India: A History. Revised and Updated (34 page)

His other ‘campaigns’ and ‘conquests’ are no less vague. That he did indeed overrun all of north India from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal is well-attested. The Maitrakas of Vallabhi in far-off Gujarat were forced to flee their capital, Kashmir was obliged to part with a cherished relic of the Buddha, Sindh and Orissa look also to have been invaded. To reach these places, kingdoms which intervened or were adjacent to the probable line of march must also have submitted. Likewise those kingdoms which were subordinate to Harsha’s new vassals, including most of the Panjab hill states in the case of Kashmir. On this evidence, and on Hsuan Tsang’s failure to indicate that they were fully independent, numerous other kingdoms and tribes stretching from the eastern Panjab to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are presumed to have formed part of Harsha’s empire. But whether he held all of them simultaneously, for how long, and on what terms is very uncertain. The Maitrakas of Saurashtra, for instance, soon returned to their capital of Vallabhi and, despite being united with Harsha’s family by a matrimonial alliance, seem to have pursued independent policies.

But perhaps the most persuasive argument for the ephemeral nature of Harsha’s empire rests on its sudden and total eclipse. An intimation of troubles ahead had been provided by Hsuan Tsang when he was witness to an attempt on Harsha’s life. Those responsible he identified as ‘heretics’, the Buddhist’s term for disaffected brahmans. Evidently by the seventh century not all religious rivalries were being resolved in friendly debate. Sasanka’s ‘vileness’ seems to have had a lot to do with his having allegedly harassed Buddhists and cut down the sacred Boddhi tree under which the Buddha received enlightenment. Elsewhere in
arya-varta
it was the other way round, with orthodox opinion being antagonised by Harsha’s growing preference for, and generosity to, the Buddhist
sangha
.

At a lavish ceremony organised by Harsha to celebrate his meeting with the king of Kamarupa, these dissidents attempted sabotage by setting fire to the tower in which the Buddha image was placed. Harsha, according to Hsuan Tsang, put out the flames not by blowing but, no less miraculously, by rushing headlong into them. Frustrated, the ‘heretic’ fanatics then persuaded one of their followers to make an attempt on Harsha’s life. The assassin lunged, knife in hand, but Harsha, still nimble on his feet despite advancing years, dodged the blow and then seized and disarmed his assailant. Hsuan Tsang makes much of the clemency later shown to those responsible. Only their leader was ‘punished’, which probably means that he was executed; the rest were pardoned. Nevertheless five hundred brahmans had to be packed off into exile. Obviously, if not a rebellion, this was much more than an intrigue.

How Harsha eventually died is not known. But when in 647 his long reign finally ended, so did his empire; it simply fell apart. No Chandra-Gupta II stepped forward to round off his conquests and no Ashoka arose to consolidate his dominions. Confederate kingdoms simply allowed their allegiance to lapse; subject dynasties simply resumed their old rivalries.

The throne itself was usurped by one of Harsha’s brahman ministers, who was then badly discredited by the mismanagement of a Chinese embassy. Harsha had cultivated good relations with the new T’ang empire and, thanks to his Buddhist sympathies and his generous treatment of visitors like Hsuan Tsang, several diplomatic missions had been exchanged. But, according to Chinese sources, a T’ang embassy which arrived immediately after his death found India in confusion. In what looks like an incident born more of sectarian than political rivalry, the Chinese were robbed and taken captive while the Celestial Emperor’s emissary barely escaped to Tibet with his life. Thence he organised reprisals which apparently culminated in a resounding Chinese victory, ‘whereupon India was overawed’.

Although there is no mention in Indian sources of this first trans-Himalayan incursion, and although it was probably no more than a raid into northern Bengal, it was indicative of the vacuum left by Harsha. Thanks to Bana, his personal fame would indeed last, and in that he also sponsored religious debate, championed scholarship, and himself wrote plays, he has often been compared with Akbar, greatest of the Mughals. But there would be no ‘House of Harsha’ to bestride India during succeeding generations, no ‘Vardhana Age’ to foster the memory of northern India’s last
cakravartin
, and no ‘Kanauj School’ to continue his patronage of Buddhist ‘universities’ like Nalanda (Bihar) and of scholars like Bana. The red-hot coals vomited so freely by the fiery Harsha were extinguished in a hiss of steam as the political monsoon finally broke over the
arya-varta
heartland of northern India.

ROUND AND ROUND THE
MANDALA

It was not so elsewhere. Indeed there is ample evidence that the ideal of a universal, or pan-Indian, sovereignty simply shifted ground. With Harsha the hegemony so long assumed by northern India came to an end. Sixty years after his death, Arabs would establish a Muslim bridgehead in Sind, their task eased by his own incursions into that region. The north-west, or in other words most of what now comprises the rest of Pakistan, had been irrevocably humbled by the Huns and was now politically irrelevant. Into
the Gangetic heartland itself, adventurous dynasts from Kashmir, Bengal and the Deccan were about to raid, indeed briefly rule, with impunity. And where Harsha had signally failed to make of the Gupta tradition of paramountcy any more than a fragile and fleeting confederacy, other great dynasties, especially those of the Deccan and the south, would so refine and substantiate the concept as to make it their own.

In the course of his wanderings round India, Hsuan Tsang traversed an area of the western Deccan which he calls ‘Mo-ho-la-ch’a’. The translation of proper names from Chinese back into Sanskrit often stretches credulity, but in this case there is little room for doubt: by ‘Mo-ho-la-ch’a’ Hsuan Tsang meant Maharashtra. This was the land either side of the Western Ghats, once the patrimony of the trading Shatavahanas whose cave temples pocked its rocky outcrops, then of the Vakatakas who so loyally served the Guptas, and nowadays more or less the modern state of Maharashtra centred on Bombay. Hsuan Tsang found the soil rich and fertile, which in parts it is; the people were honest but implacable, and they included ‘a band of champions’ who, when both they and their elephants were fired up on alcohol, proved irresistible in battle. ‘No enemy can stand before them,’ wrote the visitor, wherefore their king was able to ‘treat his neighbours with contempt’.
¹⁰

The name of this contemptuous sovereign was given as ‘Pu-lo-ki-she’, otherwise Pulakesin II, and according to Hsuan Tsang his ambitions were extensive. At the time in question, c630, he was confidently defying even Harsha who, despite summoning all his troops plus the ablest commanders from his ‘five Indies’, and despite himself leading this horde in battle, had failed to impress Pulakesin II’s gladiators or to dent his roving ambitions.

Hsuan Tsang, and no doubt Harsha, saw this impasse as a stalemate; Pulakesin not unreasonably celebrated it as a victory. He belonged to a dynasty, the Chalukya, which because of its long-lasting consequence and numerous offshoots (whence it is often distinguished as the ‘Western Chalukya’) deserves special attention. The Chalukyas hailed from Karnataka to the south, and in the course of a couple of generations had soared to prominence at the expense of various neighbours, including the Kadambas, their erstwhile suzerains. Their capital, fortified by Pulakesin I, founder of the dynasty and the first to perform the horse-sacrifice (and also Pulakesin II’s grandfather), was situated at Vatapi, now Badami, a small town scrabbling up both sides of a cliff-stepped ravine in northern Karnataka.

There or thereabouts the Chalukyas would continue to celebrate their successes with a remarkable series of temples, at first cut into the rock but by the time of Pulakesin II already free-standing buildings. They were not
the first structural temples, timber and brick having been used for such constructions since long before the time of Christ. Nor were they the first stone-built temples: at Sanchi, Nalanda, Buddh Gaya and several other sites in eastern Madhya Pradesh, UP and Bihar a dozen scattered temples from the Gupta period survive in various degrees of dilapidation or over-zealous restoration. But at Badami and its neighbouring sites (Aihole, Mahakuta and Pattadakal) the feast of architecture and sculpture heralds a new identity between dynasty and endowment in which temple-building becomes an expression and paradigm of a sovereign’s authority.

On one of these temples, a rather plain construction dedicated to a Jain saint at Aihole, the poet Ravikirti recorded Pulakesin II’s successes. Reminiscent of Samudra-Gupta’s great Allahabad inscription, this record has the bonus of a date, equivalent to 636 in the Christian calendar. It makes the shrine ‘one of the earliest dated temples in India’
¹¹
and, as noted earlier, has provided a benchmark for chronological calculations reaching back even to Manu and the Flood. Here too, in presumptuously comparing his literary talents with those of Kalidasa, Ravikirti provides the earliest dated reference to ‘Sanskrit’s Shakespeare’; whenever Kalidasa lived, he must have been well dead by 636.

Of more relevance to the Chalukyas is the detailed listing of Pulakesin II’s extensive conquests. Since he succeeded to the throne after a period of internal strife, he had first to consolidate his hold on the Badami region, his base, by again subduing the Kadambas, Gangas and other rival kings in Karnataka. It was probably after this feat that he assumed the titles of
maharajadhiraja
and
paramesvara
(‘lord of the others’). The west coast (Konkan) from Goa up to and beyond where Bombay now stands was also subjugated while several of its islands, probably including that of Elephanta, were assaulted by the Chalukyan navy. Further north the Malavas of Malwa and the Gurjaras of southern Rajasthan submitted; and a Chalukyan viceroyalty was established in Gujarat. Clearly Chalukyan forces had crossed both the Tapti and Narmada rivers and were therefore threatening Harsha and his confederates.

Next in the Aihole listing comes Harsha himself. His stature is acknowledged in a well-worn cliché about his lotus feet gleaming with the jewels of those who bowed to his sway. But in identifying this formidable challenger the poet also introduces a neat pun on the word
harsa
(‘harsha’).
Harsa
as a noun means ‘joy’, and thus Pulakesin’s victory is signified by a phrase about how ‘the
harsa
[of his enemy] was melted away by fear’. Another source has it simply that the lord of the
Daksinapatha
(the ‘South’) routed the Lord of the
Uttarapatha
(the ‘North’).

Pulakesin’s circuit of conquest then continued east, flattening more rivals and reaching the Bay of Bengal in Orissa. Most of the rich lands comprising the Kistna and Godavari deltas in what is now Andhra Pradesh were placed in the care of his younger brother, whose descendants would constitute the ‘Eastern Chalukyas’, a dynasty which would survive until the eleventh century when it merged with its Chola allies of Tamil Nadu. From Vengi, as the Eastern Chalukya kingdom would be called, Pulakesin II resumed his victorious progress down the east coast into Pallava territory. Again his champions and their punch-drunk elephants triumphed as the Pallava king was forced to seek safety within the walls of Kanchipuram. There, unwisely in view of the sequel, Pulakesin left the Pallava and continued south. He crossed the Kaveri and completed his circuit by accepting overtures of friendship from the ancient kingdoms of the extreme south – the Cholas of the Kaveri delta, the Pandyas of Madurai and the Cheras of the Kerala coast.

Now ‘lord of both the eastern and the western seas’ and indisputably master of all India south of the Vindhya hills, Pulakesin II returned to Badami. Hsuan Tsang calls him a
ksatriya
yet credits him with magnanimity and foresight, qualities rarely accorded to a ‘heretic’ by the devout Buddhist, let alone to an enemy of his beloved Harsha. He is not mentioned in any other Chinese sources but some authorities insist that an Indian mission received by Khusru II of Persia in 625 must have been from the Chalukyan king.

However far-flung his fame, Pulakesin II’s manoeuvres as listed in the Aihole inscription are of great interest as an illustration of the theory of Indian paramountcy. The assumption is usually made that his triumphs, like those of Samudra-Gupta as recorded on the Allahabad pillar, are organised in chronological sequence. It cannot be proved; but what here is self-evident is that, whether chronological or not, they were certainly logical. Pulakesin was doing the rounds of his neighbours. South, west, north, east, and back to the south, the Chalukyan was circling – or was seen to be circling – a universe of territory, riding its bounds as it were just like Raghu in Kalidasa’s
Raghu-vamsa
. Both kings were, in Indian terms, defining a
raja-mandala
, the diagram of concentric ‘circles of kings’ which is discussed at length in Kautilya’s
Arthasastra
and other works on political theory.

In Indian cosmology the
mandala
design commonly serves as a map. At the centre is the sacred Mount Meru, the axis of the world, outside which the innermost circle is divided into four lands (
dvipa
); one of these four,
jambu-dvipa (‘
the land of the rose-apple’), is the earth. Outside this, the next circle is the sea, the next more land, then more sea and so on. The
seas are filled with, or named after, familiar liquids – obviously salt-water in the case of the first, then treacle, wine, butter and other kitchen ingredients. To literal minds, like that of Thomas Babington Macaulay, minds which had been schooled on the scientific certainties and rational arguments of the European Enlightenment, these ‘seas of treacle and butter’ would seem contemptible absurdities; India’s only hope of advancement lay in forsaking such nonsense, and to this end Macaulay, in a famous minute on Indian education in the 1830s, would issue a damning and still resented indictment of Indian culture as he insisted that India’s schools forsake Sanskrit and adopt a Western-style curriculum.