350
G rIJARAT
of Cambay, Farther east, the Malii, rising far away in M~lwa, flows
into the same gulf, which finally receives also the waters of the Narbada,
the lower course of which passes between Central Baroda and Rajpipla
and through the British District of Broach. The central and coast
tracts are stoneless, and have fine groves of field trees, while the eastern
hills are covered with forest. The spread of cultivation has driven the
tiger, leopard, and bear into the eastern hills, and greatly reduced the
numbers of wild hog ; but antelope and nilgai are still common.
Game-birds, both on land and water, abound.
The name Gujarāt is derived from the widespread Gūjar tribe, which
is not, however, at the present day of much account in the province.
According to some writers, the GCijars were immigrants from Central
Asia. There is no certain trace of them in India before the sixth
century, by the end of which they were powerful in Rajputana and had
set up a kingdom at Broach, so they most likely entered India with the
White Huns in the latter half of the fifth century. The Chinese
traveller Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 640) was acquainted with the kingdom of
Broach, and also with a Gurjara kingdom farther north which he calls
Kiu-chi-lo, having its capital at Pilo-mo-lo, which is plausibly identified
with Bhilmal in the Jodhpur State. In its earliest form (Gurjararatra),
the name Gujarāt is applied in inscriptions of the ninth century to the
country north of Ajmer and the Sambhar Lake, while from the tenth to
the thirteenth century Gujarāt means the Solanki kingdom of Anhilvāda.
In the Musalm5in period the name was applied to the province that was
governed first from Anhilvada and then from Ahmadabad.
For the history of Gujarat in the pre-Muhammadan period and its
invasion by Mahmnd of Ghazni, see BOMBAY PRESIDENCY and ANH11:
VADA. By about 1233 the Solanki kingdom of Anhilvada had broken
up, and the most powerful rulers in Gujarat were the Vaghela chiefs of
DHOLKA.
'An inaccessible position, beyond the great desert and the hills con-
necting the Vindhyas with the Aravalli range, long preserved Gujarat
from the Muhammadan yoke. Only by sea was it easily approached,
and to the sea it owed its peculiar advantages, . . . its favouring climate
and fertile soil. . . . The greater part of the Indian trade with Persia,
Arabia, and the Red Sea passed through its harbours, besides a busy
coasting trade. " The benefit of this trade overflowed upon the
country, which became a garden, and enriched the treasury of the
prince. The noble mosques, colleges, palaces, and tombs, the remains
of which still adorn Ahmadabad and its other cities to this day, while
they excite the admiration of the traveller, prove both the wealth and
the taste of the founders'." Not till the reign of Ala-ud-din (of Delhi) at
the close of the thirteenth century did it become a Muslim province, and
a century later it became independent again under a dynasty of Muslim
1 Erskine, History of India, vol. i, p. 2 1.
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