Indian Antiquary Vol 48

SR No.: 032540
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 458
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 85

JUNE, 1919)
DEKK AN OF THE BÂTAVAHANA PERIOD
noteworthy custom of this period is for a male individual of the Kshatriya class to specify his metronymic along with his proper name. In North India the practice was to form the metronymio from the name of the country over which his mother's father ruled. Thus Ajátakatru of Rajagriha, who was a contemporary of Buddha, styles himself Vaidehiputra, i.e. son of the daughter of the Videha prince or Chief. But curiously enough, in South India the custom seems to be to adopt the metronymio not from the name of a country but from that of a Brâhman gotra. Accordingly we have got such metronymics as Gautami, V&sish thi, Madhari, Kautsi, Kausiki, etc., all derived from Brâhman gotras. It is not reasonable to argue from these that these rulers were Brahmans. It is not possible that they all could be Brahmaņs, because in an inscription on the Jaggayyapeta Stupa in the Kistnâ district we read of a prince Virapurushadatta who styles himself Madhariputra, but he belonged to the Ikshvaku family, and was, therefore, & Kshatriya and not a Brahman. Bühler, therefore, seems to be right in supposing that these metronymics were framed from the name of the gotra of the spiritual preceptor of the Kshatriya family to which the mother originally belonged.
One other curious fact may also be noticed. We know how Gautamiputra Satakarni and MahAkshatrapa Rudradâman were related to each other. A son of the former was son-in-law of the latter. Rudradå man was & Saka and was of foreign extraction. The matrimonial alliance between his and the Satavahana family is, therefore, all the more curious and reminds us of the marriage of Chandragupta, founder of the Maurya dynasty, with the daughter of the Greek king Antiochus Niostor.
I shall now touch on the economic condition of Maharashtra prevalent during the Andhrabhsitya period. Let us first turn our attention to the currency of the province. We have already seen that at the end of Nasik Inscription 12, Ushavadata speaks of his having given away 70,000 kârshapanas to gods and Brahmans. There we have been distinctly told that these 70,000 kârshâpaņas were in value equivalent to 2,000 suvamas, thirty-five of the former class of money making one of the latter. Kârshåpaņa was a type of. coinage indigenous to India, and we had both copper and silver kørshậpaņas. Here, of course, silver karshậpaņas are intended. Again, the reference to the Suvarņa coins, as Prof. Rapeon rightly says, must surely be to the contemporary gold currency of the Kushanas. We have already seen that Ushavadata's father-in-law, Nahapana, was a Kshatrapa not only of Kujula Kadphises but also of Wema Kadphises, who was the first Kushana sovereign to introduce gold coinage. No foreign ruler, either the Indo-Bactrian, or the Indo-Scythian, seems to have struck it before him. Wema Kadpbises' gold coinage must therefore be supposed to have been current in Nahapana's kingdom. The rate of exchange between the indigenous silver kârshapanas and the new foreign gold Suvarnas was thus 35: 1. But there was also another class of silver money, I mean that introduced by Nahapana himself and called Kućana. In the last chapter I have mentioned that on mount Trirasmi near Nasik Ushavadata excavated a cave which accommodated twenty monks, and that each was to be given a Kusana for every one of the four months of the rainy season. Evidently, therefore, eighty Knanas were needed every year. These were to accrue from the annual interest on the sum of 1,000 karshapanas deposited by Ushavadata in a neighbouring guild. And this annual interest, we have been told, amounted to 90 kårshapaņas. We thus see that 80 Kubanas were equivalent to 80 kârshậpaņas, or in other words, the rate of exchange between these two classes of coins was 9: 8,
. CIC.-AMK., Intro. dxxxv.