204 Repjort of the Archaeological Survey. [No. 4. 



proximity to Kanoj is in favour of the sovereignty which they claim 

 for their ancestors over the whole of the Gangetic Doab from Delhi to 

 Allahabad. But their genealogical lists are too imperfect, and most 

 probably also too incorrect, to enable us to identify any of their recorded 

 ancestors with the Princes of Harsha Vardhana's family. 



252. The vast empire which Harsha Vardhana raised during his 

 long reign of 44 years, between A. D. 607 and 650, is described by 

 Hwen Thsang as extending from the foot of the Kashmir hills to 

 Assam, and from Nepal to the Narbada River. He intimidated the 

 Raja of Kashmir into surrendering the tooth of Buddha, and his 

 triumphal procession from Pataliputra to Kanoj was attended by no 

 less than 20 tributary Rajas from Assam and Magadha on the east, 

 to Jalandhar on the west. In the plenitude of his power, Harsha 

 Vardhana invaded the countries to the south of the Narbada, where 

 he was successfully opposed by Raja Pulakesi, and after many repulses 

 was obliged to retire to his own kingdom. This account of Hwen 

 Thsang is most singularly corroborated in every particular by several 

 ancient inscriptions of the Chdlukya Rajas of Kalydn. According to 

 these inscriptions, Raja Vikramaditya, the grandson of Pulakesi Yal- 

 ldbha : gained the title of Paramesivara, " by the defeat of Sri Harsha 

 Vardhana, famous in the north countries.*" Now Vikramaditya's 

 reign is known to have commenced in Sake 514, or A. D. 592, as one 

 of his inscriptions is dated in Sake 580, or A. D. 608, which is called 

 the 16th year of his reign ; f and as his grandson did not succeed to the 

 throne until the Sake year 618, or A. D. 696, it is certain- that Vikrama- 

 ditya must have been a contemporary of Harsha Vardhana throughout 

 the greater part, if not the whole, of his reign, The unusually long 

 reigns of the earlier Chdlukya Princes have led Mr. Walter Elliot to 

 suspect the accuracy of the dates, although, as he points out," the 

 succeeding dates tally with each other in a way that affords the strongest 

 presumption of their freedom from any material error." The question 

 of the accuracy of these dates is now most satisfactorily confirmed by 

 the unimpeachable testimony of the contemporary record of Hwen 

 Thsang which I have quoted above. 



* Bombay Asiatic Society's Journal, III. 206. 

 f Royal Asiatic Society's Journal IV. 10. 



