History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c17.s1.t2.34

c17.s1.t2.34

§ 172 A. The Art at Śrī-Parvata which sculptured in the round a Śaka as a door-keeper¹ is to be referred to the Sātavāhana period. Giving the honour of a door-keeper to the Śaka antagonist would fix its period, and so would do also the Sātavāhana coins found in one of the monastery remains. The freezes, and the sculptures in the round, are part and parcel of the Art of Amarāvatī which may be called the Veṅgī School of Indian Art. It goes back to pre-Christian centuries as evidenced by the Amarāvatī inscriptions (E.I., XV, 267). I think the superb animated carvings of Amarāvatī are works contemporary with the Sātavāhana whose personal name was Shi-yen-te-ka or Shan-t'e-ka (Watters, ii, 207), which seems to me to represent Śāntakarṇa, a name which occurs thrice in the Sātavāhana list. The tradition which Yuan Chwang heard that the king was a patron of Nāgārjuna may be apocryphal, unless Nāgārjuna flourished in B.C. The original stūpa was, according to Yuan Chwang, by Aśoka. The Ikshvāku work was an imitation of the Sātavāhanas. Śātakarṇi II alone was rich enough to decorate the Andhra tope of Aśoka; he had a very long reign (100-44 B.C., J.B.O.R.S., XVI, 278) to accomplish it, which agrees with Yuan Chwang's description of the long life of the king; and his son's reign is a recorded date at Amarāvatī (Lüders, no. 1248). The story that Nāgārjuna gave Śāntaka Sātavāhana gold out of rock to replenish his treasury depleted in building the stūpa, may have its basis in his discovering and recognising the gold ores of Mysore or Bālāghāṭ. Nāgārjuna had specialised in the knowledge of metals and chemistry among his other achievements in a long life.