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
