Empires and Kingdoms: 6th to 10th Centuries

1. Chapter at a Glance

After the Gupta Empire faded (around 600 CE), India had no single giant empire for some centuries. Instead, many strong regional kingdoms rose, fought, allied and created great art, literature and learning. This chapter covers roughly 600–1000 CE: Harṣha of Kannauj, the three-way struggle for Kannauj, Kashmir, the Deccan and the far South, how society and the economy worked, the Bhakti tradition, great mathematicians, and the challenges from the Hūṇas and the Arabs.

2. Harṣhavardhana — the “Great King of Kings”

• Of the Puṣhyabhūti (Vardhana) dynasty, with its earlier capital at Sthāneśhvara (Thanesar, Haryana). He ruled from Kannauj (Kānyakubja, UP) from 606 CE.
• A poet and dramatist, said to have written three Sanskrit plays. His court poet Bāṇabhaṭṭa wrote the biography Harṣhacharita and the novel Kādambarī (finished by Bāṇa's son), one of the world's earliest novels.
• A devotee of Śhiva who also supported Buddhism and respected all faiths. His signature survives on the Banskhera copper plate in Nagari script.
• Hosted Xuanzang, held a great assembly at Kannauj in his honour, and every five years gave away wealth at Prayāga to Buddhists, Brahmins and the poor.
• His march south was stopped at the Narmada by Pulakeśhin II of the Chālukyas. He allied with Bhāskaravarman of Kāmarūpa (Assam). He died in 647.

3. The Tripartite Struggle for Kannauj

After Harṣha, three powers fought for control of Kannauj and the rich Ganga plains during the 8th–9th centuries, with no lasting winner:

Why Kannauj? It stood in the fertile, central Ganga plain, on river and trade routes, and carried the prestige of Harṣha's capital.

4. Kashmir

We know Kashmir's history from Kalhaṇa's Rājataraṅgiṇī (“River of Kings”), a 12th-century Sanskrit chronicle. Kalhaṇa checked eleven older works, inscriptions and grants, and said a historian should judge “free from love or hatred”. Rulers include Lalitāditya Muktāpīḍa (Kārkoṭa dynasty), who defeated Arab chiefs, and the strong but ruthless Queen Diddā (late 10th c.). Kashmir was a centre of Sanskrit learning and Kashmir Śhaivism (scholar Abhinavagupta). Tradition links Ādi Śhaṅkarāchārya (8th c., Advaita Vedānta) to the Shankaracharya hill at Srinagar; he set up four maṭhas at Badrinath, Puri, Dwarka and Sringeri, at the four corners of India.

5. The Deccan and the South

6. Administration, Economy and Society

• Sāmantas (vassals) ruled outer regions for the king and led armies; when the centre weakened, some rebelled — the Rāṣhṭrakūṭas themselves were once Chālukya sāmantas.
• Core areas were divided into provinces (bhukti/rāṣhṭra), districts (maṇḍala) and largely self-governing villages; south India had elected assemblies (sabhā).
• Land grants expanded farming into new land but created landholders who did not till the soil, and peasants were sometimes exploited.
• Tanks and wells were built; merchant guilds thrived; west-coast ports traded with Iran, Iraq and East Africa; east-coast ports traded with Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and China.
• Jātis multiplied, often by occupation (e.g. the Kāyasthas, scribes who became a jāti by the 10th c.). The system was flexible — the Pālas are said to have had Śhūdra origins — but some groups were treated as “untouchable” (aspṛiśhya), as Xuanzang also noted.
• Women worked in farming, crafts and courts and funded temples and tanks. Queen Tribhuvana Mahādevī I of the Bhauma-Karas (Odisha, 9th c.) ruled with the title of empress.

7. Religion, Culture and Science

• Rulers usually supported Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions alike. An Arab writer, al-Masʿūdī, praised a Rāṣhṭrakūṭa king for protecting Muslims and their mosques.
• Buddhism thrived in the east under the Pālas but declined elsewhere; Tantric schools arose around the 6th century.
• Jainism flourished in western India and Karnataka — the giant monolithic Bāhubalī statue at Shravanabelagola (10th c.), and Jain caves at Ellora.
• The Bhakti wave started in Tamil country: the 12 Āḻvārs (devotees of Viṣhṇu, including the woman saint Āṇḍāḷ) and the 63 Nāyanmārs (devotees of Śhiva, including Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār). Their regional-language songs opened devotion to all, across caste and gender.
• Mathematics: Brahmagupta (born 598 at Bhillamāla; Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta) gave rules for zero, negative numbers and fractions; Bhāskara I (trigonometry); Virahāṅka (the Virahāṅka–Fibonacci sequence); the Jain Mahāvīra at Amoghavarṣha's court wrote a maths book separate from astronomy.
• Bilingual inscriptions: praise in Sanskrit, practical details in the local language, so both the elite and local people could understand.

8. Foreign Invasions

India and Arabia had traded long before Islam; even the word monsoon comes from Arabic mawsim (season). In the 9th century, Indian maths, astronomy and medicine texts were translated into Arabic at Baghdad; the Arabs carried the decimal system with zero to Europe, where the digits became known as “Arabic numerals” — today often called Hindu-Arabic numerals.

9. Master Table: Ruler → Capital

10. Master Summary Table

Chart — length of reigns mentioned in the chapter (years):

11. Mind Map

12. Tips and Tricks

13. Important One-liners

• Harṣha became king in 606 CE.
• Bāṇabhaṭṭa wrote Harṣhacharita and Kādambarī.
• Xuanzang travelled in India from 630 to 644.
• Gopāla founded the Pāla dynasty around 750.
• Dharmapāla founded Vikramaśhilā.
• The Kailāśhanātha temple at Ellora was built under Krishna I.
• Kalhaṇa wrote Rājataraṅgiṇī.
• Ravikīrti composed the Aihole inscription.
• Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh in 712.
• Brahmagupta gave rules for operations with zero.
• Vijayālaya revived the Cholas at Thanjavur.

14. Exam-pattern Questions with Detailed Answers

15. Quick Revision Summary