________________
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[SEPTEMBER, 1925
The Valabhi kings were patrons of learning. They valued science just as they reverenced religion. 170 Like ascetics, scholars also flocked to their court. Valabhi had become during their dynasty as famous a centre of Buddhistic learning and scholarship as Nalanda. For It-Sing tells us that in his time (671-695 A.D.) Nalanda and Valabhi were the only two places in India, which deserved comparison with the famous centres of learning in China. Advanced students, instructed by their teachers and instructing others, used to pass two or three years at these centres. Eminent and accomplished men also used to assemble in crowds to discuss possible and impossible doctrines.' We may here mention that Bhartihari, the author of Bhatti kavya, flourished in this city under the patronage
of Shri Dharasena IV.171
40
The city was a fortified place; the gates of ramparts are referred to in one inscription.173 There was ample open space outside the ramparts where, the army could be encamped and fairs held. Some of the space was reserved for gardens and orchards, which answered the needs both of recreation and religion. An inscription of Guhasena I, dated 240 G.E., records the grant of several gardens in the city to the Vihara founded by Dudda.
Valabhi rulers were quite catholic in their charity; hence all sects flourished in the capital. Hiuen Tsiang records that there were temples of Jains and several hundreds of the heretics. Valabhi must therefore have attracted in its days of glory several Brahmana immigrants, an inference which is supported by inscriptional evidence. 173
The prosperity of Valabbi lasted only for about three centuries. Several legends are told regarding the cause and manner of destruction of Valabhi; but being mutually inconsistent, they are of little historic value. The conjectures of early scholars, who assigned its destruction to Scythian or Baktrian invasions, have now to be rejected, as the city was existing in a flourishing condition about 640 A.D., when Hiuen Tsiang visited it. As the Valabhi copperplates bring the dynasty down to Silâditya VII and to the year 766 A.D.,174 the fall of Valabhi must have taken place during the reign of his successor Dhruvabhatta. The local tradition, which assigns the event to the year 523 A.D., as well as the Prabandhachintamani statement that it took place in 376 VIK. SAM.176, must be summarily rejected.
The legend, which assigns the dilapidation of Valabhi to an earthquake, caused by the curse of an enraged Brahmana 176, will be acceptable only to those who believe in sudden supernatural interference in human affairs. The story told by Merutunga of Raika, a disaffected merchant prince of Valabhi, financing a Muhammadan invasion from Sindh, embodies a historic fact; for, it is confirmed by Alberuni, 177
At the instigation then of this Rańka, who was somehow enraged with the Valabhi king, whether it was for taking forcibly the jewelled comb of his beloved daughter for the princess' use or for wishing to occupy the villa dearly bought by him, we need not stop to enquire. The Sindh ruler sent an expedition by sea. The naval detachment made a surprise night attack, in which the king was killed; the city was afterwards pillaged and destroyed. Now as Mansura, the capital of the Moslem king who sent the expedition, was not founded till about 750 A.D., and as the latest Valabhi copperplate is of the year 766, we may assign the fall of Valabhi to about 775 A.D.
The Arab historians admit that the victor could not impose his terms upon the vanquished; the Rajputana tradition, which states that a branch of the local family continued to rule at Valabhi till its subjugation by Malaraja at the end of the tenth century appears to be based upon a historic fact.
170 Beal II, p. 269.
171 काव्यमिदं रचितं मया वलभ्यां श्रीधरसेन नरेन्द्रपालितायाम् । 173 विजयस्कन्दावारालभित्र द्वार होंब वा सकात् - Siladitya, grant of, 290 G..
179 Eg., आनन्दपुरविनिर्गताय... वलभिवास्तव्याय - Grant of Siladitya II, 352 0..
174
Pbc., p. 176.
Sahau's trav., I, p. 193.
Alina copperplates, Gupta Vol., p. 171: 170 JRAS., XIII, p. 151.
175
177
