Collection of Prakrit and Sanskrit Inscriptions

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Bhavnagar Archiological Department

Page 19

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world, he travelled often in this region. Wherefore in all the places where he rested King Asoka raised pillars or constructed topes in honour of him. For seven days every year the present king holds a great assembly, at which he distributes to the multitude of recluses choice dishes, the three garments, medicine, the seven precious things, and rare objects of great value. After giving all these in alms he buys them back at double price. He esteems virtue and honours the sages, he reverences religion and values science. The most eminent men of distant countries are always objects of respect with him." It is strange to read these words, as the writer has done, and look out on the modern Vala. As has been said, not a vestige of the former greatness of the city remains; while the empire of which it was the head has sunk to the narrow limits of a "Third Class" State of Kattywar. The whole. of the modern town is built of the large foundation bricks of the older city. The superstructure once raised upon those bricks was of brick and wood, and it has entirely disappeared. But all around is the cemetery of a great city, so to say, in which the peasant of to-day may at any time count on obtaining by digging a suflicient stock of those foundation bricks with which to put together his modest dwelling.
History knows the princes of the House of Valabhi only by their copper-plate grants, six of which the student will find in the book before him. It is not known how they began any more than it is known how they ended. But the grants themselves preserve for us a tolerably complete genealogy of the Valabhi kings, which has been made accessible to the general reader by the exertions chiefly of Dr. Bühler. Our first inscription, a mere fragment, belongs to Guhasena, who is known now to have reigned from about 539 A.D. to 569 A.D., and who has the special interest for Bhownuggur that the first part of his name, Guha, is probably the same word as that recurring in the title of the Rajput. House to which His Highness the Maharajah boasts to belong. He was succeeded by Dharasena the Second, who made the grant which is our second inscription. This Dharasena reigned from A.D. 569 to 589. It will be seen that, as is the case in all these grants, the genealogy of the House, from its founder Bhattârâka to the monarch reigning at the time and making the grant, is given with a verbosity and obscurity that goes far to defeat the writer's presumed intention. Bhattaraka's only title is Senapati or Commander-in-Chief. He was therefore an early Indian example of a military chief who raised himself
Aho! Shrutgyanam