Indian History Quiz: Harsha and the South Indian Kingdoms

Harishena belonged to an earlier century altogether: he was the court poet of Samudragupta and composed the Prayag Prashasti, the Allahabad Pillar Inscription.

Shashanka was the king of Gauda, the region of Bengal with its centre at Karnasuvarna. He killed Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana, and it was to avenge that killing, and to recover his sister Rajyashri, that Harsha declared war and allied with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa.

Harshavardhana was a dramatist as well as a king, and three Sanskrit plays are credited to him: Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda.

Banabhatta was the court poet of Harsha in the seventh century CE. He wrote the Harshacharita, the biography of his patron and the first historical biography in Sanskrit, and the prose romance Kadambari, which was completed by his son Bhushanabhatta.

The Aihole inscription was composed in Sanskrit by Ravikirti, the Jain court poet of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II of Badami.

Harsha inherited Thanesar in modern Haryana from the Pushyabhuti family. When his sister Rajyashri's husband Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kannauj, was killed, Harsha united the two realms and moved his seat to Kannauj on the Ganga, which then became the symbol of paramountcy in northern India for the next…

He is also called Mamalla, the great wrestler, and the port city of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram takes its name from that title.

He ruled in the early eighth century and marks the structural phase of Pallava architecture, when temples were built up of dressed stone instead of being cut from living rock.

He reached India in 630 CE, stayed for about fifteen years, and studied Yogachara philosophy at the Nalanda mahavihara under its head, the aged monk Shilabhadra.

The Pandyas ruled the extreme south of the peninsula from Madurai on the Vaigai, with the pearl-fishing port of Korkai on the coast.

The Nayanars were the Shaiva saints of the Tamil bhakti movement, traditionally counted as sixty-three, and they included Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar.

He was the founder of Rashtrakuta power and overthrew the last important Chalukya of Badami, Kirtivarman II, about 753 CE.