- Lived:
- 590–647 CE · born at Sthāṇvīśvara (Thanesar, in modern Haryana) → ruled the Gangetic north from Kanyākubja (Kannauj), dying at fifty-seven with no heir
- Field:
- empire — the Puṣyabhūti (Vardhana) dynasty's one great reign; also Sanskrit drama (three surviving plays) and religious patronage on a continental scale
- The Big Idea:
- The last ruler to hold most of northern India together before the Turkish conquests was also a working playwright and a scheduled philanthropist — and he is the only ancient Indian king we can check from three independent directions: his court poet's biography, a Chinese pilgrim's records, and his own hand.
- In their words:
- "I will put it on and offer to the son of Vinatā my own body as food, to save the life of thy son." (the self-sacrificing hero of the Nāgānanda — a play the emperor wrote himself; Palmer Boyd's 1872 translation)
- If you remember one thing:
- Every five years Harṣa emptied his entire treasury to a vast crowd at Prayāga, down to his own jewels and clothes, and finished the festival bowing in a worn garment borrowed from his sister — and the empire that could afford this died with him within a year, because it was never a machine, only a man.