This Royal Decree was as all Royal Decrees in Sindhusthan had generally been, the mere executive outcome of a strong and popular movement. For, the custom of looking upon Attock as the veritable Indian land’s end as the very word Attock signifies could not have been originated and observed so universally and so long, had it not been inspired by and appealing to our national imagination. This custom that is so tenaciously and reverently observed by millions of people, premiers and peasants alike, is a good proof that strongly corroborates the fact that some such royal edict sanctioning the identification of our frontiers with the ancient Sindhu and associating the name of our land and nation with it as Sindhusthan had actually been issued; and that the highest religious sanctification consecrating this royal sanction and popular will must have enabled this attempt to restore the Vedic name of our country to triumph in the end. Of course centuries had yet to pass and momentous events to happen to shape and mould the destinies of the words Sindhu and Sindhusthan till they came to be as powerfully influential as to colour the thought of our whole nation and be the cherished possession of our race. But after all they have done it and today we find that while thousands would not know what Aryawarta or Bharatwarsha exactly means yet the very man in the street will understand and recognize the names Hindu and Hindusthan as his very own.
The verses from Bhavishyapuran quoted above seem to be quite trustworthy so far as their general purport is concerned : Firstly because they record a general tradition that, unlike dates or individual successions, can easily be remembered longer. Secondly, independently of that, the general trend of our history as shown points to some such state of affairs. Thirdly, it is not necessary here for our arguments to be very precise either about the date of this Decree or even the king by whom it was issued. And fourthly, the author does not seem to have been writing about things only haphazardly or to which he is entirely a stranger. For the family table that he gives of the House of Vikrama-ditya is again given in other part of the work and the two agree closely with each other. The writer who knows of details about the House is likely to know the SALIENT facts of the most distinguished king that belonged to it. After all, the main resources of our history had been and must ever be our national traditions remembered or recorded in our ancient puranas. epics and literature. Their details may be challenged, their dates determined and rejected, but on account of discrepancies here or miraculous colouring there which are in fact common to all ancient records of mankind, we cannot dismiss them altogether, especially where the acts recorded have not an impossible or unnatural clement in them or when they do not contradict events otherwise proved to be indisputably true. The habit of doubting everything in the Puranas till it has been corroborated by some foreign evidence is absurd. The sounder process would be to depend on our works especially where general traditons and events are concerned till they are found to be unreliable in the light of any more weighty and less ambiguous evidence and not simply on account of the airy imaginings of some one to whom it does not seem probable. Take the case of this Bhavishyapuran itself ; because it contains some inaccuracies and even absurdities-and is Plutarch free from them ? Are we to reject the personality of Alexander himself because of the supernatural touches given to the story of his birth ? Would it be reasonable to doubt, say the following verse ? [The son of Chandragupta with leanings towards Buddhism then married the yavani daughter of Sulava, Governor of Purus] In fact we owe a debt of gratitude to these Puranas and Epics for having preserved all ancient and venerable records of our people through revolutions which had effaced the very traces of whole nations and whole civilizations elsewhere in the world. For after all, these records of our ancient and partriotic Puranas and Historis (Itihasas) are at any rate more faithful, more accurate and more reliable than the modern up-to-date western puranas that have such convincing discoveries to their credit as the one which assures us that Ramayan sings of the foundation of Vijayanagar or the other which asserts that Gautam the Buddha was merely the Sun or the Dawn personified !