Tribes in Ancient India c12.28

c12.28

Just about this time, the celebrated Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang in the course of his Indian travels visited the kingdom of ‘Mo-la-po’; its capital was on the south-east of the river Moha (= Mahī). Mo-la-po was a country where learning was much prized.³ This Mo-la-po must now be identified with Mālavaka or Mālavaka-āhāra, referred to in a number of Valabhi grants as included in the kingdom of the Maitrakas of Valabhi. The Mālavaka-āhāra lay between Bhṛgukaccha or Broach, Cutch, Valabhi, and Vadnagar (Smith), and corresponds roughly to the modern districts of Kaira and Ahmedabad, together with parts of the Baroda State and some adjoining territories.⁴ That the Mo-la-po of Hsüan Tsang cannot be identified with Mālava (i.e. Western Mālava) whose capital was Ujjayinī is also proved by the fact that the pilgrim describes the former as being included within the territory of Valabhi. ‘The diminutive suffix *Ka* also indicates that it was then known as Lesser Mālava to distinguish it from Mālava proper’ (C.A.G.I., Mazumdar’s Notes, p. 728). The Mālavaka country is also referred to in the *Gurvāvalī Sūtra* of Dharmasāgaragaṇi, where Śrī Devendrasundarī is represented as having gone from Mālavaka to Gurjaratrā or Gujrat;¹ and it is also mentioned in the Tewar Stone Inscription of the region of Jayasiṃhadeva of the Cedi year 928.² The Mālavas and their country,—evidently meaning the region around Ujjayinī and Bhilsa, i.e. modern Malwa, are mentioned in a number of later epigraphic records, e.g. in the Sagartal inscription of the Gurjara Pratihāras, the Paithāna Plates of Rāṣṭrakūṭa Govinda III, and a host of others.