t
all accurately dated. To the credit of Brahmanism be it said that in its
hour of triumph it remained at least negatively tolerant, as all purely
Indian creeds generally have been. Fa-Hien, who visited India during the
reign of Vikramadytia, though dismayed at the desolation which had
already overtaken many of the sacred places of Buddhism, pays a generous
tribute to the tolerance and statesmanship of that great sovereign. The
country seems, indeed, to have enjoyed real prosperity under a paternal
and almost model administration.

Yet the Gupta dynasty endured only a little longer than had that of the
Mauryas. Its downfall was hastened by the long reign of terror which
India went through during the invasion of the White Huns. Europe had
undergone a like ordeal nearly a century earlier, for when the Huns
began to move out of the steppes of Eastern Asia they poured forth in
two separate streams, one of which swept into Eastern Europe, whilst the
other flowed more slowly towards Persia and India. What Attila had been
to Europe, Mihiragula was to India, and though the domination of the
Huns did not long outlive him, the anarchy they left behind them
continued for another century, until "the land of Kuru," the cradle and
battle-field of so many legendary heroes, produced another heroic
figure, who, as King Harsha, filled for more than forty years (606-648)
the stage of Indian history with his exploits. He had inherited the
blood of the Gupta emperors from his mother, though his father was only
a small Raja of Thanesvar, to the north of Delhi. The tragic
circumstances in which he succeeded him made a man of him at the early
age of fourteen. By the time he was twenty he was "master of the five
Indias"--_i.e._ of nearly the whole of Northern India from Kathiawar to
the delta of the Ganges, and henceforth he proved himself as great in
peace as in war. In his case the knowledge we owe to Chinese sources is
supplemented by the valuable record left by the Brahman Bana, who lived
at his court and wrote the Harsha-Charita. Taxation, we are told, was
lightened, and the assessment of land revenue was equitable and
moderate. Security for life and property was enforced under severe but
effective penalties. Education received impartial encouragement whether
conducted by Brahmans or by Buddhist monks, and both as a patron of
literature, which he himself cultivated by composing dramas, and as a
philanthropic ruler King Harsha bestowed his