Synopsis Harsha is decidedly the most-well-documented monarch of ancient India. Since the nineteenth century he has attracted the attention of modern scholars and has been the subject of numerous monographs and hundreds of research papers. The present work, however, is different, not another ordinary text-book on him. Firstly, it gives a detailed and critical account of the history of history-writing on Harsha. In other words, it delineates and critically examines various phases and trends through which the historiography of the age of Harsha has passed. Secondly, it is concerned not merely with ‘what’ and ‘when’ questions of the history of age of Harsha, it raises ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions as well regarding the political events of the period. This approach has been adopted only by a few scholars so far. Thirdly, it seeks to look upon the culture of the period not only as an aggregate of the data found in the works of Bana and other contemporary writers, but as the cultural situation which marked the end of the ‘classicism’ of the Gupta age and the beginning of the early ‘medievalism’. When looked with the help of these two peepholes – the classical culture of the Gupta period and the medieval culture of the Rajput age – the works of Bana and his contemporaries appear to yield new meaning and light. We are sure, therefore, that this monograph will attract the attention of the scholarly world which it so eminently deserves.