Part 10 (2/2)
It was in his later years that King Harsha became a p.r.o.nounced Buddhist. This was largely owing to the preachings and teachings of Hiuen T'sang, in honour of whom a solemn a.s.semblage was held at Kanauj in the fresh spring-time of the year A.D. 644. The scene is admirably given in Hiuen T'sang's Record, and is well worth a reading. We can imagine the king carrying in person the canopy upheld over the golden statuette of Buddha; we can see him ”moving along, scattering golden blossoms, pearls and other rare gems.” We catch a glimpse of the flaming monastery accidentally catching fire, to be extinguished by the mere sight of the good Harsha. The rush of the mad Hindu fanatic to slay this ”favourer of Buddhists” comes as a startling incident, to be followed by the immediate exile of five hundred Brahmans for high treason.
Then we learn of the journey to Prag (Allahabad), where every five years Harsha, in accordance with ancient custom, had held a distribution of alms.[2]
[Footnote 2: This a.s.semblage, or fair, still exists, under the name of the Magh-mela.]
The description of this is even more entrancing, and we can take part in all the ceremonials of the seventy-five days during which Buddha, the Sun, and Siva were apparently wors.h.i.+pped indiscriminately. The proceedings were opened by a magnificent procession of feudatory princes, and ended with a forty-days' distribution of alms to all and sundry.
After this, Hiuen T'sang writes,
”the royal acc.u.mulation of five years was exhausted. Except the horses, elephants and military accoutrements ... nothing remained....
The king gave away his gems and goods, his clothing and neck-laces, ear-rings, bracelets, chaplets, neck jewels, and bright head jewel; all these he freely gave away without stint.”
Was it a real gifting, we wonder, or, after duly wors.h.i.+pping in a borrowed second-hand suit, did Harsha return to his palace to find his wardrobe much the same as ever?
The hint of unreality in all things provokes the question.
King Harsha died in A.D. 648, shortly after his beloved Chinese pilgrim had departed for his native land. Once again it has to be written that the ”withdrawal of the strong arm plunged the country into disorder.”
Arjuna, his minister, seized the throne, but drew down on himself the wrath of China, and after a brief interval was carried thither as a prisoner.
Meanwhile, no one appeared to take the reins. In truth, degeneration had already set in. The people who had posed so long as a nation of culture, of refinement, who had spent their lives in applauding poetasters, who had laughed when the court wit said the commander-in-chief's nose was as long as the king's pedigree, who had been ready to wors.h.i.+p any G.o.d if so be the ceremonial pleased their aesthetic sense, who had given free pa.s.s to their emotions in all ways, such people were not ready for action. And so once for all the clouds cover Hindu supremacy.
The next four hundred years are the Dark Ages of Indian history. Even the impressionist outlook of our case of coins is denied us. A thousand names jostle each other in commonplace confusion. In the chaos of conflicting claims, any attempt at cla.s.sification is hopeless.
CHAOS
A.D. 700 TO A.D. 1001
These, as has been said, are the Dark Ages of Hindustan. She has ever been the prey of personality, the willing victim of vitality. From the year B.C. 620, when her real history begins, until now, that history has been that of individuals who have either risen from her ranks, or appeared on her horizon; who have dominated her imagination, and left her too often at their death confused, helpless, to fall back into the bewildering anarchy of petty princedoms.
The light s.h.i.+nes clearly for a few years, reflected by one man's keen sword, or keener eyes; and then the strong arm falls, the vision fails, and India sinks back into the Great Apathy concerning things sublunary which is ever her most salient characteristic.
And these three hundred years give us no personality striking enough to be seen through the mist which settled down like a pall over India after the death of Harsha. This death, says Mr Vincent Smith, ”loosened the bonds which restrained the disruptive forces always ready to operate in India, and allowed them to produce their normal result: a medley of petty states with ever-varying boundaries, and engaged in unceasing internecine war.”
No new thing this in the past history of India; it will be no new thing in the future, for Hindustan will always need some strong, centralising, magnetic force to hold together its innumerable atoms.
It is true that in literature some few names hover doubtfully about the eighth century, and that round the outskirts of India, in Kashmir, Nepaul, Madras, Ceylon, we hear every now and again of events which arrest the attention for a moment. The rea.s.sertion of Chinese influence along the northern borderland, though brief, was noteworthy, and in Kashmir the names of several kings and one queen stand out from the general _posse_. Amongst them that of Laladitya, who built the famous Temple of the Sun at Martand, not far from Bawun in Kashmir. A magnificent ruin this, standing out sharply against both the rising in the east and the setting in the west; set high on one of those lofty _karewas_, or tablelands, which are so marked a characteristic of Kashmir. Fringing the mighty mountains, they stretch like promontories into the rice and saffron fields, still showing by their precipitous sides the force of the mighty flood which at some time must have swept through the valley, lowering its levels, and leaving these landmarks to tell of its pa.s.sage.
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