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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c7.s6: VII. Political History of the Sātavāhanas

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c7.s6

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VII. Political History of the Sātavāhanas

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I N attempting the history of Sātavāhana rule, we are treading on uncertain and controversial ground. It is more or less an essay in probabilities. An inscription here and a coin there, mixed-up relievo figures and doubtful architectural alinements, disputed synchronisms and uncorroborated Purāṇic texts, undated or insufficiently dated epigraphs with palaeography as the only guide to determine their sequence in time; this in brief is the nature of the material on which any history of the Sātavāhanas must be based.

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This uncertainty surrounds the figure of Simuka, the reputed founder of the Sātavāhana line of the sovereigns of Andhradeśa. The Purāṇic statement which makes him the destroyer of the last of the Kaṇvas has already been shown to be unacceptable. Neither coins nor epigraphs of his are available. For epigraphic mention of Simuka we have to go to the Nānāghāṭ inscription of queen Nāganikā.

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Simuka is called a Rājā by the Purāṇas and he is styled Rāya Simuka in the Nānāghāṭ inscription. This title itself need not mislead us into thinking that he was in any sense of the term the supreme sovereign of an independent state. The inscription was a later one, subsequent to the attainment of Sārvabhaumatva by a descendant of Simuka. The authors of the Purāṇas were writing the past history of a contemporary royal family, an old old family of unbroken succession, which could proudly trace its beginnings to the early half of the third century B.C. If through the whole line the succeeding chieftains were all kings, the authors would surely not refer to their great ancestor as being anything less than a king.

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The fact is that Simuka had not founded an independent state. Nor could he have known of his destiny as the first of a great dynasty. The Andhras with their ‘thirty walled towns’ were already powerful potentates, though it may be that they belonged to different family groups. They were easily forced into subserviency by Bindusāra to the imperial power of Magadha. Simuka was probably the first to bring these several Andhra groups together and to oblige them to recognize him as their mutual and unique leader. He emerges as a prominent figure about 271 B.C., a year after the accession of the great Aśoka Maurya. If the Buddhist sources are reliable then Aśoka waged a bitter war of succession lasting for four long years.

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In the meanwhile an inevitable consequence of the Civil War was the decision of Aśoka to make war against Kaliṅga, with a view to overawing all his potential enemies and possible rebels against his rule. But the Kaliṅga War, an overwhelming success as a show of force, was also the harbinger of an era of peace. Simuka and his associates were content for the time being with their semi-independent status. The R. E. XIII of Aśoka includes the Andhras among the ‘Hidarajas’. They are placed in this inscription next to the hereditary Bhojas. Though it was too early to be certain whether Simuka’s leadership would be retained in his family, the Andhras themselves were already welded into a single power, with this chief at their head.

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Simuka held power for twenty-three years. If the first King Sātavāhana, mentioned in the later Jain legend,¹ was identical with Simuka, then he must have been a patron of Jainism during the early years of his reign. He is reputed to have built Jain temples and *chaityas*. Later, however, he became a wicked king, says the legend, and was dethroned and killed.

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¹ *JBBRAS*, x, 132 ff.

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Kaṇha, the brother and successor of Simuka,² continued to respect the Mauryan sovereignty, as his predecessor had done. The Nāsik inscription of his time is quite revealing on this point.³ It mentions the construction of a cave by a *Mahāmātra* in charge of the Śramaṇas at Nāsik. These monks must have been mostly Buddhists. For twelve out of the eighteen years of his administration Kaṇha was Aśoka’s contemporary.⁴ It was inevitable that he should have come under the spell of Aśoka’s increasing zeal for *Dhamma*. The cave is Aśokan in inspiration and Sātavāhana in execution. It is the earliest of the series of Sātavāhana caves at Nāsik and incidentally indicates that Nāsik was the westernmost point of Sātavāhana rule. Aśoka’s death and the disturbed conditions in the Magadhan capital must have given him his opportunity to break off from the Mauryan yoke and to acquire an independent status for the regions under his authority.

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² All the *Purāṇas* call him (Krishna) Simuka’s brother. Rapson would infer that this explains the absence of his name in the Nānāghāṭ relievo inscriptions (op. cit., p. xix). Mr. Bakhle propounds a theory of Kaṇha’s usurpation of power, over-riding the claims of Sātakarṇi, to explain his omission from the Nānāghāṭ (JBBRAS, 1927, p. 53). These inferences are all based on the belief that the Sātakarṇi of the inscription was the son of Simuka. But this is after all only a conjecture. See infra.

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³ No. 1144 of *Lüders Litt.*

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⁴ Rapson, op. cit., p. lxvi. Pargiter gives ten years (*abdān daśa*), op. cit., p. 39, n. 28. *Matsya* has generally *aṣṭādaśa*. The ‘*aṣmaddasa*’ of some copies of *Vāyu* is not intelligible, except that it is nearer in form to *aṣṭādaśa*, and it may have been an error of the scribe.

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Some six years after Aśoka’s demise, Kaṇha was succeeded in 230 B.C. by his son Sātakarṇi (I), *Matsya’s* Mallakarṇi. He was the third in the order of Sātavāhana succession and ruled for ten years. After him Pūrṇotsaṅga and Skandastambhi each had a rule of eighteen years.

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The forty-six years of rule of these three chieftains, from 230 to 184 B.C., were apparently uneventful within the frontiers of the Sātavāhana dominions. The unsettled conditions across their borders evidently exhausted all the energies of these kings in the effort to consolidate their power and to make it immune from dangers such as beset the reigns of Aśoka’s Mauryan successors. The Magadha empire was tottering to its fall owing to internal dissensions, and external invasions by the Bactrian princes of the house of Euthydemos. The empire was divided among the princes, Samprati at Ujjain, Daśaratha at Pāṭaliputra, Jalauka in Kashmir, and Virasena in Gandhāra. Even as early as 206 B.C. Antiochos the Great is stated to have renewed his alliance with Subhagasena, probably a member of the family of Virasena. This was only the beginning of intrusion, though here in a friendly form. But from 200 B.C. onward the Bactrian (Greek) invasions began in real earnest. Demetrios, Apollodotus, and Menander conquered and consolidated an Indian Empire, much richer and more extensive than even Alexander could have ever dreamt of, including the Cis-Hindukush regions, the Kābul valley, the Punjāb, and the Indus delta and the region of Surāṣṭra.¹ The eastern frontier of these extensive Indian possessions of the Yavanas was a fluid one. Most certainly they reached the Jamunā and extended east of that river. Their incursions must have been many and with only short intervals between each and the next. The Yuga Purāṇa, a chapter of the Gārgī Saṃhitā, describes an eastern invasion by the ‘viciously valiant Greeks’. They reduced Sāketa (Oudh) and the Pañchāla country that was the Gaṅgā-Jamunā doab, and established themselves firmly at Mathurā.² Patañjali’s illustrations in which he uses the imperfect tense: ‘The Yavana was besieging Sāketa: the Yavana was besieging Madhyamikā’, reveal the sore straits to which the country was reduced.³ Pāṭaliputra was itself threatened.

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¹ The Periplus notes that the coins of Apollodotus and Menander were in circulation at Broach. See CHI, i, 542-3, 548. ² Kern, Brhat Saṃhitā, p. 37. ³ Kielhorn, IA, vii, 266. ⁴ Yuga Purāṇa; see Kern’s Brhat Saṃhitā, p. 37.

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These dreadful events drove even Brihadratha, that pusillanimous Mauryan king, to consider whether he should not make a stand against the Greeks. The review of his forces, however, which he held as a preliminary to such a course, proved fatal to him. Magadha was badly in need of a real fighter. She secured him at last in 185 B.C. in Pushyamitra Śuṅga, the regicide and founder of the Śuṅga dynasty of Magadha.

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Pushyamitra halted the warlike inroads of the Greeks in the Madhyamikā country and rescued the capital, Pāṭaliputra, from any immediate danger. He plunged into the work of fully preparing the country to repel the foreigner. But in the meanwhile, indirect and unexpected help came his way from the side of a new power, that of the Chetis of Kaliṅga. Khāravela’s heroic exploits, recorded in his Hāthigumphā inscription, included a war with the Yavana Dimita in the eighth regnal year of that king. A dreadful war had broken out in the Greeks’ own country.⁴ The two houses of Euthydemos and Eucratides were at grips with each other. With a civil war at home, and with the great Khāravela out for a decisive struggle with the Greeks, Dimita or Demetrios preferred retreat to the uncertainties of armed conflict. The great danger to India passed for the time.

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The infant Andhra power, faced with a situation like this, could not hope to do more than to consolidate and preserve its strength at home. The Bactrians had so far followed the courses of rivers and travelled along plains in their wanderings. The difficult country separating the Sātavāhana kingdom from the Greek dominions in the north was, however, not destined to prove a barrier much longer. The Greeks had become the masters of Surāṣṭra, and the western reaches of the Sātavāhana kingdom were now not far away from them. The defence of their northern and western boundaries became the dominant concern of the successors of Kaṇha during that fateful half-century which followed the death of Aśoka.

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In their new King Sātakarṇi (II) the Andhras were fortunate to find a champion of their cause and a protector of their interests. He came to the throne in 184 B.C. He seems to have immediately devoted his main attention to the northern and western frontiers of his kingdom. And when he found that a newly crowned king of Kaliṅga (Khāravela) had sent the forces of that country westward regardless of his embarrassments on the opposite border, he must have felt himself in a difficult position. But Sātakarṇi did not give him battle. Perhaps he hoped that the Greeks, in their eastward expansion, were bound to cross swords with Khāravela, and that the latter’s initial incursions into his territories need not cause him to abandon his self-imposed task of keeping his armies in the west for its prompt protection if the need should arise. This hope was more than justified when in 175 B.C. the Greeks withdrew to busy themselves wholly with their internecine wars, and Sātakarṇi then embarked on a career of conquest which later entitled him to emulate Puṣyamitra, who celebrated two Aśvamedhas and Rājasūya, and Khāravela, who performed a Rājasūya.

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What rendered Sātakarṇi’s western dominions safe was his alliance with the powerful Aṅgiya family of the west country. In her Nānāghāṭ record, Nāganikā the queen of Sātakarṇi described herself as a girl (bālā) of that Mahārathi who was the Aṅgiyakulavardhana. This was the Mahārathi Tranakayiro of the figure-label inscriptions of the Nānāghāṭ cave. This marriage brought greater security and power to Sātakarṇi, who now prepared to pay off his old scores against his aggressive neighbour of Kaliṅga.

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In the meanwhile, a great many events were happening in the eastern regions. In 175 B.C., the very year of his triumph against the Greek forces, who fled from the city of Mathurā in fear of him, King Khāravela raided the city of Rājagṛiha.¹ This was not the end of the matter. For again in his 12th regnal year, i.e. c. 171 B.C., he struck terror into the heart of the Māgadhas by an invasion of their lands. In this campaign he was victorious over Brihaspatimitra, the king of Magadha.² This Brihaspatimitra was obviously identical with Puṣyamitra Śuṅga.³

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¹ Athame ca vase mahatā sen(ā) ... Rajagṛham Upapīdayati ... Senāvāhaune Vipamucitam Mathuram apayāto Yavana ra(ja) (Dimita) ... Yaccati.

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² Bārasame ca vase ... m(ā)gadhānam ca vipulam bhayam janeto ... m(aga) dha(m) ca rājānam Bahasatimitam pade Vamdapayati.

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³ Jayaswal in JBORS, iii, pp. 476 ff., and Sten Konow: Acta Orientalia, i, pp. 28-9. For contra see Chanda in JHQ, 1929, p. 591.

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Khāravela’s incursions into Magadha, perhaps in retaliation for earlier Magadhan invasions of Kaliṅga, brought in a like reaction from Puṣyamitra. But Khāravela does not figure further in any war against the Śuṅga ruler. We have no more information about him except that he spent nine years as *Yuvarāja*, was twenty-four years old at the time of his accession, and that he ruled as king for at least thirteen years. He may have died about 169 B.C., a year or two after his triumph over Magadha.

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The field was clear for Puṣyamitra. The Greeks were far away; the Kaliṅga ruler was dead; and the Maurya *Sachiva* who was his natural enemy (*prakṛtyamitra*) was in the royal prison. Yet a relation of the latter Yajñasena had taken advantage of the confusion in the land to carve out an independent kingdom in Vidarbha. It did not take long, however, for Agnimitra, the son of Puṣyamitra and Viceroy of Vidiśā, to destroy the independence of Vidarbha, since it had only very recently been established and was as weak as a newly planted tree.¹ Vidarbha was divided between the cousins Agnimitra and Virasena, the river Varadā forming the boundary between their kingdoms.

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¹ *Acirādhiṣṭhita navasamropana—Sithila—staru.*

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The drama *Mālavikāgnimitra* by the poet Kālidāsa, which embodies Agnimitra’s exploits in these regions, refers also to a conflict between the Śuṅga prince Vasumitra and a Yavana on the southern bank of the river Sindhu. The identity of this Greek prince is not yet established, but it is accepted that he was a Bactrian. The immediate cause of the quarrel was the horse let loose by Puṣyamitra preliminary to the *Aśvamedha* sacrifice. After the successful termination of this campaign, Puṣyamitra felt entitled to celebrate the old sacrifices of *Aśvamedha* and *Rājasūya*. He performed the former twice, and according to *Uttara Harivaṃśa* he was the first to revive these sacrifices which had not been performed since the death of King Janamejaya.²

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² Khāravela had earlier celebrated the *Rājasūya*. He was a Jaina and this may perhaps explain why it was that Puṣyamitra got all the credit for the revival of these practices.

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Puṣyamitra’s war on Vidarbha may have to be assigned to the period immediately following the death of Khāravela in *c.* 169 B.C. The circumstances that brought him into power precluded any such war during the early years after his accession. Yajñasena’s declaration of Vidarbha’s independence occurred after the Śuṅga revolution and the imprisonment of the Maurya *Sachiva*. Vidarbha must have enjoyed a few years of independence even to merit its description as *acirādhiṣṭhita*. Soon thereafter followed Khāravela’s invasions of Magadha in 175 and 171 B.C. In this quick succession of political occurrences it is difficult to place the Śuṅga war against Vidarbha and its resettlement under the cousins Agnimitra and Virasena. It may perhaps be assigned to *c.* 168 B.C. Though it ended in a victory for the Śuṅgas, the Vidarbha war initiated a chain of events for which Puṣyamitra had not bargained. Hardly he celebrated his successes with the observance of *Aśva-* medha, than an enemy more formidable than Yajñasena came to grips with him. As Prof. Rapson says: ‘It seems clear from what is known of the general history of the period that any such incursion by the Śuṅgas into Vidarbha must inevitably have brought them into collision with the Andhras.... This was merely an episode in the struggle in which the Andhras were finally triumphant.’¹

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¹ CHI, i, pp. 519, 531. ² EI, xiii, 159; Lüders No. 1346. ³ Ibid., pp. 160-1; Lüders Nos. 1347-48. ⁴ History of Orissa, p. 83. ⁵ Op. cit., xcii and xciii.

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After the death of Khāravela, the power of Kaliṅga died down as quickly as it had risen. The Svargapuri cave inscription records the establishment of a cave by his chief queen, daughter of rājan Lālaka, great-grandson of Hathisiṁha.² Nothing more is known of these persons. Information of some importance is forthcoming from the Mañcapuri inscription, which mentions a king of Kaliṅga, Kudepa Siri by name, who styled himself Aira, Mahārāja, Mahāmeghavāhana. Prince Vaḍukha is also referred to in another part of the same cave.³ Except that Kudepa Siri appropriated all the high-sounding titles which king Khāravela really deserved, he appears to have accomplished nothing. His name suggests, if it has indeed any particular significance, the Sātavāhana influence that had come over Kaliṅga. Mr. R. D. Banerji remarks: ‘after Kudepasiri the pall of dense darkness again descends on the history of Kaliṅga, and most probably the country was subjugated by the Sātavāhanas before their conquest of Magadha in the 1st century B.C.’⁴

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During the first two decades of his reign, Sātakarṇi (II) was not merely an interested spectator. He was slowly but very surely building up his power. A study of his early coins seems to show that he brought West Malwa under his sway. These are ‘invariably round pieces while those of Besnagar and Eran are nearly all square’. In accordance with this observation of General Cunningham, Prof. Rapson attributed the provenance of the oldest known coins of the dynasty, which bear the legend Raño Siri-Sātasa, to West Malwa rather than to East Malwa.⁵ Ākara and Avanti, with their capitals respectively at Bhilsā and Ujjain, were ‘usually independent states’ and neither the Śuṅgas nor the Kaṇvas ever appear to have ruled over Avanti or Western Malwa. Prof. Rapson observed the striking similarity between the characters of the coin legend Raño Siri-Sātasa and those of the Nānāghāṭ relievo inscription Devi-Nāyanikāya Raño ca Siri-Sātakanino and remarked that ‘it can scarcely be explained except by supposing that they belong to the same period and refer to the same king’.

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With Avanti already annexed to his dominions and Kaliṅga brought within the orbit of his power, Sātakarṇi (II) determined to bid for the possession of Eastern Malwa as well. We are not certain of the exact date of this occurrence. His reign of fifty-six years, by far the longest in the dynasty, may here be of some significance. Coming into power just a year after Puṣyamitra Śuṅga, Śātakarṇi survived him nineteen long years, bringing his reign to a close in 128 B.C. His attempts on Eastern Malwa may have taken place during the very last years of Puṣyamitra Śuṅga or in the early years of Agnimitra’s rule. As Menander appears to have taken Śākala during the lifetime of Puṣyamitra himself,¹ this Sātavāhana inroad into the Śuṅga Viceroyality of East Malwa may be assigned to the same period. The celebration of two Aśvamedhas and a Rājasūya by Sātakarṇi (II), in which he followed the example of Puṣyamitra, would suggest the triumph of the former over the latter or over his armies while he was still ruling in Magadha.

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¹ CHI, i, 519.

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The story of Sātakarṇi’s successes in East Malwa is obtained from the evidence of his coins and of an inscription on the Sāñchī gateway. Western India produced certain potin and copper coins, bearing part of the legend Raño Sātakaṇisa. They are square in form and bear close resemblance to the coins of Eraṇ (East Malwa).² The Bhilsā Tope inscription is inscribed on the south gateway at Sāñchī. It records the donation of a Vāśiṣṭhīputra Ānanda, the foreman of the artisans of Siri Sātakaṇi. Dr. Bühler and General Cunningham believed that the Sātakaṇi of this inscription and of the Nānāghāṭ record were identical.³ R. P. Chanda questions Dr. Bühler’s palaeographical judgement in this case. As has already been observed,⁴ chronological exactitude is not obtainable on the basis of palaeography alone. Mr. Chanda, however, agrees in identifying Siri Sātakaṇi of this Sāñchī inscription with No. 6 of the Matsya list, who is no other than Sātakarṇi (II).⁵ ‘The conquest of East Malwa marks the north-eastern limit to which the progress of the Andhra power can be traced from the evidence of inscriptions and coins.’⁶

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² CAI, p. xcv and pl. 1, nos. 5 to 12.

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³ Cunningham, Bhilsā Topes, p. 264; Marshall, Guide to Sanchi, p. 13; EI, ii, 88.

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⁴ See supra.

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⁵ MASI, no. i, p. 15.

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⁶ CHI, i, 534.

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Sātakarṇi (II) now felt entitled to round off his signal successes by the performance of a great many Vedic sacrifices. The Nānāghāṭ epigraph of Queen Nāganikā recounts among others the celebration of Aśvamedha, Rājasūya, Agnyādheya, &c. The words Yanehi Yitham, ‘the sacrifices were offered’, used in the epigraph suggests that at the time of the inscribing of the record King Sātakarṇi was no longer alive and that his wife was commemorating the great Brāhmanical revival during the reign of her lord as symbolized by those sacrifices in which she herself had been associated with him.

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The reign of Sātakarṇi (II) was in fact successful from beginning to end. He had come to the throne at a time extremely critical and altogether momentous in the history of the Sātavāhana kingdom and indeed in the history of all India. He was a great conqueror even in an age of conquerors; a great king even when such rulers were not rare. A Demetrios, a Khāravela, and a Puṣyamitra: such names distinguished the age when Sātakarṇi (II) essayed to build an empire. As the Nānāghāṭ epigraph records, he was vīra, śūra, apratihatachakra, and Dakṣiṇāpathapati. The kingdom of Malwa, both east and west, the extensive Dakṣiṇāpatha and the kingdom of Kaliṅga all acknowledged his supreme authority. He steered the ship of the Sātavāhana State triumphantly into harbour. Imperial Magadha lay within reach.

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But if any such hopes had ever thrilled the hearts of the Sātavāhana hosts, Sātakarṇi's death in 128 B.C. effectively put an end to them. The brilliance of his successes did not inspire the souls of his successors; it depressed them. They did not reach out for Magadha but recoiled before the idea of doing so, and the chance of a century was frittered away. Not before a hundred years passed after his death do we find a Sātavāhana king entertaining thoughts similar to those of his great predecessor and working for their better and greater fulfilment.

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The Nānāghāṭ record and the relievo inscriptions there show that Queen Nāganikā, the wife of Sātakarṇi (II), was the mother of Vedisiri and Satisiri. Even if she did in fact govern the kingdom as Regent during the minority of Vedisiri, as Dr. Bühler and Prof. Rapson would have us believe, there is at least no evidence to show that any of her sons ever ascended the Sātavāhana throne. Of the eight successors of Sātakarṇi (II) before Puḷumāvi (I), the Vāyu Purāṇa notices only one, Apilaka by name. He was the son of Lambodara and ruled for twelve years. A copper coin of this king comes to us from the Central Provinces.¹ The legend on it shows that King Apilaka bore both Śiva and Śrī as prefixes to his name. With his reign (110-98 B.C.) began the dwindling of the Sātavāhana dominions which reduced them eventually once again to the status of a mere Deccani power.

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¹ EHAC, pp. 39-40.

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The loss of the northern provinces of the Sātavāhana kingdom cannot be dated with certainty. An inscription from Besnagar, near Bhilsā, records the erection of a stone column in honour of Vāsudeva by Heliodorus, son of Dio, an inhabitant of Takṣaśilā.² He was an ambassador from the Great King Antialkidas to King Kāsīputra Bhāgabhadra, then in the fourteenth year of his reign. Besides revealing the diplomatic relations between Takṣaśilā and Vidiśā, the inscription is clear that the kingdom of Vidiśā had passed from the hands of the Sātavāhanas. The inscription does not state when this transference occurred. It is, however, clear that King Kāsīputra Bhāgabhadra was the gainer and that he had been king for fourteen years at the time of the embassy of Heliodorus.

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² JRAS, 1909, p. 1092.

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Sir John Marshall identified the Kāsīputra of this record with the fifth Śuṅga king, variously termed Bhadraka, Ārdraka and Odruka, Andhraka and Antaka in the Bhāgavata, Viṣṇu, Vāyu, and Matsya Purāṇas respectively.³ Mr. Jayaswal and Prof. Rapson have taken him for the penultimate Śuṅga king, Bhāga or Bhāgavata of the Purāṇas.⁴ Mr. H. C. Raychaudhuri believes that ‘the view of Marshall seems to be the more probable’.¹ He argued that the ‘discovery of another Besnagar Garuḍa pillar inscription (of the twelfth year after the installation of Mahārāja Bhāgavata) . . . proves that there was at Vidiśā a king named Bhāgavata to be distinguished from king Kāsīputra Bhāgabhadra’.

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³ A Guide to Sanchi, p. 11 n.

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⁴ JBORS, Dec. 1917, pp. 473-5. Mr. Jayaswal identifies the fifth king with one Udāka of the Pabhosā inscription, see also CHI, i, 521.

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¹ PHAI, 3rd edition, pp. 270-1.

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Marshall’s view ignores the regnal period which the Purāṇas assign to the 5th Śuṅga king. As in the name, so in the duration of his reign, there has been an error in the Purāṇas. They assign either two or seven years for this king, but in no case more than the latter period. The record under question, belonging to the 14th regnal year of the king, precludes his identification with the fifth Śuṅga monarch. The other record referred to by Raychaudhuri need not suggest two different kings in Vidiśā about that time. There is nothing whatever to prevent the identification of Mahārāja Bhāgavata with the Bhāgabhadra of the Besnagar inscriptions.

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Undoubtedly, therefore, the Bhāgabhadra who was lord of Vidiśā in the 14th year of his reign was the last but one Śuṅga sovereign, the Bhāga or Bhāgavata of the Purāṇas. He reigned for thirty-two years, from 115 to 83 B.C., ten years before the Kaṇva usurpation in 74 B.C. The embassy of Heliodorus to the Court of Bhāgabhadra must, therefore, be assigned to c. 101 B.C. A margin of a year on either side may be allowed. As Apilaka reigned until 98 B.C., he was the Sātavāhana contemporary of Bhāga Śuṅga, and in his reign the Sātavāhana empire was shorn of the northern districts conquered by Sātakarṇi (II).

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From the close of Apilaka’s reign to the accession of Puḷumāvi (I) in 43 B.C., there were six Sātavāhana rulers. Within that period of fifty-five years they did nothing worthy of record or even anything to make their names worthy of mention by the compiler of the Vāyu Purāṇa. Yet their empire in the Deccan appears to have remained intact till the reign of Kuntala Sātakarṇi, the thirteenth king of the line. He is mentioned in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra,² and if his name has any significance at all he must have ruled over the country of Kuntala. Prof. Kane describes it as ‘the country from the Bhīmā and the Kṛṣṇā to some distance beyond the Tuṅgabhadrā, which also included Kolhāpur and other Southern Marāṭhā States such as Miraj, Belgaum, and the Dhārwār districts, a portion of the Nizām’s dominions and of the Mysore State and the North Kanārā’.³ If this be accepted and in view also of Puḷumāvi I’s great success in arms in the third quarter of the first century B.C., we may assume that the inherent strength of the Sātavāhana power was well preserved during those difficult years by the successors of Sātakarṇi (II). This success may have been partly due to the waning fortunes of the Bactrian Greeks in India and elsewhere.

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² Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, p. 149.

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³ Ancient Geography of Mahārāṣṭra, p. 38. See also Bakhle, op. cit., pp. 92 ff.

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While the question of supremacy in Eastern India and the Deccan was being hotly contested among the powers of Magadha, Kaliṅga, and Andhra, a similar struggle engulfed the lands of the Greeks, who had earlier threatened the safety of all the three kingdoms. As Justin says, ‘Almost at the same time that Mithridates ascended the throne among the Parthians, Eukratides began to reign among the Bactrians; both of them being great men....Eukratides carried on several wars with great spirit.’ Indeed their struggle for power and territory had now shifted from the Indian soil to Bactria and the north-west frontier of India. In this ‘cruel and most lamentable war in their own kingdom, caused entirely by themselves’, Demetrios lost everything west of the Hindukush by the end of 167 B.C.¹ As Eukratides is found to have issued a new series of coins in 166 B.C., this fact may be taken to indicate the final defeat and death of Demetrios in the preceding year.²

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¹ Kern, *Brhat Saṃhitā*, p. 38.

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² Tarn, GBI, pp. 197 ff.

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Eukratides was now master of Seistan, Arachosia, Aria, Bactria, and Sogdiana. He carried war into India. This time Apollodotus died fighting Eukratides in *c.* 162 B.C. His kingdom of Alexandria-Kapisa became a province of Eukratides’ dominions. Eukratides would fain have added to his Indian possessions but his eastern advance was probably checked by Menander and thereafter the grave news that Mithridates had invaded his homelands demanded his immediate return. Mithridates’ earlier conquest of Media in 161 B.C. had augmented his military resources by bringing him the Śakas as mercenaries or allies. To conquer him was wellnigh impossible. Eukratides lost his dominions and his own life at the same time. As Justin says, ‘his end was to be conquered by the Parthians; however, he fought well first.’³

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³ Tarn assigns the death of Eukratides to 159 B.C. and not to the conventional date 155 B.C. (see op. cit., p. 219).

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Now that Apollodotus had died, in *c.* 162 B.C., Menander became the sole and effective support of the Euthydemid cause in India. Following the retreat of Demetrios and the general abandonment of the Madhyadeśa, Menander formed a new frontier, with Mathurā for its easternmost stronghold and with the Chambal as frontier west of the Jamunā. He ruled from Mathurā to the Upper Indus and his coins prove that he held Gandhāra as well.⁴

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⁴ Tarn believes that Eukratides must have made a treaty with Menander at the time of his homeward march (op. cit., pp. 216-17). Either as a result of it or by force of arms, Menander recovered Gandhāra or most of it.

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Menander died sometime between 150 and 145 B.C., almost at the same time as his rival Pushyamitra Śuṅga, whose life ended in 148 B.C. His wife Agathocleia, the daughter of Demetrios, became regent for her son Strato I, a minor. This brought Heliocles, the son and successor of Eukratides, once again on the Indian scene. His invasion of India added to his dominions the provinces of Takshaśilā and Gandhāra. Strato I was driven back to his father’s realms east of the Jhelam. Menander’s extensive dominions now began to break up and the Greek provinces of Surāṣṭra and Sind had to shift for themselves.

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Antialkidas, the immediate successor of Heliocles in *c.* 130 B.C.,¹ was the last of the line of Eukratides. It was this king who sent Heliodorus to the Śuṅga court. The purpose of the embassy is not clear. Perhaps the Śaka invasion of India which may have begun any time after 120 B.C. was partly responsible for it.

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¹ This is the date suggested by Tarn. Rapson gives *c.* 120 B.C. for the accession of Antialkidas.

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The Śaka or Scythian subjects of Parthia gave no little trouble to their kings—Mithridates I, Phraates II, and Artabanus I. They were always turbulent, almost independent, and even aggressive. They were never really subject to Parthia until they were conquered by Mithridates II. Under that king Parthia was fortunate to be able to hold back the Śaka hordes, who were desperately in need of lands in to settle, for their own homelands had been occupied by the Yueh-chi. Thus diverted, these Śakas forced themselves into India, where they established a kingdom in the country of the lower Indus—Patalene, Cutch, and Surāṣṭra. By 80 B.C. they had moved up the river Indus under the leadership of Maues, who as early as 70 B.C. had usurped Greek rule west of the Jhelam. Gandhāra and the Western Punjab including Takṣaśilā were under his sway. He adopted the Parthian title ‘king of kings’ on his coins. About the same time Vonones, a Pahlava (Parthian), became the ruler of Arachosia and Seistan. Like Maues, he too assumed the imperial title. The exact relationship between the two is not known. Vonones is distinctly a Parthian name. But names are not sure proofs of nationality because the same family includes both the Śaka and the Pahlava names. However, Azes I appears to have made himself master of the territorial possessions of both Maues and Vonones.² He extended his authority as far east as Mathurā and consolidated the Śaka-Pahlava power in India. He is said to have founded the ‘Vikrama’ era beginning in 58 B.C.³ ‘Almost everything in Asia between the Euphrates and the Jumna which Greeks had once ruled had now passed into the hands of peoples from the northern steppes.’⁴

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² The relationship of Azes I to Maues and Vonones is a much disputed point. See PHAI, 3rd edition, pp. 293-300; CHI, I, 572-4.

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³ CHI, I, 571.

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⁴ Tarn, op. cit., p. 350.

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While Azes I and his successors were ruling as suzerains, their vast Indian dominions were administered by their agents called Satrapas or Kṣatrapas, who exercised almost sovereign powers within their respective jurisdictions. Of the Satrapal families, the most important were those of Takṣaśilā, Mathurā, Surāṣṭra, and Malwa.

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Thus the elimination of the Greek power from India did not bring permanent relief to the Sātavāhanas of the Deccan. When Puḷumāvi (I) ascended the throne in 43 B.C., he found the political map of India very like what it had been in the days of Sātakarṇi (II). Only this time it was not the Greeks but the Śaka-Pahlavas who dominated the land. The Śuṅgas had been overthrown in 73 B.C. and the Kaṇva dynasty had been founded in Magadha. But Vāsudeva, through whom Devabhūti, the ‘over-libidinous Śuṅga’ king, was ‘reft of his life’, did not become master of all the Śuṅga possessions. Malwa and other lands in Central India were in the hands of the foreigners and the Kaṇvas came in possession of only a much depleted Magadha empire. According to the Purāṇas, Vāsudeva ruled for 9 years, his son Bhānumitra for 14, and his grandson Nārāyaṇa for 12. Within 5 years of the Puḷumāvi’s accession to the Sātavāhana throne, Nārāyaṇa Kaṇva was succeeded by his son Suśarman. The Kaṇva kings were weak and incapable of any exertion either in order to defend the land from aliens or even to save their own lives. The fall of Magadha was certain and imminent. Who should take it was the question. Puḷumāvi was quite determined that it should not be the foreigner. And when he struck the blow in 28 B.C., Magadha fell to him like a ripe fruit; Suśarman, the last Kaṇvāyana, was killed by the Andhra ruler; Sātakarṇi’s former conquests of Avanti and Ākara also came once again under Sātavāhana rule.

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But in the very success of Puḷumāvi, the ‘extirpator’ of the Kaṇva dynasty, lay also his weakness. He now presided over a far-flung empire with too elongated a frontier to defend against an external enemy. With Suśarman’s death, a night, neither calm nor cloudless, descended upon Magadha. For the first time, the Sātavāhanas became the only Indian power with whom the Śaka overlords of the north had to reckon. The latter were probably forced to abandon Malwa, which lay on the Andhra-Magadhan route.¹ The integrity of the Western dominions and the security of the Satrapy of Mathurā were alike threatened.

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¹ The Periplus (c. A.D. 60) speaks of Ujjain as the former capital of the kingdom of Nambanus.

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The Śaka-Pahlava overlords of the north, therefore, prepared themselves to beat down the Sātavāhana menace. Puḷumāvi himself survived his great exploit for only five years. His death in 19 B.C. made it easy for the Western Kshatrapas to regain the lands wrested from them earlier by the Sātavāhana king.² Nahapāna, the Western Kshatrapa, went farther still to conquer and annex even the Sātavāhana provinces of Northern Mahārāṣṭra and Aparānta. This Nahapāna, who was apparently connected with the Mathurā Kshatrapas, must have received considerable assistance from his contemporary at Mathurā, Mahākshatrapa Rājuvula, ‘King of Kings, the Saviour’.³ Indeed Rājuvula’s title ‘the Saviour’ here assumes a special significance.

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² The Kshatrapas of Surāṣṭra and Malwa are generally called the ‘Western Kshatrapas’, as distinguished from the ‘Northern Kshatrapas’ or Kshatrapas of Taxilā and Mathurā. The Western Kshatrapas included at least two distinct families—the Khakharāta to which Bhūmaka and Nahapāna belonged, and Karddamaka, to which Chaṣṭana and his descendants were affiliated.

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³ Bakhle, JBBRAS, iii, 61.

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Hardly two years had passed since Puḷumāvi’s death and Gaurakṛiṣṇa’s accession in 19 B.C., when Uṣabhadāta, the husband of Dakṣamitrā, the daughter of Nahapāna, is found at Nāsik recording the construction of a cave for the monks. Within five years after that date, by 12 B.C. (year 46 of Ayama’s record at Junnar), Nahapāna became master of wide regions including Malwa, Southern Gujerāt, and Northern Konkan, from Broach to Sopārā and the Nāsik and Poona districts, and thus rose from the status of a mere Kshatrapa in the year 41 (c. 17 B.C.) to that of Mahākshatrapa in the year 46 (12 B.C.).

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King Gaurakṛṣṇa, during his long rule of twenty-five years from 19 B.C. to A.D. 6, presided over the disintegration of the Sātavāhana empire. How unpopular he must have been with his contemporaries and the later compilers of the Purāṇas is easily seen in the variety of epithets heaped upon him by the Purāṇas.¹ Riktavarṇa, Vikṛṣṇa, Ariṣṭakarma, and Aniṣṭakarma; such names are not given to a king without intentional significance.

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¹ See CIC, pp. lxvi-lxvii.

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After Gaurakṛṣṇa came Hāla. His was a brief reign of one year. Yet he won for himself a niche among the great poets of all time. He collected and edited a number of erotic verses, gāthas, of excellent taste and elegance.² But we have practically no evidence of any of the political events of his reign except what is supplied by a later work, Līlāvatī. Allowing for all misstatements and distortions, this document connects him with an expedition to the eastern part of his realm, Saptagodāvarī, identified with modern Dakshārāma in the Godāvarī District.

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² See infra.

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During the reigns that followed from A.D. 7 to 62 a succession of rulers, all of little merit or importance, ascended the Andhra throne. Khakharāta pressure against the western possessions of the Sātavāhanas went on increasing. The Sātavāhana ports of Sopārā and Kalyāṇ were closed to all commerce by the action of Nahapāna’s successors, and all trade found its way across difficult country to the Western Kshatrapa port of Barygaza (Broach). The economic life of the kingdom was becoming completely disorganized. The prospects were bleak, therefore, when Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi took over the reins of government in A.D. 62. The only alleviating feature in the picture was that about the time of his accession the great Śaka-Pahlava empire disintegrated and broke up into several small principalities, each under an independent Kshatrapa ruler. Gautamīputra, therefore, was saved the necessity of pitting himself against one single mighty empire in the north.

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Gondopharnes was the last great king of the Śaka-Pahlava line. Coming to the throne in A.D. 19, he appears to have conquered some Parthian dominions in addition to his inherited possessions. The manner in which he styled himself ‘great king, supreme king of kings’ suggests that he claimed authority over others who also styled themselves ‘great king, king of kings’. As Rapson remarks, ‘such a style can only mean that, even in the reign of Gondopharnes, the allegiance of the governors to the suzerain was becoming merely nominal’.³ Gondopharnes died sometime after A.D. 45, and the reign of his successor Pacores marked the rapid extinction of the Śaka-Pahlava power. The Kushāṇa conquest of the Kābul valley and North-west India was complete by A.D. 78, when an inscription from Taxilā describes a ‘great king, supreme king of kings, son of the Gods, the Kushāṇa’, who was obviously Vima Kadphises.¹ Eleven more years passed before the Kushāṇa suzerainty came to be acknowledged in the lower Indus delta in A.D. 89.² The Śaka-Pahlava princes, however, still ruled their own provinces, though as Kushāṇa feudatories. But as the *Periplus* states, these 'Parthian' princes remained their old selves, turbulent, perpetually quarrelsome, and intent upon internecine quarrels for supremacy. This state of affairs offered a strong temptation to conquerors like Gautamīputra to interfere in the hope of appropriating the possessions of all the contesting parties.

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³ CHI, i, 580.

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¹ Discovered by Sir John Marshall. It is dated in the month of *Āshādha*, in the year 136, *ayasa* = of Azes. It is of the era which begins in 58 B.C. and therefore is equivalent to that of A.D. 78.

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² The Sui Vihāra inscription dated in the 11th regnal year of Kanishka. See Hoernle, *IA*, 1881, p. 324.

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Gautamīputra made elaborate preparations for war as may be inferred from his inscriptions at Nāsik and Kārle, for his actual campaign only began about the 18th year of his reign (A.D. 80). He first won back the territories on his western borders from the Khakharāta successors of Nahapāna. Both his Nāsik and his Kārle grants were issued from the *Vijayaskandāvāra* of Govardhana. In these first major battles the contingents from Vaijayanti distinguished themselves. The whole land was ultimately regained for the Sātavāhanas and it soon became settled as a part of their dominions.

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But Gautamīputra would not rest content with these small gains. He was determined to recover for the Sātavāhanas the position which they had formerly held under his great predecessors, Sātakarṇi (II) and Puḷumāvi (I). He had only six more years in which to accomplish this, for he died in A.D. 86. But within that period his success was phenomenal. How far he realized his ambition to recover the imperial position of the Sātavāhanas may be gathered from the description of his dominions and personality recorded by his mother, Gotami Balaśrī. The territories included the countries of Asika, Asaka, Muḷaka, Surāṣṭra, Kukura, Aparānta, Anūpa, Vidarbha, Ākara, and Avanti; the mountainous regions of Vindhya, Achavata, Pariyatra, Sahya, Kaṇhagiri, Siritana, Malaya, Mahendra, Seta, and Chakora, and extended as far as the seas on either side.³ He imposed his will on the kingly order. He was comely in countenance like the lotus in bloom, immensely strong, and a warrior of renown. He never lost a battle, and was a terror to his enemies yet did not harm them if he could avoid it. He humbled the power and pride of the Kshatriyas, destroyed the Yavanas, Śakas, and Pahlavas and extirpated the family of Khakharāṭas. He was uniquely skilled as an archer, absolute as a sovereign, a figure of heroic mould. Over all the fortresses of his enemies, deemed impregnable hitherto, his flag now fluttered in the breeze.

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³ *Asika* = Rishika, possibly between the Krishṇā and the Godāvarī south of Asaka; *Asaka* = South-east province of the Hyderabad State and the Godāvarī Dt.; *Muḷaka* = The district round about Paithan; *Surāṣṭra* = Southern Kāthiāwād; *Kukura* = probably a portion of eastern Rājputānā; *Aparānta* = North Konkan and North Mahārāshtra inclusive of Nāsik and Kārle districts; *Anūpa* = A district on the upper Narmadā, with Mahishmati as capital; *Vidarbha* = Berar; *Ākara* = East Malwa, with Vidiśā as capital; *Avanti* = West Malwa with Ujjain as capital. Vindhya = Eastern Vindhyas; Achavata = Vindhyas south of Malwa; Pariyatra = Arāvali and Western Vindhyas; Sahya = Western Ghāts; Kaṇhagiri = Kānheri; Siri-tana = Śrī Śaila; Malaya = Western Ghāts to the south of Nilgiri; Mahendra = Eastern Ghāts, between the Mahānadi and Godāvarī; Seta = unidentified; Chakora = In the same locality as Śrī Śaila. For further information see Pt. I, Geography of the Deccan, and also EHD, p. 29; *CIC*, pp. 31-5; *JBBRAS*, iii, 73; *AHRS*, iv, 25 ff.; *EHAC*, pp. 62-3 and n. 75; *SI*. pp. 172, 196, 198.

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Though an absolute king, Gautamīputra was benevolent to his subjects and a father to his people. He understood the needs of his times and of his country and so conducted himself as to fulfil the duties of the trivarga-dharma, artha, and kāma. He shared the sorrows and the pleasures of those over whom he ruled. A pious and orthodox Brāhman, he was meticulous in maintaining caste-purity. The most devoted of sons, he was tireless in the service of his mother. He restored the glory of the royal Sātavāhana family. Thus he won fame for himself, for his mother, for the long line of his ancestors, for his people, and for his country.

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Vāsiṣṭhīputra Puḷumāvi (II) was indeed fortunate to inherit such vast dominions from his father in A.D. 86. As many as eight inscriptions refer to his reign. Four are from Nāsik,¹ two belong to Kārle,² one hails from Amarāvati,³ and another from Dharaṇikoṭa.⁴ Many coins have been found in the Andhradeśa, and these are generally assumed to have belonged to him. Ptolemy records this king as having been a contemporary of Chashtana of Ujjain. This abundance of evidence for his reign does not, however, indicate that he was any greater than or even the equal of his father Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi.

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¹ Nāsik Inscriptions 1, 2, 3, and 25. See EI, viii.

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² Kārle Inscriptions nos. 17 and 21. See ASWI, iv.

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³ ASSI, i, 100.

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⁴ EI, xxiv, 256-8.

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Puḷumāvi is styled Dakshiṇāpatheśvara in Gotami-Balaśrī’s inscription dated in his 19th regnal year = A.D. 105. He was entitled to that biruda on the ground of his father’s conquests. Personally he achieved nothing. His vast inheritance was not entirely a blessing since it necessarily involved much additional responsibility. The unsettled conditions which prevailed in the north, due to the coming of the Kushāṇas and the perpetual rivalries of the Śaka Kshatrapas, had to some extent facilitated Gautamīputra’s victories. Thus at the time of Puḷumāvi’s accession to the throne we find the Kushāṇas fairly settled in North-west India and extending their suzerainty over Śaka Satrapies to the east and south. By A.D. 89, the date of the Sui Vihār inscription, Kanishka had imposed his authority over the lower Indus country and in his year 23 (78+23 = A.D. 101), his sovereignty was already acknowledged in Mathurā.⁵ The very next year his son Vāsishka appears as reigning at Mathurā. V. A. Smith assumes that Vāsishka and Huvishka were both sons of Kanishka and that with Vāsishka predeceasing his father, Huvishka succeeded to the whole empire of Kanishka.¹ Huvishka’s epigraphs show him as ruler of Mathurā between the years 33 and 60 (= A.D. 111-38).

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⁵ Kanishka’s inscriptions at Mathurā are dated in the years 21 and 23. I assume with Rapson that Kanishka was the founder of the Śaka era which began in A.D. 78. Kanishka’s later Mathurā inscription should, therefore, be assigned to A.D. 101. According to Smith, Kanishka’s rule began in c. A.D. 120 and terminated about A.D. 160. For a discussion of the Kushāṇa chronology see PHAI, pp. 317-27.

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¹ EHI, 4th edition, p. 286.

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The proximity of the Kushāṇa power in Mathurā to the now extensive Sātavāhana empire must have produced the usual repercussions. Ptolemy’s notices have been taken as indicating that Chashtana had acquired the Avanti country some time between the years A.D. 105 and 114.² Chashtana’s coins, which show similarities with the Śaka coins of Mathurā, and his title of Kshatrapa, which suggests that he was subordinate to a suzerain, have led historians to believe that Chashtana must have been entrusted by the Kushāṇa monarch with the conquest of the northern provinces of the Andhra empire. If this be correct then Chashtana’s wresting of Ujjain from Puḷumāvi cannot have been an isolated incident of its kind. Several such attacks must have been made on Gautamiputra’s earlier conquests in Central India and Rājputānā. This opinion is fully borne out by the Buddhist image inscription of Vāsishka of the year 28 (= A.D. 106) discovered at Sāñchī.³ It demonstrates clearly that simultaneously with Chashtana’s invasion of Avanti occurred also the attack on Ākara, and that Puḷumāvi lost both of those provinces. Chashtana’s coins have been found in Gujerāt and Surāshṭra. But we cannot be definitely certain that the Sātavāhana losses during the last years of Puḷumāvi included those provinces also. The mere provenance of coins cannot establish the Śaka conquest of these regions. The first epigraphic evidence of such an event is seen in the Andhau inscriptions of A.D. 130, where Rudradāman’s name occurs together with that of his grandfather Chashtana. The conquest of these provinces may, therefore, have taken place in the Post-Puḷumāvi period before A.D. 130.

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² See supra., p. 107.

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³ Bühler, EI, ii, 369-70.

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The existence of Puḷumāvi’s inscriptions at Amarāvati and at Dharaṇikoṭa and the large number of his coins which have been found in the Andhra regions combine to indicate his increasing interest in the eastern provinces of his realm. The Dharaṇikoṭa epigraph is dated in his 25th regnal year (= A.D. 111). This fact may also suggest that he had already begun to feel the hopelessness of the Sātavāhana struggle for supremacy in the north. Ptolemy’s notice of Baleokuros at Hippokura as being contemporary with Puḷumāvi at Paithan is another pointer in the same direction. For it shows the increasing tendency on the part of Puḷumāvi to divest himself of responsibility as far as possible. But, as later became evident, the consequent devolution of authority meant an equivalent weakening of royal power.

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Puḷumāvi (II) was succeeded in A.D. 114 by Śiva Śrī. The latter and his successor Śivaskanda each ruled for seven years. They had to endure the unwelcome sight of the growing power of the house of Chashtana which expanded so rapidly as to reach Cutch in the west by A.D. 130. It is not possible to be certain as to which of the intervening provinces were conquered by the Karddamakas, the house of Chashtana. But the position of the province of Cutch in relation to Avanti or Western Malwa would suggest that both Chashtana and Jayadaman and Chashtana and Rudradaman had advanced rather cautiously from the northern frontiers before actually risking a direct invasion of the heart of the empire. And in spite of this pusillanimous hesitation some bitter conflicts appear to have taken place between the Saka and the Sātavāhana forces. Indeed Chashtana’s son Jayadaman, as already recorded above, lost his life in fighting his Andhra enemies.

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