[Mewád and the Persians.] One further point requires notice, the traditional connection between Valabhi and the Ránás of Mewád with the Sassanian kings of Persia (A.D. 250-650). In support of the tradition Abul Fazl (A.D. 1590) says the Ránás of Mewád consider themselves descendants of the Sassanian Naushirván (A.D. 531-579) and Tod quotes fuller details from the Persian history Maaser-al-Umra. [350] No evidence seems to support a direct connection with Naushirván. [351] At the same time marriage between the Valabhi chief and Maha Banu the fugitive daughter of Yezdigerd the last Sassanian (A.D. 651) is not impossible. [352] And the remaining suggestion that the link may be Naushirván's son Naushizád who fled from his father in A.D. 570 receives support in the statement of Procopius [353] that Naushizád found shelter at Belapatan in Khuzistán perhaps Balapatan in Gurjaristán. As these suggestions are unsupported by direct evidence, it seems best to look for the source of the legend in the fire symbols in use on Káthiáváda and Mewád coins. These fire symbols, though in the main Indo-Skythian, betray from about the sixth century a more direct Sassanian influence. The use of similar coins coupled with their common sun worship seems sufficient to explain how the Agnikulas and other Káthiáváda and Mewád Rájputs came to believe in some family connection between their chiefs and the fireworshipping kings of Persia. [354] [Válas.] Can the Vála traditions of previous northern settlements be supported either by early Hindu inscriptions or from living traces in the present population of Northern India? The convenient and elaborate tribe and surname lists in the Census Report of the Panjáb, and vaguer information from Rájputána, show traces of Bálas and Válas among the Musalmán as well as among the Hindu population of Northern India. [355] Among the tribes mentioned in Varáha-Mihira's sixth century (A.D. 580) [356] lists the Váhlikas appear along with the dwellers on Sindhu's banks. An inscription of a king Chandra, probably Chandragupta and if so about A.D. 380-400, [357] boasts of crossing the seven mouths of the Indus to attack the Váhlikas. These references suggest that the Bálas or Válas are the Válhikas and that the Bálhikas of the Harivamsa (A.D. 350-500 ?) are not as Langlois supposed people then ruling in Balkh but people then established in India. [358] Does it follow that the Válhikas of the inscriptions and the Bálhikas of the Harivamsa are the Panjáb tribe referred to in the Mahábhárata as the Báhikas or Bálhikas, a people held to scorn as keeping no Bráhman rites, their Bráhmans degraded, their women abandoned? [359] Of the two Mahábhárata forms Báhika and Bálhika recent scholars have preferred Bálhika with the sense of people of Balkh or Baktria. [360] The name Bálhika might belong to more than one of the Central Asian invaders of Northern India during the centuries before and after Christ, whose manner of