Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c5.s1.73

c5.s1.73

The Sātavāhana kings of the Deccan claimed to have been the lords of Dakṣiṇāpatha, a name often applied to the whole of South India lying beyond the Vindhyas and the Narmadā. The great Sātavāhana monarch Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi (c. 106-30 A.D.) actually ruled over the western part of South India from the Kṛṣṇā in the south to Ākara and Avanti in Malwa in the north. But he claims at the same time to have been the lord of the Vindhya, Ṛkṣavat, Pāriyātra, Mahendra and Malaya mountains which covered practically the whole of the Vindhyan range as well as the Eastern and Western Ghats. That Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi claimed a sort of vague suzerainty over the whole of South India is further indicated by the claim that his chargers drank the waters of the three seas, no doubt meaning the eastern, southern and western seas, i.e. the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arbian sea. A Sātavāhana king is mentioned in Bāṇa’s *Harṣacarita* as the ‘lord of the three seas’.⁴