The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c7.s2.22

v1.c7.s2.22

The term ‘Andhrabhṛtya’ does not militate against this assumption, when, as interpreted by Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, it means Andhras who were servants. Dr. Sukthankar’s interpretation of the term creates unnecessary difficulties; if the Sātavāhanas were not Andhras but the servants of these, and if at the time of their rise the Andhras were ‘powerful potentates in the Deccan,’ it is inexplicable how no vestige of the power of the latter is to be found in the contemporary records—literary, epigraphic, and numismatic. Since the selfsame kings are termed by the Purāṇas both ‘Andhrabhṛtya’, and ‘Andhra-Jātīyah’, it must be that the terms were interchangeable. These kings were, then, Andhras by community, and at the same time acquired power as servants of some other sovereign. The Paurāṇic testimony should not be lightly dismissed. The mention of Śrī-yajña as the reigning prince found in three independent manuscripts of the Matsya Purāṇa moves the date of its compilation well into the second century A.D. Moreover the earliest Purāṇa, the Bhaviṣya, from which the Matsya, Vāyu, Bhāgavata, and Viṣṇu derived their account, stops with the fall of the Andhras and the rise of ‘their servants’.¹ Thus so near were the compilers of the Matsya and the Bhaviṣya in point of time to the Sātavāhana kings that they could not have in their ignorance foisted the name Andhra on to the Sātavāhana princes simply because they found or knew them only as rulers of Andhra. The fact is that the Paurāṇikas were dealing with them in the larger context of their tribal or communal affinity. Thus it appears most likely that the Sātavāhanas belonged to the Andhra community.