HARSHA, or Harshavardhana (fl.
620) he came in contact with Pulakesin II., the greatest of the Chalukya dynasty, who made himself lord of the south, as Harsha was lord of the north.
See Bana, Sri-harsha-charita, trans.
Cowell and Thomas (1897); Ettinghausen, Harsha Vardhana (Louvain, 1906).
The Mala y a dynasty maintained Hindu civilization in the 6th century, and from 606 to 646 Harsha established a brief but brilliant empire in the north with its capital at Kanauj.
But after Harsha Hindu history is lost in a maze of small and transitory states, incapable of resisting the ever advancing Mahommedan peril.
In 620 Pulakesin defeated Harsha, the powerful overlord of northern India, and established the Nerbudda as the boundary between the South and North.
After the fall of the central power, the scattered Hunnish settlers, like so many before them, became rapidly Hinduized, and are probably the ancestors of some of the most famous Rajput clans.4 The last native monarch, prior to the Mahommedan conquest,' to establish and maintain paramount power in the north was Harsha, or Harshavardhana (also known as Siladitya), for whose reign (606-648) full and trustworthy materials exist in the book of travels written by the Chinese pilgrim Hstian Tsang and the Harsha-charita (Deeds of Harsha) composed by Bana, a Brahman who lived at the royal court.
Harsha was the younger son of the raja of Thanesar, and gained his first experience of campaigning while still a boy in the successful wars 2 V.
