Indian Antiquary Vol 47

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

Page 74

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
MARCH, 1918
widowed sister. One day she went to the bank of the Godavarî to fetch water, when Sesha, king of serpents, became enamoured of her. He assumed the human form and had connection with her against her will. In course of time she gave birth to a boy, who, when he grew up and played with his companions, used to become their king. And because he used to give them clay horses, elephants and other conveyances, he was called Satavahana (sátáni dattáni váhanáni yena sah Satavahanah). Soon after, Vikramaditya, king of Ujjain, when he heard that he was to die at the hands of a virgin's son, despatched his Vetâla or king of ghosts in search of him. Vetâla saw Satavahana and informed Vikramaditya. The latter came with a large army to clestroy the child, but Satavúhana, by means of an incantation communicated to him by his father Sesha, infused life into the clay figures with which he was in the habit of playing, and at once raised a large army. He gave battle to Vikramaditya, killed him, and instituted an era called Salivahana-saka commencing with A.D. 78.
Such would have been our knowledge of the ancient history of the Dekkan, if we had har mere legends to go upon. Fortunately for us inscriptions have been found in sufficient numbers, and it is possible to construct a history which is reliable. If these inscriptions had not been found, to this day we should have continued believing that Satavahana was the name of a king and not of a dynasty and that he was the founder of the era beginning with A.D. 78. The latter question does not concern us here, and we may dismiss it with a few words. The phrase Salivahana-saka, which is used at present in Maharashtra to denote this era, has really no meaning, because the word Saka has in no Sanskrit lexicon been given as signifying "an era." And what inscriptions teach us is that up to the eleventh century it was called Saka-kala, Saka-nripa-kála, or, as in an inscription at Badami in the Bijapur clistrict, Saku-wipa-rájyábhisheka-kúla, showing clearly that it was believed to be founded by a Saka king and that Salivahana or Satavahana had absolutely nothing to do with it. Let us now see in detail what we can know of the Satavahana dynasty from epigraphic records, which are the principal and most reliable source of our information here. These inscriptions have been engraved in caves at Nasik, Karle, Junnar, Katheri and so forth. The names of some of the kings of this family mentioned in epigraphs occur also in the list of the Andhra dynasty enumerated in the Purâņas, such as the Vayu, Matsya and Vishnu. The founder of this family is therein described as Andhra-jatiya, i.e. as belonging to the Andhra race. It, therefore, behoves us to say a few words about the Andhras before the actual account of the Satavahana dynasty is concerned.
We learn for the first time about the Andhras from the Aitareya-Brahmaņa,3 a work which was certainly composed long prior to 500 B.C. Andhras are there represented as a Dasyu tribe living on the fringes of the Aryan settlements and to have descended from Visvamitra. Evidently this means that they were a non-Aryan race, and that at the time when the Brāhmaṇa was compiled there was an admixture of blood between them and the Aryans. especially the hymn-composing Aryans. The next notice of this people is to be found in a well-known passage of Pliny, the Roman encyclopædist, whose information was doubtless derived from the writings of Megasthenes, who we know was an ambassador sent by Seleucos to the court of Chandragupta, the founder of the Maurya dynasty. He describes the Andhras, or the Andaræ as he calls then, as a powerful race," which possesses numerous villages and thirty towns defended by walls and towers, and which supplies its king with an army of 100,000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, and 1000 elephants. ..." From this we infer that about 300 B.C. the Andhra country was thickly inhabited and occupied by a large urban
: VII. 18.
Hist. Nat., Book vi. 21-3.