shiva and the literary works made by writers before his time. In the first chapter, Bana introduces the history of his family and life stories; the second chapter tells the story about how he met Siladitya and the third chapter gives a vivid description of the ancestors of Siladitya, and from chapter four all the way down to chapter eight, the birth and life stories of Siladitya are presented.

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Harṣacarita can be viewed as a very important literature for people to study and research the early reign of Siladitya, and can boast to have irreplaceable value in history.

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In the second chapter, when Bāṇa meets Siladitya, the latter had become the king of five regions of India. Bāṇa’s story starts from the ancestor of Siladitya and birth of Siladitya and extends into the most fantastic moment of his life - inheritance of the throne. The whole story utilises the death of Empress Yaśomatī, Emperor Prabhākaravarddhana, Emperor Grahavarman and Rājyavarddhana as plots and ends up conquering the whole world and rescuing Rājyaśrī (possessing the same meaning with the kingship). The description about Siladitya ends at the climax.. The story in chapter eight is echoed in the second chapter, in which Bāṇa told the stories of Harṣacarita. Bāṇa returns to the audiences and finishes his story in chapter eight.

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From the perspective of the structure, *Harṣacarita* is complete, and runs through the whole course of Siladitya’s life. *Harṣacarita* is far from a historical piece, but a literary biography. Bāṇa made good use

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[Figure: *Painting depicting King Shiladitya* *paying respect to the Buddha*]

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of Indian epic poetry and classical narrative poems in Sanskrit, and copied the myths and legends to establish a literary style with ornamental elaboration as its characteristics by a combination of partial tones, words or phrases with double meaning, metaphor, exaggeration and symbolic means, and lengthy compound words and adjectives. On the surface, these are rhetorics complimenting Siladitya, but if we view it from a deeper perspective, we will understand that he was trying to expose the truth and conspiracy in front of us with excessive flattery. His words are luxurious and elegant, but unreal and flattering, and only those words and sentences that take off their magnificent disguise and seemingly spring up inadvertently and unintentionally are what we should think about carefully and treat them as valuable historical materials. As long as we see through the nature and essence of the flowery language, we could get a glimpse of the truth and restore the true colors of history.

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Under the circumstance, since there are not many historical works about ancient India, ‘*Harṣacarita*’ has a very high historical value. A large number of figures and events, such as Tonghu and Chunhu in Malava, Skandagupta, leader of elephant troops and minister Bhaṇḍi, Rājyavarddhana’s death from a conspiracy have been proven by inscriptions and some historical materials. This shows that Bāṇa is not only a literati living in the royal palace, but an excellent official historian. The book *Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang* mainly describes the reign of late Siladitya period, while Harṣacarita tells us stories about Siladitya’s early life, and both books complement each other. At the same time, Harsacarita presents an all-round and vivid picture of the Indian social lives in Siladitya’s time, which involves a wide range of fields like caste, profession, religion, art, cloth, customs etc.

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(*Zhang Yuan*)

Linked texts (2)

Harṣacarita — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
Kādambarī — Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Sanskrit