The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c7.s2.11

v1.c7.s2.11

Dr. V. S. Sukthankar questioned the very basis of the Andhra-Sātavāhana identity.⁴ His main arguments are: (i) nowhere in their records are the Sātavāhanas called Andhras; (ii) other contemporary or nearly contemporary records, as the Hāthi-Gumphā, Girnār, and Talagunda inscriptions, always refer to them as Sātavāhanas and never as Andhras; (iii) Khāravela says that he ‘without entertaining any fear of Sātakarṇi, sent a large army to the west’. If this Sātakarṇi was in fact ruler of the Andhras, Khāravela’s army should have been sent to the south; (iv) all their inscriptions and coins were discovered in Western India. They had undoubtedly overrun and conquered the Andhra country; but their earliest possessions were, as revealed by archaeological discoveries, in Western India. The terms ‘Sātavāhanihāra’ and ‘Sātāhani-raṭṭha’ occurring in the Myākadoni inscriptions and Hirahaḍagalli plates were considered by Sukthankar as sufficient pointers to the solution of the problem. Myākadoni and Hirahaḍagalli being in the modern Bellary District, he suggested that this region or round about it should be taken as the original habitat of the Sātavāhanas. He drew support for his theory from the fact that at one time it was a common practice in many districts to name the country after its early inhabitants. Sātavāhanihāra, he suggested, was so named. His whole theme is that the Sātavāhanas did not belong to the Andhra area, as the field of their early activity was confined to the west of India, and Paiṭhan was their capital. If the Paurāṇic statement, he said, be accepted literally as implying that the Sātavāhanas were Andhras, he had two suggestions to make: either that the Sātavāhanas ‘separated themselves from the main stock of the Āndhras’ of the Godāvarī and Kṛiṣṇā deltas even before the time of Simuka (the founder of the Sātavāhana dynasty) and settled in the west; or that the Andhras themselves at first occupied Sātavāhani-hāra and then migrated from that centre towards the west and towards the east. But in his view the Sātavāhanas ‘may not have been Andhras’. Their connexion with the Andhradeśa was, according to him, the result of a migration from the west to the east. He further argued that ‘some of the Purāṇas call these kings Andhras; others call them Āndhrabhṛtyas; and there are others still who call them by both names’. In his opinion the correct designation of this dynasty is really Āndhrabhṛtya, a tatpuruṣa, meaning ‘the feudatories of the Andhras’. The feudatories of the Andhras need not necessarily be themselves Andhras.