Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c17.s2.46

c17.s2.46

The statement that, except for the third king, the royal title and relationship to the mother went together, is not borne out by recorded facts. In the Myākadoni Inscription, for example (Ep. Ind., XIV, pp. 153 ff.) We have the passage—*Raño Sātavahanānaṁ s* (*i*) *ri-Pulum* (*ā*) *visa* without any mention of the metronymic *Cf.* also the passage *Raño SiriChaḍa-sātisa* (Rapson, *Andhra Coins*, p. 32). As to cross-cousin marriages, several recorded cases, *e.g.*, those of the wives of Śrī Sātakarṇi I and Vāsiṣhṭbīputra Śrī-Sātakarṇi of the Kanheri Inscription, do not support the theory propounded by Mr. Chaṭṭopādhyāya. The kings in question may, doubtless, have been polygamous. But that the extra queens, if any, included cousins is only a guess. The marriages actually hinted at in the epigraphic records of the Sātavāhanas (unlike those of the Ikshvākus) are not of the 'cross-cousin' type. Indian history knows of cases where a queen or other royal personage takes as much pride in the mother's family as in that of the father (*cf.* *ubhayakulālaṅkārabhūtā* Prabhāvatī, JASB, 1924, 58). Does Nāyanīkā lay any claim to a Sātavāhana origin? The table of cross-cousin marriage on p. 325 of JASB, 1939 would make Sātakarṇi (No. 6 of the list) a brother of of Kanarese origin. Mr. O. C. Gangoly points out¹ that in some class of literature a distinction is suggested between the Āndhras and the Sātavāhanas. In the *Epigraphia Indica*,² Dr. Sukthankar edited an inscription of Siri-Pulumāvi, "king of the Sātavāhanas," which refers to a place called Sātavahanihāra.³ The place finds mention also in the Hīrahadagalli copper-plate inscription of the Pallava king Siva-skandavarman in the slightly altered form of Sātāhani-raṭṭha. Dr. Sukthankar suggests that the territorial division Sātavahani-Sātāhani must have comprised a good portion of the modern Bellary district of the Madras Presidency, and that it was the original home of the Sātavāhana family' Other indications point to the territory immediately south of the *Madhyadeśa* as the original home of the Sātavāhana-Sātakarṇis. The *Vinaya Texts*⁴ mention a town called "*Setakaṇṇika*" which lay on the southern frontier of the *Majjhima-desa*. It is significant that the earliest records of the Sātakarṇis are found in the Northern Deccan and Central India; and the Hāthīgumphā Inscription of Khāravela, king of Orissa, refers to the family as 'protecting the West.' The name 'Andhra' probably came to be applied to the kings in later times when they lost their northern and western possessions and became a purely Andhra power, governing the territory at the mouth of the river Kṛishṇā.¹ The Sātavāhanas themselves never claim an 'Andhra' ancestry.