A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s8.48

v3.c35.s8.48

In the purāṇas⁴, Hāla appears as the seventeenth in the list of Āndhra- or Āndhrabhṛtya-rulers, all of whom bore the epithet Sātavāhana or Śālivāhana as their family title and who ruled in the Deccan from the middle of the 3rd century B.C. down to the beginning of the 3rd century A. D.⁵. Since Hāla¹ appears in the list approximately in the middle, he must have lived in the first or second century A.D. The correctness of this tradition is supported also by the fact that almost all the inscriptions of the Āndhra kings are in Prākrit². Besides the repeated mention of the names of the Vindhya-hills and of the Godāvarī in the anthology lends further support to the view that the work of its compilation was done in the north-eastern part of the Deccan, and the Āndhras ruled just in the same region.