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 favours with a fairly equal hand on Hinduism and on Buddhism alike.  For Buddhism still lingered in the land, and Harsha, who was a mystic and a dreamer as well as a man of action, certainly inclined during his later years towards Buddhism, or, at least, included it in his own eclectic creed.

Hiuen-Tsang, who spent fifteen years in India during Harsha’s reign, searching for the relics of early Buddhism in a land from which it was steadily disappearing, has given us a wonderful picture of a religious state-pageant which makes Prayaga, at the triple confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna with the sacred but invisible river, Saraswati, near to the modern city of Allahabad, stand out as another striking landmark in Indian history.  Hindus attach great holiness to rivers and their confluence, and this Triveni, or triple confluence, had been specially consecrated by Brahma, who chose that spot for the first Asvamedha.  “From ancient times,” says the Chinese chronicler, “the kings used to go there to distribute alms, and hence it was known as the Place of Almsgiving.  According to tradition more merit is gained by giving one piece of money there than one hundred thousand elsewhere.”  So King Harsha having invited all alike, whether “followers of the law or heretics, the ascetics and the poor, the orphans and the helpless,” the kings of eighteen subordinate kingdoms assembled there with their people to the number of 500,000, and found immense refectories laid out for their refreshment, and long rows of warehouses to receive silk and cotton garments and gold and silver coins for distribution to them.  “The first day a statue of Buddha was placed in the shrine erected on the Place of Almsgiving, and there was a distribution of the most precious things and of the garments of greatest value, whilst exquisite viands were served and flowers scattered to the sound of harmonious music.  Then all retired to their resting-places.  On the second day a statue of the Sun-god was placed in the shrine, and on the third day the statue of Shiva,” and the distribution of gifts continued on those days and day after day for a period of over two months, ten thousand Brahmans receiving the lion’s share, until, having exhausted all his wealth, even to the jewels and garments he was wearing, King Harsha borrowed a coarse and much-worn garment, and having “adored the Buddhas of the ten countries,” he gave vent to his pious delight, exclaiming:  “Whilst I was amassing all this wealth I was always afraid lest I should find no safe and secret place to stow it away.  Now that I have deposited it by alms-giving in the Field of Happiness I know that it is for ever in safety.  I pray that in my future lives I may amass in like manner great treasures and give them away in alms so as to obtain the ten divine faculties in all their plenitude.”