We know more of Indian Buddhism in the seventh century than in the periods which precede or follow it.  The epoch was marked by the reign of the great king, or rather emperor, Harsha-Vardhana (606-648 A.D.), and the works written by Bana, Bhartrihari and others who frequented his court have come down to us.  Also we are fortunate in possessing the copious narrative of Hsuean Chuang, the greatest of the Chinese pilgrims, who spent sixteen years (629-645) in India as well as the work known as the “Record of the Buddhist religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago,” composed by I-Ching who travelled in those countries from 671 to 695.  I-Ching also wrote the lives of sixty Chinese pilgrims who visited India during the seventh century and probably there were many others of whom we have no record.

The reign of Harsha is thus illustrated by a number of contemporary dateable works unusual in India.  The king himself wrote some Buddhist hymns,[245] and three dramas are ascribed to him but were probably composed by some of the literary men whom he patronized.  For all that, the religious ideas which they contain must have had his approval.  The Ratnavali and Priyadarsika are secular pieces and so far as they have any religious atmosphere it is Brahmanic, but the Nagananda is a Buddhist religious drama which opens with an invocation of the Buddha and has a Jataka story for its plot.[246] Bana was himself a devout Brahman but his historical romance Harshacarita and his novel called Kadambari both describe a mixture of religions founded on observation of contemporary life.  In an interesting passage[247] he recounts the king’s visit to a Buddhist ascetic.  The influence of the holy man causes the more intelligent animals in his neighbourhood, such as parrots, to devote themselves to Buddhist lore, but he is surrounded by devotees of the most diverse sects, Jains, Bhagavatas, Pancaratras, Lokayatikas with followers of Kapila, Kanada and many other teachers.  Mayura, another literary protege of Harsha’s, was like Bana a Brahman, and Subandhu, who flourished a little before them, ignores Buddhism in his romance called Vasavadatta.  But Bhartrihari, the still popular gnomic poet, was a Buddhist.  It is true that he oscillated between the court and the cloister no less than seven times, but this vacillation seems to have been due to the weakness of the flesh, not to any change of convictions.  For our purpose the gist of this literature is that Hinduism in many forms, some of them very unorthodox, was becoming the normal religion of India but that there were still many eminent Buddhists and that Buddhism had sufficient prestige to attract Harsha and sufficient life to respond to his patronage.

About 600 A.D.  India was exhausted by her struggle with the Huns.  After it there remained only a multitude of small states and obscure dynasties, but there was evidently a readiness to accept any form of unifying and tranquillizing rule and for nearly half a century this was provided by Harsha.  He conquered northern India from the Panjab to Bengal but failed to subdue the Deccan.  Though a great part of his reign was spent in war, learning and education flourished.  Hsuean Chuang, who was his honoured guest, gives a good account of his administration but also makes it plain that brigandage prevailed and that travelling was dangerous.