Indian Art: A History of Indian Art from the Earliest Times up to the Third Century A.D. c15.4

c15.4

The earliest inspiration to the art movement that took shape in the Andhra country probably goes back to Aśoka. He was a strange emperor, who unrolled the map of Asia before him and plotted his creative activity in all the four direction in his own kingdom and beyond it up to Afghanistan and the Mediterranean towards the west and Nepal and Burma etc. towards the east. He was in direct touch with the country of Kaliṅga where the impact of his art activity was felt. A little to the south at Guṇṭapalle we find the cave-architecture of the Lomas Ṛishi and other caves of the Barābara group taking its footholds in an emphatic manner. It seems that the earliest Sātavāhana rulers (c. 200 B.C.) were kindly disposed to the Buddhist community of monks who were encouraged to fan out deeper into their territory. Amaravati or ancient Dhānyakaṭaka was the first capital of the Andhras where the earliest structural monuments were built in the Kṛṣṇā Valley about 200 B. C. and continued to be followed by the most stupendous Stūpas under the Later Sātavāhanas up to about 225 A.D. In the Western Ghats the Sātavāhanas wrested power from the Śakas and a political game of hide and seek with fluctuating fortune ensued between the two. But in Andhra the Sātavāhanas were undisputed masters for four centuries until they were succeded by the Ikshvāku kings in the middle of the third century A. D., who were builders of great monuments such as the Stūpas of Nagarjunikonda.