Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/99

72 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY Who were these Vakatakas ? Where did they reign ? What was the nature of their kingdom and their power ? The inscription on Cave Six- teen claims that Harisena, the king under whom both it and Seventeen were excavated (a.d. 500 to 520), had conquered amongst other places Ujjain, Orissa, and Kosala. Are we to suppose from this that they were Rajputs reigning in Malwa, that country of which Hiouen Tsang said a century later that it could only be compared with Magadha as the home of learning ? And were the tributary Asmakas — whose minister Aditya made Seventeen, Eighteen, and Nineteen — a mere local power, confined to the immediate neighbourhood ? How urgently the history of India calls for students who will search it out in the light of its geography ! An anxious antiquarianism has been very useful in providing a few data and starting-points for real work. But the day has bome when we are able to realise that, except as the great stream of the Indian story carries it, even Ajanta has little value. We must know how it stood related to the life of its period ; what it did for the world ; who loved and served it ; what joy they drew from it ; and a thousand other truths about that living past which surrounded its birth. No one has yet troubled to depict the social conditions out of which it grew. Yet this is the very thing that we must know. The network of strong cities that must have sur- rounded every focus of ecclesiastical power and learning is non-existent as yet in the national