This cultural commentary of the Harshacharita is a close analytical study of Bana’s great work which is acclaimed as a gazeteer of Harshia’s court in poetical style. The cultural material brought together in the following pages is essential for the study of Indian History and Culture relating to the Gupta and post-Gupta civilisation.
What the Ajanta paintings present to us, as the rich pictures of Indian civilisation in the fifth-sixth centuries A. D., isin no way in excess of what the two great works of Banabhatta present to us in words about the detaiis of the Gupta civilisation.
There are several portions in the text of the Harshacharita which are made clear for the first time in this commentary. Many a difficult passage, that had remained unintelligible uptil now, will be found understood here in their proper context and cultural background. The author has thus recovered for modern scholarship the true meanings of Bana’s long interminable descriptions and compound sentences by focusing the light of comparative evidence and know- ledge from many sources, viz., Indian art and paintipgs literary and cultural tradition, institutions, and also linguistic parallels.
Fortunately Bana’s date is well-nigh certain. He lived in the first half of the seventh century when Gupta Culture had attained its optimum development. Art, religion, philosophy, polity, social ‘life and many other institutions of the ; Golden Age were blazing in full lustre in the time of Bana and his patron king Harsha. Scholars have usually studied Bana as a poct or literary writer, but - in the present work it is from an altogether new approach that Bana’s text is analysed and expatiated at length. "What once was wearisome in the Harshacharita now becomes fiery, each word of it pregnant with purposive meaning in its cultural context.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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