Harshacharita

01A prayer, then a roll of poets

Bana opens with Shambhu, the pillar planted at the founding of the city of the three worlds, and with Uma; then he bows to Vyasa, who made the Bharata rain merit on the world. Before he says a word about Harsha he looks back at the poets before him and names them: the Vasavadatta that humbled every poet’s pride, Bhattara Harishchandra’s prose, the Prakrit treasury of Satavahana, Pravarasena’s Setubandha, Bhasa’s plays that begin with the sutradhara, Kalidasa’s verses like honey-filled mango blossom, and Gunadhya’s Brihatkatha. No earlier Indian author gives such a list, and literary historians date half a dozen poets by it.

02Sarasvati on the Shona

Bana traces his family to a katha. In Brahma’s assembly the sage Durvasa, singing a Sama chant, strikes a false note; Sarasvati laughs, and Durvasa curses her to be born on earth. She comes down beside the river Shona, and there marries Dadhicha, son of Chyavana. Their son Sarasvata grows up, and his cousin Vatsa founds the line of Vatsyayana brahmins who settle on the Shona. Generations later Bana is born into that family at Pritikuta. The first ucchvasa ends with the boy losing his mother early and his father at fourteen, and a description of the Shona’s waters that Sanskrit teachers still read aloud.

03‘A great rake, this one’

Orphaned and restless, the young Bana wanders with a crowd of friends he lists by name and calling: two half-brothers, the Bhasha poet Ishana, singers and drummers, a snake-doctor, a goldsmith, a gambler, a Shaiva, a Jain monk, a woman ascetic, a magician. Wiser in the end, he comes home. Then a letter arrives from Harsha’s brother Krishna, saying slanderers have spoken against him at court and he should come. Bana walks to the royal camp by the Ajiravati. When he is presented, Harsha turns to the Malava prince behind him and says aloud, ‘This one is a great rake.’ Bana answers with dignity that he is a brahmin of good family whose follies were those of youth. Within days the king’s favour turns warm.

04Pushyabhuti and the house of Thanesar

Back home, his kinsmen ask Bana to tell the story of the king he has met, and the third ucchvasa begins it. The land of Shrikantha and its city of Sthanvishvara, Thanesar, are described with a lover’s detail. Its first king of note is Pushyabhuti, a devotee of Shiva so firm that the Shaiva ascetic Bhairavacharya chooses him as helper for a rite in a cremation ground at night. The king stands guard with his sword through terrors of the dark. At the close the goddess Lakshmi rises before him and blesses him: from his line will come a great king, a chakravartin. Bana means Harsha.

05Prabhakaravardhana, lion to the Huna deer

Many generations later comes Prabhakaravardhana, whom Bana crowns with a string of titles: a lion to the Huna deer, a fever to the king of Sindhu, a sleeplessness to the Gurjaras, a bilious plague to the elephant of Gandhara. He worships the Sun daily. Queen Yashomati dreams of the sun entering her, and bears Rajyavardhana, then Harsha, then a daughter, Rajyashri. The fourth ucchvasa ends with Rajyashri’s wedding to Grahavarman of the Maukhari house of Kanyakubja, described with such care, from the plastering of the courtyard to the bride’s dress, that historians use it for the customs of the age.

06Grief upon grief

Rajyavardhana is sent north against the Hunas, and Harsha rides with him to the hills, then stays behind hunting. A messenger finds him: the king is ill with fever. Harsha rides home to a palace full of physicians and prayers. Queen Yashomati, unwilling to live as a widow, enters the fire on the bank of the Sarasvati before her husband dies, and Prabhakaravardhana passes soon after. Rajyavardhana returns wounded from victory and, crushed with grief, asks Harsha to rule while he takes to the forest. Then news arrives that the king of Malava has killed Grahavarman and thrown Rajyashri in chains at Kanyakubja.

07Harsha’s vow and the march

Rajyavardhana forgets the forest and marches on Malava with ten thousand horse. He wins, and is then killed by the king of Gauda, who had lured him with false friendliness; other sources name that king Shashanka. In the sixth ucchvasa Harsha, still young, swears before his commander Simhanada that unless he clears the earth of Gaudas within a set number of days he will enter the fire. The seventh is the march, and Bana’s picture of the army breaking camp before dawn is one of the longest and liveliest sentences in Sanskrit: drums, elephants, quarrelling grooms, overloaded carts, villagers running from trampled fields. An envoy from Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa arrives with a jewelled umbrella and an offer of alliance.

08Rajyashri at the pyre

News comes that Rajyashri has escaped from Kanyakubja into the Vindhya forest. Harsha leaves the army to his cousin Bhandi and goes after her himself. The eighth ucchvasa walks through the forest villages, with their charcoal-burners, honey-gatherers, bird-catchers and women carrying fruit to market, a picture of rural India no inscription gives. A Shabara youth leads the king to the ashram of Divakaramitra, a brahmin turned Buddhist teacher, round whom students of every school sit debating. A monk brings word of a grieving woman about to enter a fire nearby. Harsha runs, and reaches his sister as she steps towards the flames. Divakaramitra comforts her, and there Bana stops.

09Prose that historians trust

The Harshacharita is an akhyayika, a prose narrative told by its author about real people, divided into ucchvasas, breaths. Its sentences can run a page, compound piled on compound, and the old saying is that Bana left nothing for later poets to say. Yet for historians it is the first Sanskrit biography of a living king, and on the main events it agrees with the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who stayed at Harsha’s court, and with Harsha’s own copper plates from Banskhera and Madhuban. Shankara’s Sanketa is the old commentary; Cowell and Thomas translated it in 1897, and Vasudev Sharan Agrawala’s Hindi study reads it as a handbook of seventh-century life.

What it contains

1. 1
   Ucchvasa 1

   The invocation and Bana’s verses on earlier poets. Sarasvati’s descent to the Shona by Durvasa’s curse, Dadhicha, and the origin of the Vatsyayana line down to Bana’s birth and orphaning.

2. 2
   Ucchvasa 2

   Bana’s wandering youth and his circle of friends. Krishna’s letter, the walk to Harsha’s camp, the cold first audience and the king’s later favour.

3. 3
   Ucchvasa 3

   Bana’s kinsmen ask for the king’s story. The land of Shrikantha and Thanesar, and King Pushyabhuti’s service to Bhairavacharya, rewarded by Lakshmi’s blessing on his line.

4. 4
   Ucchvasa 4

   Prabhakaravardhana and Yashomati; the births of Rajyavardhana, Harsha and Rajyashri. Rajyashri’s marriage to the Maukhari Grahavarman of Kanyakubja.

5. 5
   Ucchvasa 5

   Rajyavardhana sent against the Hunas; the king’s fever. Yashomati enters the fire and Prabhakaravardhana dies.

6. 6
   Ucchvasa 6

   Rajyavardhana’s grief and wish to renounce, the news of Grahavarman’s murder, Rajyavardhana’s victory over Malava and death by the Gauda king’s treachery. Harsha’s vow and Simhanada’s war-speech.

7. 7
   Ucchvasa 7

   The army breaks camp and marches. The embassy of Hamsavega from Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa, and Bhandi’s report that Rajyashri has fled into the Vindhyas.

8. 8
   Ucchvasa 8

   The search through the Vindhya forest villages, Divakaramitra’s ashram, and the rescue of Rajyashri at the edge of the fire. The work ends here, unfinished.

Famous verses

नमस्तुङ्गशिरश्चुम्बिचन्द्रचामरचारवे । त्रैलोक्यनगरारम्भमूलस्तम्भाय शम्भवे ॥

Salutation to Shambhu, beautiful with the moon that kisses his lofty head like a royal chowrie, the foundation pillar set at the building of the city of the three worlds.Harshacharita, Ucchvasa 1, verse 1

नमः सर्वविदे तस्मै व्यासाय कविवेधसे । चक्रे पुण्यं सरस्वत्या यो वर्षमिव भारतम् ॥

Salutation to the all-knowing Vyasa, creator among poets, who through Sarasvati made the Bharata holy, as one makes a land holy by rain.Harshacharita, Ucchvasa 1, verse 3

सूत्रधारकृतारम्भैर्नाटकैर्बहुभूमिकैः । सपताकैर्यशो लेभे भासो देवकुलैरिव ॥

Bhasa won fame with his plays, begun by the sutradhara, full of many roles and with their patakas, as one wins fame by temples founded by an architect, many-storeyed and bearing flags.Harshacharita, Ucchvasa 1, verse 15

निर्गतासु न वा कस्य कालिदासस्य सूक्तिषु । प्रीतिर्मधुरसान्द्रासु मञ्जरीष्विव जायते ॥

When Kalidasa’s fine sayings come forth, dense with sweetness like clusters of mango blossom, who does not feel delight?Harshacharita, Ucchvasa 1, verse 16