Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 292

278
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1913.
second year of his reign (168 B. c.) "Sâtakani, protecting the west sent a numerous army of horses, elephants, men and chariots" apparently to help him in his operations against Magadha. This Satakani was either the third or fifth king of the list of Andhra kings in the MatsyaPurana. The Andhra territory was hence, still in the west" of Kalinga. Next comes the cave inscription at Pitalkhora near Châlisgaon cat in characters of the 2nd century R. c. and referring to the king at Paithan or Pratishthana. The centre of Andhra influence is still in western India. The next Andhra king we hear of is Hâla, the 17th king, who, according to Mr. Vincent A. Smith lived circa 68 A. D. The Brihat-katha, the original of Kshemendra's Brihat-katha-manjari and Somadeva's Katha-sarit-sagara, said to have been written in the Paiśâchi dialect by Gunâdhya, was composed, according to tradition, for the sake of this king's wife, who must, therefore, have been a northern princess. Hâla is the reputed author of Saptasati, an anthology of erotic verses in the ancient Maharashtri tongue. This fact and the other one, that the Andhra inscriptions are all in some form of Prakrit, prove that the Andhras spoke some kind of proto-Mahârâshtri. In modern usage Andhra means Telugu; and hence many historians assume that the ancient Andhras spoke Telugu, Sir Walter Elliot in his discussion of the question in the Numismata Orientalia, hopelessly mixes up the Kalingas, the Triglypton of Ptolemy, Trikalingam, Trilingam, Telugus, and Audhras and takes an imaginary Kalinga-Andhra tribe to have migrated from the Gangetic region, the Andhra tribe separating off in Orissa, first settling on the Chilka Lake, then going down the coast to the Godâ vari-Krishna valley and shooting up into the Deccan, and accomplishing this itinerary in an impossibly short space of time! Not to speak of the blending into one of so many tribes by Sir Walter Elliot, even the assumption that the ancient Andhras spoke Telugu is an entirely gratuitous one. If the ancient Andhras had been Telugus, Telaga literature would have been born in the early years of the Christian era, in the palmy days of Andhra supremacy in India, whereas its birth took place in the 11th century A. D. when undoubted Telugu princes, i. e. princes whose mother-tongue was Telugu, whatever their (ultimate) origin, reigned in the Telugu country.
The next reference to the Andhras is in Pliny (77. A.D.) where he says that "the Andhra territory, stronger (than other territories of India) ineluded thirty walled towns, besides numerous villages, and the army consisted of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and 1,000 elephants." The Andhras must have been dominant throughout India at this epoch, as references to them are found in inscriptions in various parts of India. Their sway extended from sea to sea in Central India and up to Sanchi in the north. The Periplús, which was written at about the same time as Pliny's Natural History, says, "Beyond Barygaza (Broach), the adjoining coast extends in a straight line from north to south; and so this region is called Dachinabades, for Dachanos in the language of the natives means south. The inland country back from the coast towards the east comprises many desert regions and great mountains; and all kinds of wild beasts-leopards, tigers, elephants, enormous serpents, hyenas, and baboons of many sorts; and many populous nations, as far as the Ganges. This is the first clear1o reference to the Andhra country by the name Dakshinapatha, which still survives as the Deccan.
Bom. Gaz. I. ii. p. 147.
Hist. Nat. VI. 224.
'P. 10.
Ep. Ind. ii. 88.
10 Dakshinapada is mentioned in the Rig-Veda vii, 33-6 as a place of exile; it meant of course the Vindhyan region, which was in those days outside the pale of the Aryan fire-oult. Dakshinapatha occurs in the Baudhayana Dharma-stra (I. i. 2. 13), coupled with Saurashtra. It occurs in the Mahabharata, Sabh&-Parvan, xxxi. 17, when Sahadeva is said to have gone to the Dakshinapatha after defeating the Pulindas and the Pandyas. In Patanjali's Mahabhashya on Panini, I, i. 19, also, the word Dakshinapatha occurs. In all these places it probably means the Andhra territory, but we cannot be certain that it is so. In the Puranas, Dakshinapatha is clearly defined, but we cannot use it in historical investigations, since the question of the dates of the composition of the Puranas is a hopeless of solution. Similarly the Andhra country is, in the Saktisangamatantra, said to be above Jagannath and behind Bhramarátmika, and the next country is said to be Saurashtra (Vide Sabdakal padruma i. sub desah). This tantra work is apparently a recent one and is absolutely unauthoritative..