Maitraka dynasty

From generals to kings

The dynasty was founded by Bhaṭārka, a Gupta general in charge of Saurashtra, who made himself independent as imperial authority failed in the later fifth century. His successors moved from the title of general to that of king, a transition their charters record in stages, and ruled a prosperous coastal territory with an extensive maritime trade.

More than a hundred Maitraka copper-plate grants survive, which makes the dynasty one of the best-documented of its period for administrative and land history.

Vallabhī

Vallabhī became a major centre of Buddhist learning. Xuanzang and Yijing both describe it, and Yijing pairs it with Nālandā as one of the two great seats of study in India, noting the numbers of monks and the standard of debate there. It was particularly associated with the Sthaviravāda-derived schools, in contrast to Nālandā's Mahāyāna orientation.

Jain tradition also places at Vallabhī the council at which the Śvetāmbara canon was fixed in writing, in the fifth or sixth century — one of the decisive events in the history of that tradition.

The Maitrakas were tolerant patrons across all three religions, endowing Buddhist monasteries, brahmin settlements and temples in the same charters. The kingdom ended around 780 CE, apparently in an Arab raid from Sindh, in ancient India (modern-day Pakistan), and Vallabhī was destroyed; the site is a mound today.