Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part I: History of Gujarat c7.s2.3

c7.s2.3

The Valabhi dynasty, which succeeded the Guptas in Gujarát and Káthiávád, take their name from their capital in the east of Káthiávád about twenty miles west of Bhávnagar and about twenty-five miles north of the holy Jain hill of Satruñjaya. The modern name of Valabhi is Valeh. It is impossible to say whether the modern Valeh is a corruption of Valahi the Prakrit form of the Sanskrit Valabhi or whether Valabhi is Sanskritised from a local original Valeh. The form Valahi occurs in the writings of Jinaprabhasuri a learned Jain of the thirteenth century who describes Satruñjaya as in the Valáhaka province. A town in the chiefship of Valeh now occupies the site of old Valabhi,¹ whose ruins lie buried below thick layers of black earth and silt under the modern town and its neighbourhood. The only remains of old buildings are the large foundation bricks of which, except a few new houses, the whole of Valeh is built. The absence of stone supports the theory that the buildings of old Valabhi were of brick and wood. In 1872 when the site was examined the only stone remains were a few scattered Lingas and a well-polished life-size granite Nandi or bull lying near a modern Mahádeva temple. Diggers for old bricks have found copper pots and copperplates and small Buddhist relic shrines with earthen pots and clay seals of the seventh century.