The ''Harshacharita'' ( sa, हर्षचरित, ) (''The deeds of Harsha''), is the

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n emperor

Harsha Harshavardhana ( IAST Harṣa-vardhana; c. 590–647 CE) was a Pushyabhuti emperor who ruled northern India from 606 to 647 CE. He was the son of Prabhakaravardhana who had defeated the Alchon Huna invaders, and the younger brother of Rajy ...

by Banabhatta, also known as Bana, who was a

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

writer of seventh-century CE India. He was the ''Asthana Kavi'', meaning ''Court Poet'', of Harsha. The ''Harshacharita'' was the first composition of Bana and is considered to be the beginning of writing of historical poetic works in the Sanskrit language. The ''Harshacharita'' ranks as the first historical biography in Sanskrit although it is written in a florid and fanciful style. Bana's detailed and vivid descriptions of rural India's natural environment as well as the extraordinary industry of the Indian people exudes the vitality of life at that time. Since he received the patronage of the emperor Harsha, his descriptions of his patron are not an unbiased appraisal and presents the emperor's actions in an overly favourable light.

The ''Harṣacharita'', written in ornate poetic prose, narrates the biography of the emperor Harsha in eight ''ucchvāsa''s (chapters). In the first two ''ucchvāsa''s, Bana gives an account of his ancestry and his early life. He was the great emperor.

Commentaries

The only commentary available is the ''Sanketa'' written by Shankara, a scholar from Kashmir. It seems that Ruyyaka also wrote a commentary known as the ''Harsacaritavartika'', which has not yet been found. The work was translated into English by

Edward Byles Cowell Edward Byles Cowell, (23 January 1826 – 9 February 1903) was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. Cowell was born in Ipswich, the son of Charles Cowell and Marianne Byles. Elizabet ...

and Frederick William Thomas in 1897. The military historian Kaushik Roy describes ''Harshacharita'' as "historical fiction" but with a factually correct foundation. This work was translated into Telugu prose by M. V. Ramanachari (Medepalli Venkata Ramanacharyulu) of Maharajah's College, Vizianagaram in 1929.

References

External links

* Indian biographies Sanskrit literature 7th-century Indian books Biographies about royalty {{royal-bio-book-stub

Contents

Commentaries

See also

References

Further reading

External links