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mention a king Sādavahana. It is just possible that he was most prominent in the family or the founder of the dynasty which consequently came to be known after him. The first Sadavāhana is being assigned to the 3rd century B. c. or so, though it is not unlikely that his period comes later by a century or two. The Purānas designate this family as Andhra possibly because it held its sway at some time over the Andhra country. They enumerate 29 or 30 kings and assign to them 456 or 460 years. One Hāla ( of course different from the progenitor of the dynasty, but bearing the same name or title and consequently confused mutually in floating traditions) figures in this dynastic list as the 17th king. The chronology of these kings is much uncertain : it is surmised, however, that this dynasty rose to power soon after the death of Asoka, c. 232 B. c. The Purānic calculation, which mentions the period of reign of each king, would require us to assign Hāla, with his reign extending over just five years only, to the first century A. D.
Like the ancient monarch Vikramaditya and medieval king Bhoja, Sādavāhana, generally mentioned as Salivahana in Sanskrit, has become a favourite subject of many legends some of which are like fables and miracles. According to Somadeva's Kathäsaritsāgaras etc. Satavahana of Pratisthāna, probably the same as that on the bank of Godavari, was a patron of Gunadhya, the author of the Brhatkatha in Paisaci, and of Sarvavarman, the author of Kätantra grammar. That he is made to learn Sanskrit presumes that Sätavāhana and his family were partial to Prakrit which is attested by the fact that the Satavahana inscriptions and coin-legends are in Präkrit. Vätsāyana also refers in his Kamasūtra to a king of Kuntala, Sātavähana Satakarņi by name, who killed his queen Malayavati with scissors. Rajasekhara records that it was reported that Sātavāhana, the king of Kuntalas, had Prakrit
1 V.V. Mirashi : A Coin of king Satavahana, The Journal of the Numismatic
Society of India, VII. i-ii, Bombay 1945, pp. 1-4; see also Bulletin of the
Deccan College Research Institute, VI. 3, March 1945. 2 Rapson, Op. cit. pp. lxiv ff; Pargiter: The l'urāņa Text of the Dynasties of
the Kali Age, Oxford 1913, pp. 35-43. 3 Nirnayasagara ed., Bombay 1930, especially Kathapitham; Keith: A History of
Sanskrit Literature, Oxford 1928, pp. 266 it. Asal : la Fröf: Tangat merasa [FI]. Chap. XII. Kuntala may be even an alternative name of Hala : that is how Hemacandra appears to have taken it in his Deśīnāmamala, quoted above, p. 43, foot-note 1.
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