Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/354

 310 THE REIGN OF HARSHA A curious legend, narrated by Taranath, the Tibetan historian of Buddhism, if founded on fact, as it may be, indicates that Harsha's toleration did not extend to foreign religions. The story runs that the king built near Multan a great monastery constructed of timber after the foreign fashion, in which he entertained the strange teachers hospitably for several months, and that at the close of the entertainment he set fire to the building, and consumed along with it twelve thousand followers of the outlandish system, with all their books. This drastic measure is said to have reduced the relig- ion of the Persians and Sakas to very narrow limits for a century, and it is alleged that their doctrine, pre- sumably Zoroastrianism, was kept alive only by a single weaver in Khorasan. King Harsha was so delighted with the discourse of Hiuen Tsang, whom he had met while in camp in Bengal, that he resolved to hold a special assembly at Kanauj, which was then his capital, for the purpose of giving the utmost publicity to the Master's teaching. The king marched along the southern bank of the Ganges, attended by an enormous multitude, while his vassal Kumara, King of Kamarupa, with a large but less numerous following, kept pace with him on the opposite bank. Advancing slowly in this way, Harsha, Kumara, and the attendant host reached Kanauj in the course of ninety days, and there encamped, in February or March, 644 A. D. The sovereign was received by Kumara, the Raja of Kamarupa, who had accompanied him on the march, the Raja of Valabhi in Western