300 THE REIGN OF HARSHA the cost of permitting the assassin's escape. The haste shown was none too great, for the princess, despairing of rescue, was on the point of burning herself alive with her attendants, when her brother, guided by aboriginal chiefs, succeeded in tracing her in the depths of the Vindhya jungles. The details of the campaign against Sasanka have not been recorded, and it seems clear that he escaped with little loss. He is known to have been still in power as late as the year 619, but his kingdom probably became subject to Harsha at a later date. Harsha, having recovered his sister a young lady of exceptional attainments, learned in the doctrines of the Sammitiya ^chool of Buddhism devoted his signal ability and energy to the prosecution of a methodical scheme of conquest, with the deliberate purpose of bringing all India " under one umbrella/' He pos- sessed at this stage of his career a force of five thousand elephants, twenty thousand cavalry, and fifty thousand infantry. Apparently he discarded as useless the chari- ots, which constituted, according to ancient tradition, the fourth arm of a regularly organized Indian host. With this mobile and formidable force Harsha over- ran Northern India, and, in the picturesque language of his contemporary, the Chinese pilgrim, " he went from east to west subduing all who were not obedient; the elephants were not unharnessed, nor the soldiers unhelmeted." By the end of five and a half years the conquest of the northwestern regions, and probably also of a large portion of Bengal, was completed, and his
