- Lived:
- c. 590s–c. 650 CE · Prāgjyotiṣapura (in modern Guwahati) → the Brahmaputra valley kingdom of Kāmarūpa, and, at the height of his life, an army camp in conquered Bengal
- Field:
- kingship — last ruler of the Varman dynasty of Kāmarūpa, ally of Harṣa, host of Xuanzang
- The Big Idea:
- A frontier king made his far-eastern kingdom indispensable to the empire of its day — by alliance, by learning, by sheer nerve — and wrote the Northeast into India's classical story in its own documents. Assam still counts its years from him.
- In their words:
- "Do you, my master, suppose that your disciple has no such power? … I will equip my army and elephants, and like a cloud sweep down on and trample to the very dust that monastery of Nālandā." (his message to the abbot who refused to send him Xuanzang, as reported in Huili's Life, translated by Samuel Beal)
- If you remember one thing:
- When an Assamese almanac prints this year's date in the Bhāskarābda era, it is counting from the accession of a seventh-century king of Kāmarūpa — the clearest case in India of a man who became a calendar.