________________
DATE OF EARLY SATAVAHANAS
may be placed in the Kanva period, i.e., in the first century B. C.-a date which accords with Purāņic
evidence. 1
As to the second point Mr. R. D. Banerji gives good grounds for believing that the expression Ti-vasasata occurring in the passage "Pamchame che dāni vase Namdaraja ti-vasa-sata..... of the Hathigumpha Inscription means not 103 but 300. 2 This was also the view of Mr. Chanda and, at one time, of Dr. Jayaswal. S
405
1 Bühler also observes (ASWI., Vol. V, 65) that the characters of the Nanaghat inscriptions belong to a period anterior by about 100 years to that of the edicts of Gautamiputra Satakarni and his son Pulumāyi. Scholars who place the Nanaghat record in the first half of the second century B.C., and the epigraphs of the time of Gautamiputra Satakarni in the second century A.D., will have to account for the paucity of Satavahana records during a period of about three hundred years (if that be the actual length of the interval between the age of the husband of Naganikā and the reign of the son of Balaśrī). Mr. N. G. Majumdar (The Monuments of Sanchi, Vol; I, pt. iv, p. 277) places the Nanaghat record during the period 100-75 B.C.
2 JBORS., 1917, 495-497.
3 JBORS, 1917, 432; cf. 1918, 377, 385. The older view was changed in 1927, 238, 244. According to the usually accepted interpretation of a passage in the Hathigumphā record Khāravela, in his fifth year, extended an aqueduct that had not been used for "ti-vasa-sata" since Nandarāja. If "ti-vasa-sata" is taken to mean 103 years, Kharavela's accession must be placed 103-5=98 years after Nandaraja. His elevation to the position of Yuvaraja took place 9 years before that date, i.e., 98-9-89 years after Nandarāja (i.e., not later than 324 B.C.-89=235 B.C.). Khāravela's father was apparently on the throne at that time, and he seems to have been preceded by his father. But we learn from Aśoka's inscriptions that Kalinga was actually governed at that time by a Maurya Kumara under the suzerainty of Aśoka himself. Therefore "ti-vasasata" should be taken to mean 300, and not 103 years. The figure 'three hundred' (a round number) is in substantial agreement with the Puranic tradition about the interval between the Nandas and Satakarni I, 137 (period of the Mauryas) +112 (of the Sungas) +45 (of the Kanvas) +23 (of Simuka) +10 (of Krishna) = 327.
