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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Hun invasions were unfavourable to religious and intellectual activity in the north and, just as in the time of Moslim inroads, their ravages had more serious consequences for Buddhism than for Hinduism. The great Emperor Harsha (
With the death of Pulakeśin and Harsha begins what has been called the Rajput period, extending from about 650 to 1000 A.D. and characterized by the existence of numerous kingdoms ruled by dynasties nominally Hindu, but often descended from northern invaders or non-Hindu aboriginal tribes. Among them may be mentioned the following: 1. Kanauj or Pancâla.
So King Harsha having invited all alike, whether "followers of the law or heretics, the ascetics and the poor, the orphans and the helpless," the kings of eighteen subordinate kingdoms assembled there with their people to the number of 500,000, and found immense refectories laid out for their refreshment, and long rows of warehouses to receive silk and cotton garments and gold and silver coins for distribution to them.
And he is worshipped, for that reason, by men. And he is eternal and immutable, this Viswakarman. "And the illustrious Dharma, the dispenser of all happiness, assuming a human countenance, came out through the right breast of Brahman. And by their energy they are supporting the worlds. And the wife of Kama is Rati, of Sama is Prapti; and the wife of Harsha is Nanda.
Hsüan Chuang describing India in 629-645 A.D. is unwilling to admit the decay but his truthful narrative lets it be seen. It is only of Bengal and the present United Provinces that he can be said to give a favourable account, and the prosperity of Buddhism there was largely due to the personal influence of Harsha. In central and southern India, he tells us of little but deserted monasteries.
This was the sixth quinquennial distribution which Harsha had held and the last, for he died in 648. He at first favoured the Hinayana but subsequently went over to the Mahayana, being moved in part by the exhortations of Hsüan Chuang. Yet the substance of Hsüan Chuang's account is that though Buddhism was prospering in the Far East it was decaying in India.
But fierce clan jealousies and intense dynastic pride made the Rajputs incapable of uniting into a single paramount state, or even into an enduring confederacy fit to withstand the storm of which Harsha himself might have heard the distant rumblings. For it was during his reign that militant Islam first set foot in India, in a remote part of the peninsula.
He prohibited the taking of life and the use of animal food, and of the three periods into which his day was divided two were devoted to religion and one to business. He also exercised a surveillance over the whole Buddhist order and advanced meritorious members. Hsüan Chuang has left an interesting account of the religious fêtes and spectacles organized by Harsha.
The laborious research of Europeans has shown that Asoka and Harsha were great monarchs. Their own countrymen merely say "once upon a time there was a king" and recount some trivial story. In fact, Hindus have a very weak historical sense.
According to Jain tradition there was a severe famine in northern India about 200 years after Mahâvîra's death and the patriarch Bhadrabâhu led a band of the faithful to the south . In the seventh century A.D. we know from various records of the reign of Harsha and from the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Chuang that it was nourishing in Vaiśâlî and Bengal and also as far south as Conjeevaram.
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