the sixth century the White Hun, Mahirakula, ruled the Panjab from Sakala, the modern Sialkot. He was a worshipper of Siva, and a deadly foe of the Buddhist cult, and has been described as a monster of cruelty.
The short-lived dominion of the White Huns was destroyed by the Turks and Persians about the year 565 A.D.
Panjab in seventh century A.D.— From various sources, one of the most valuable being the Memoirs of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who travelled in India from 630 to 644 a. d., we know something of Northern India in the first half of the seventh century. Hiuen Tsang was at Kanauj as a guest of a powerful king named Harsha, whose first capital was at Thanesar, and who held a suzerainty over all the rajas from the Brahmaputra to the Bias. West of that river the king of Kashmir was also overlord of Taxila, Urasa, Parnotsa (Punch), Rajapuri (Rajauri) and Sinhapura, which seems to have included the Salt Range. The Peshawar valley was probably ruled by the Turki Shahiya kings of Kabul. The rest of the Panjab was divided between a kingdom called by Hiuen Tsang Tsekhia, whose capital was somewhere near Sialkot, and the important kingdom of Sindh, in which the Indus valley as far north as the Salt Range was included. Harsha died in 647 a.d. and his empire collapsed.
Kashmir under Hindu Kings.— For the next century China was at the height of its power. It established a suzerainty over Kashmir, Udyana (Swat), Yasin, and Chitral. The first was at this period a powerful Hindu kingdom. Its annals, as recorded in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, bear henceforward a real relation to history. In 733 a.d. King Muktapida Lalitaditya received investiture from the Chinese Emperor. Seven years later he defeated the King of Kanauj on the Ganges. A ruler who
