MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 711
Rajputana and Sind. Their capital was at first Pataliputra, but afterwards Kausambi and Ayodhya became royal residences.
The fall of the Guptas was brought about by another invasion of barbarians known as Huns, Ephthalites [1] or White Huns and apparently a branch of the Huns who invaded Europe. This branch remained behind in Asia and occupied northern Persia. They invaded India first in 455, and were repulsed, but returned about 490 in greater force and overthrew the Guptas. Their kings Tormana and Mihiragula were masters of northern India till 540 and had their local capital at Sialkot in the Panjab, though their headquarters were rather in Bamiyan and Balkh. The cruelties of Mihiragula provoked a coalition of Hindu princes. The Huns were driven to the north and about 565 A. D. their destruction was completed by the allied forces of the Persians and Turks. Though they founded no permanent states their invasion was important, for many of them together with kindered tribes such as the Gurjars (Gujars) remained behind when their political power broke up and, like the Sakas and Kushans before them, contributed to form the population of north-western India, especially the Rajput clans.
The defeat of the Huns was followed by another period of obscurity, but at the beginning of the seventh century Harsha (606-647 A. D.), a prince of Thanesar, founded after thirty five years of warfare, a state which though it did not outlast his own life, emulated for a time the dimensions and prosperity of the Gupta Empire. We gather from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Chaung, who visited his court at Kanauj, that the kings of Bengal, Assam and Ujjain were his vassals but that the Panjab, Sind and Kashmir were independent. Kalinga, to the south of Bengal was depopulated but Harsha was not able to subdue Pulakesin II, the Calukya king of the Deccan.
Let us now turn for a moment to the history of the south. It is even more obscure both in events and chronology than that of the north, but we must not think of the Dravidian countries as uninhabited or barbarius. Even the classical writers of Europe had some
- For authorities see Vincent Smith, Early History of India, 1908, p. 401.