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85
KO. 8)
TWO INSCRIPTIONS FROM GUNTUR DISTRICT is known from an Amaravati inscription and the latter part of the name is generally taken to stand for sātakarni or Sātavāhana. Consequently, Sivamaka Sada is assigned to the Sātavāhana family. The present epigraph, however, does not look like a Satavahana record and seems to show that a king of the Krishna-Guntur region bearing a sada-ending name belonged to the Aira (possibly also called Gälaveya) and not to the Sātavāhana family. Whether Sivamaka Sada, whose inscription has to be attributed to the same age as the epigraph under study on grounds of palaeography, belonged to the Aira family cannot of course be determined without further evidence."
The next word in the latter balf of line 4 reads: disidhārikāya (Sanskrit drißi-dharikayā), by the female torch-bearer'. The first letter of the name of this female official of the Aira king contained in the first word of line 5 is lost, the following two letters of the word reading (vā]ya, by ... v'. The name was therefore something like Revā, Deva, eto.
The following four letters of line 5 are damaged; but the second and third appear to read gava and the expression may be restored as Bhagavato, of the Lord' which is followed by what looks like Bhutaga[ha][ka*]sa containing the name of a deity. Of this name, which may be compared with the word Bhutagrihya meaning a class of domestic spirits, the fourth letter is partially damaged at the end of line 5 while the last letter was broken away at the beginning of the next line even when Mr. Sastri copied the inscription eighteen years ago. As already indicated above, sa (the last akshara of the above expression) and ma (the first letter of the following word mada(pā(po)]) were lost at & slightly later date. The above is followed in line 6, with which the inscription oombludes, by the words eko [nilvahito, the passage Bhagavato Bhulagāhakasa madapo eko nivahito (Sanskrit Bhagavataḥ Bkütagrāhakasya mandapan ekat nirvāhitah) meaning 'one mandapa of the gad Bhūtagrähaka has been completed.' The word mandapa may mean here a building conBhorated to a deity [in the vicinity of his templel' The inscription thus appears to record the construction of a building for a god called Bhūtagrābaka by a lady in the service of a Mahārāja of the Aira family and probably of the Galava gotra.
The importance of the inscription lies in the fact that the rule of the Aira(Arya) family over the Guntur District and the adjoining areas in the second century A.D. is known from it for the first time. We know that about the end of the first century B.C., the Chedi-Mahāmeghavāhans king Khiravels of Kalinga, who claimed Aira (Arya) descent, ruled over the territory lying to the immediate east of the dominions of the contemporary Satavahana king Satakarni and that the former besieged the city called Asikanagara (Sanskrit Rishikanagara) situated on the bank of the river Kanhavenā (Sanskrit Krishnavena, i.e. the modern Krishna) probably within the latter's dominions. In the absence of any reference to the Chedi-Mahämeghevāhana family in our inscription and of epithets like Haritiputra in the records of the Chedi-Mahāmoghavähanas of Kalinga, it is difficult, in the present state of our knowledge, to determine the exact relation of the Aira king mentioned in our epigraph with the family of Khåravela. But it is equally difficult
1 Arch. Suru. 8. Ind., Vol. I, p. 61, Plate LVI, No. 2.
Cf. Rapson, Catalogue of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty, etc., p. lii.
• According to some scholars, the Chinna inscription prefixes tho Prakrit word araka for Sanskrit aryaka to the name of Yajña Satakarni (above, Vol. I, p. 96, note 8; Vol. X, Appendix, p. 180, No. 1340), although thore are other soholars who disagree with this viow and hold different opinions on the subject (ARASI, 1913-14, pp. 213-14; JASB, Vol. XVI, 1920, pp. 329-80). Even if, howovor, it may be believed that arala of the Chinna inscription stands for Sanskrit äryaka and for Aira of the Volpůru inscription, it is difficult to determine whothor Yaju Satakarpi (not dosoribod as Satavahana in tho Chinna insoription) belonged to the Batav hana family but was No called because he was born of an Aira princess (of. The Successors of the Salandhanas, p. 316).
• Apto's Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1924, p. 509) recognises 'light's one of the.moanings of the word drifi or drift. Cf. the official designation dipadhara in the Rajatarangint, VIII, 392.
Beo Select Inscriptions, pp. 206 ff.; The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 218.
