Indian Antiquary Vol 42

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

Page 295

NOVEMBER, 1913.)
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE ANDHRAS
281
affinities, and has nothing in common with the peculiar coinage of the South." The gratuitous assumption that the Andhras were a south-eastern tribe is the cause of this apparent anomaly. It has been proved above that there is not a shadow of evidence to assume that the original home of the Andhras was the cast coast of south India and all reliable documents indicate that their original home was south of the Vindhyas, as their coins also prove.
In the third century A. D., the Andbrs dominions in the west passed into the hands of the Sakas whose capital was Ujjain. The eastern Andhra territory was acquired by the Pallavas, the earliest king of which dynasty, so far as has been made out from epigraphical evidence, was Sivaskandavarma. The Pallava capital was Káfichipuram and the Andhra district of the Pallavas was called . Andhrâ patba.'23 This name, translated into Tamil, Vadogavali, 12,000, was in use even in the 9th century A. 0.24 Dbai akada, which is the same as Dhamiakads of the Amaravati in. scription already referred to, was the capital of a Pallava governor in Sivaskandeyarma's time, at about the beginning of the fourth century. Now for the first 26 time we hear of Dhañyakada as a capital of any kind. In the year 340 A. D. when Samudragupta went round India on a digvijaya tour, he vanquished Hastivarma of Vengi (now Pedda Vêgi, eight miles north of Ellore), a Pallava viceroy of another part of the Andhramandalam wrested from the Andhra King by the Pallsvas. Vêági was also called Andbranagaram.26 But the Andhra kings and the Andhra tribes have disappeared without any trace from the 3rd century A. D. We do not hear of them in Samudragupta's inscription, nor in the Raghutumia where a digrijaya similar to that of the great Gupta conqueror is attributed to the mythical Ragbu. The word Andhra now became the name of a territory. As such it is mentioned by Hiouen Tsang, who visited the province in the 7th centary A. D., about 30 years after the Eastern Chalukya dynasty was founded at Véngi by Kubja VisbņuVarda hada. The Chinese traveller says that he went from southern) Kosala (Berar) to the country of Andhra (An-ta-lo)," through a great forest, south, after 900 li or so." He calls its capital Ping-ki-lo (P Vénginadu). He says that not far from the city is a great Sangharama with storeyed towers and balconies beautifully carved and ornamented." The extensive Buddhist rains at Gunţupalli, 16 miles from Pedda Végi, are perhaps relics of this Sangharama. "These consist of a chaitya cave, a circular chamber with a simple façade containing a ddgaba cut in the solid rock, and several sets of vihdra ca ves with entrance halls and chambers on each side."7 Hiouen Tsang says of the Andhra country, "The soil is rich and fertile ; it is regularly cultivated and produces abundance of cereals. The temperature is hot." This applies very well to the Ellore Taluk, which is the modern representative of the ancient Vêngirashtran). Hionen Tsang also says, "the language and arrangement of sentences differ from Mid-India (where Kosala was) but with reference to the sbapes of the letters, they are nearly the same." The language referred to by the keenly observant Ohinese traveller, is the Proto-Telugu evolved in the GodavartKțishạå valley, tbe (later) literary form of which was used by Nannayya Bhatļa, the author of the Telaga Mahabharatamu, who lived in the 11th century, and, who, so far as I can discover, was the first person to call the Telugu language by the name of Andhra,
We thus find that the Andhras were & Vindhyaa tribe and that the Andhra kings originally ruled over western India and spoke Prakṣit and not Telugu. The extension of Andhra power was from the west to the east down the Godavari Krishna valley. When their power declined in the west, the namo Ândhramandalam travelled to their eastern provinces and stuck to it under Pallava as well as Eastern Chalukya rule. The word Andhra was first a tribal name ; then it became the name of dynasty of kings, who ruled in the west ; and then it became the name of a language which evolved in the cast sometime before the eleventh century. Whence and when and how Telugu arose, what influences fostered its inception and growtb is, however, another and a more complicated story, which will be told in a future article. 13 4. 8. I. 08-07 p. 223.
** 8. I. I., iii, p. 90, # The next occasion when Dbambakaa is called onpital is in Hiouen Teang's description of the place, when it continaed to be, it is presumed, the capital of Pallaya vioeroy. 20 Dalakumdracharitam, vii,
?' Imp. Gax., Ind., zii, 888.