Harshа: A New Cultural Study (An Account of Society, Economy and Cultural Developments within the Paradigm of Indian Feudalism)

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The reign of Harsha (606-647 A.D.) is a comparatively well-documented period of ancient Indian history. But it is indeed surprising that no full-length study of culture of the period has been attempted by any scholar since the publication of Professor VS. Agrawala's classic work entitled Harshacharita: Eka Samskrtika Adhyayana from Patna in 1953. The present work is divided into nine chapters Introduction: The Making of Early Medieval Indian Society (pp. 1-24), Religion and the Medieval Trends in the Religious Activities of Harsha (pp. 25-38), Social Organisation in the Age of Harsha and the Impact of Feudalism (pp. 39-62), Society and Social Life in the Age of Transition (pp. 63-81), Economy and the Feudal Tendencies in the Economic Life of the Age of Harsha (pp. 82-103), Political Culture of the Age of Harsha and the Feudalization of Administrative Structure (pp. 104-129), The 'Medieval' Factor in Indian Art (pp. 130-143), Literary Activities under Harsha: (i) Bana and the Writing of Harshacharita (pp. 144-180), Literary Activities under Harsha: (ii) The Problem of the Authorship of the Three Plays: Ratnavali, Priyadarsika and Nagananda (pp. 181-188), and an Appendix entitled Art and Architecture of the Age of Harsha as Known from the Literary Sources (pp. 189-196) and contains an exhaustive bibliography. This work is different from other existing works on the subject because it seeks to study the culture of the age of Harsha not only as an aggregate of the data found in the works of Bana and other contemporary writers, but as the cultural situation which marked the end of the 'classicism' of the Gupta age and the beginning of the early 'medievalism'. When looked with the help of these two peep-holes - the classical culture of the Gupta period and the medieval culture of the Rajput age-the works of Bana, Yuan Chwang and their contemporaries appear to yield new meaning and light.

Shankar Goyal, M.A., Ph.D., D. Litt., is the retired Professor of History, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, and one of the well known authorities of ancient Indian history and historiography. Apart from about 150 articles published in reputed journals, he has published 50 voluminous works including Recent Historiography of Ancient India, Marxist Interpretation of Ancient Indian History. Contemporary Interpreters of Ancient India, Ancient India: A Multidisciplinary Approach, 175 Years of Vakataka History and Historiography, Harsha: A Multidisciplinary Political Study, Harsha Revisited: A Re-interpretation of Existing Data, The Significance of Yuan Chwang in the Context of the Seventh Century: A Critical Assessment, State, Society and Culture: Early India: 300 AD to 900 AD and The Classical Age: A Study in Feudalization. His books and many articles brought him encomiums from scholars such as Professors R. N. Dandekar, G.C. Pande, R.S. Sharma, Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar, R. Champakalakshmi, Shireen Moosvi, Kumkum Roy, A.M. Shastri, Bardwell L. Smith (Minnesota, U.S.A.), Walter alter M. M. Spink (Michigan, U.S.A.), Maurizio Taddei (Napoli, Italy) and P. K. Mitra (Rajshahi, Bangladesh). In 2009 Professor Goyal presided over the Cultural History Section of the XXIX Annual Session of the South Indian History Congress, in 2012 he was elected General President of the XXXVII Annual Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India, and in 2016 he was invited to preside over the Historiography Section of the XXIII Annual Session of the Tamilnadu History Congress. Recently in December 2017 he presided over Section I (Ancient India) of the 78th Session of the Indian History Congress held at Jadavpur University, Kolkata (Bengal). He was also invited by the Organising Committee of the 16th World Sanskrit Conference, 2015, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, to participate in the deliberations of their Epigraphy Section to promote Indian epigraphical studies on the world forum. He has also travelled extensively in China, Australia, United States, Canada, Europe, Sudan and Egypt.

The reign of Harsha (606-647 A.D.) is a comparatively well-documented period of ancient Indian history. But it is indeed surprising that no full- length study of culture of the period has been attempted since the publication of Professor V.S. Agrawala's classic work Harshacharita: Eka Sämskṛtika Adhyayana from Patna in 1953. That the present work appears more than six decades after and many years after briefer accounts by well-known scholars is a matter of huge satisfaction for me. In this study I have looked upon the culture of the age of Harsha not only as an aggregate of the data found in the works of Bäņa and other contemporary writers, but as the cultural situation which marked the end of the 'classicism' of the Gupta age and the beginning of the early 'medievalism'. When looked with the help of these two peep-holes the classical culture of the Gupta period and the medieval culture of the Rajput age the works of Bāņa, Yuan Chwang and their contemporaries appear to yield new meaning and light. This, of course, could not have been possible without the invaluable Indian and Chinese sources, nor without the numerous studies on ancient Indian polity and feudalism. To these sources I am sincerely indebted.

My researches in the history of the age of Harsha commenced in the middle of the eighties of the last century. Since then I have published more than thirty research papers and several monographs dealing directly and indirectly with the history of this monarch and his times.

If we exclude Asoka, the ruler best known to us from ancient India would undoubtedly be Harsha. True, unlike Asoka's series of inscriptions on rocks and pillars, only three copper-plate grants survive from Harsha. But then, we have two contemporary witnesses, totally independent from each other, who have left accounts of him in writings, each of which forms a class by itself. One is Bāņa, himself a great name in Sanskrit literature, who wrote Harshacharita, the first royal biography in Sanskrit; the other, the Chinese pilgrim Yuan Chwang (Xuan Zhwang), who wrote his great work, The Records of the Western World, whose information is supplemented by his Life compiled by Hui Li. Both these works have received much scholarly attention. The Harshacharita, a notably difficult text, has been rendered into English by E. B. Cowell and F. W. Thomas (London, 1929), while P.V. Kane has edited it with very important detailed commentary (2nd ed., Delhi, 1962). Yuan Chwang's Records have been translated by Samuel Beal as Si-Yu-Kior Buddhist Records of the Western World, 2 vols., London, 1884, followed by Thomas Watters' critical commentary, On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 2 vols., London, 1905. The first biography of Harsha based on this material came from K. Μ. Panikkar, then Professor at Aligarh, who published his Śrī Harsha of Kanauj in 1922, followed by Radha Kumud Mookerji's more substantive Harsha (1926), and then, after a long interval, by D. Devahuti's Harsha, A Political Study (1970). Professor Shankar Goyal himself, the author of the present volume, has published three works on Harsha, viz., History and Historiography of the Age of Harsha (1992), Harsha, A Multidisciplinary Political Study (2006, second edn., 2023) and Harsha Revisited: A Re-interpretation of Existing Data (2018), and also a couple of other works on the age of Harsha, viz., The Significance of Yuan Chwang in the Context of the Seventh Century: A Critical Assessment (2018) and The Classical Age: A Study in Feudalization (2022).