Page:The Harsa-carita of Bana (1897).djvu/14

 the additional help which we have received in our task from other quarters.

The great merit of the Harsa-carita consists in the fact that it is a very early attempt at an historical romance. Bana's other work, the Kadambari, and Subandhu's Vasavadatta deal with mythological fiction, and everything is viewed through a highly poetical atmosphere; and the Daca-kumara-carita is equally based on pure imagination, although its characters, as in the picaresco literature of modern Europe, are the exaggerated pictures of the vulgar rogues and ruffians of every great city. But the author of the Harsa-carita has taken his own sovereign as his hero and has woven the story out of the actual events of his reign. The narrative can be often illustrated by contemporary inscriptions, in fact it is as much based on real events as Scott's Quentin Durward or Waverley. This gives to it a peculiar character which distinguishes it from all other works of Sanskrit literature. In studying any other classical Sanskrit writing we are generally obliged to infer the date of its composition by a careful examination of the accidental allusions or the peculiar words and phrases which it may contain, or by tracing the earliest quotations from it in subsequent authors ; it is the special interest of the Harsa-carita that it treats of a period, which happens to be almost as familiar to the student of Indian history as the reign of any of the early Muhammadan monarchs of Northern India.

Sri-harsa, who gives his name to the story, was the ruler at whose court the Chinese Buddhist traveller Hiuen Thsang for a time resided, who has left us such a precious description of India as he actually saw it in the early part of the seventh century (A.D. 630 644); and, fortunately for us, Sri-harsa was a king who well deserved to have this strong light thrown upon his reign. He was the Akbar of the ' Hindu period ' of Indian history ; and under his wise toleration the adherents of