HISTORY Subject : History (For under graduate student) Paper No. : Paper-I History of India Topic No. & Title : Topic-9 Post Mauryan Developments Lecture No. & Title : Lecture-3 Satavahana, Satrapa, Iksaku, Chola, Chera, Pandya Satavahana, Kshatrapa, Iksvaku, Chola, Chera, Pandya Thanks to the military and political success of major Kushana rulers like Kujula Kadphises, Vima Kadphises, Kanishka I, Vashiska, Kanishka II, Huvishka, Vasudeva, Kanishka III, and Vasudeva II, they could dominate a large area including major portions of north India for nearly two hundred and fifty years. The rise of the Kushanas, like their fall was intimately linked to Bactria. The loss of Bactria at the hands of the Sassanid ruler Shapur I in 262 CE., spelt the death blow to Kushana
power and gradually led to their exit. After 265 AD there was hardly any Kushana political presence in the main land of the sub continent. While the Kushana power was on the rise, the Deccan (the peninsular part of India), also began to make its presence felt, and gained considerable visibility in political history for the first time. The main focus of the political history of the Deccan in this period centred round the Satavahanas in the Deccan and to some extent the Sakas in Gujarat and western India. Peninsular India experienced a monarchical polity for the first time, with the emergence of the Satavahanas. The Satavahanas are known from their own inscriptions, as well as from the very large variety of coins they issued. They are also mentioned in the Puranas but under a different name. In the Puranas they are called the Andhras or the Andhrabhrityas. It is significant however to note that the inscriptions never referred to them as Andhrabhrityas or Andhras, while the Puranas never called them Satavahanas. The list of kings in the Puranas
is large, with nearly thirty rulers being mentioned. Yet the inscriptions mention only nineteen Satavahana rulers. A comparative study of the two, suggests that it would be preferable to stick to the names common to both the inscriptions and the Puranic lists. This puts the actual number of Satavahana rulers who ruled, at a figure of nineteen or twenty. The Satavahanas possibly came into prominence from the late first century BCE. The monarchical polity was no doubt first seen in the case of the Satavahanas, but it was not a sudden development. We come across Rathis and Bhojas in the Asokan inscriptions, which were then transformed to being referred to as Maharathikas, Mahabhojas, in the post-mauryan period. From Bhattiprolu in eastern Deccan, we come across a chief called Kubiraka. B D Chattopadhyaya argues that it was a very slow process of transition from a pre-monarchial polity to a fully fledged monarchial polity. Thus the grounds for a monarchical polity were getting ready since the pre Satavahana phase.
Coins indicate the existence of localities under chieftains that correspond to the experiences of Janapadas in North India before the sixth century BCE. It is against this background that one has to study the emergence, foundation, and consolidation of Satavahana rule. Their Puranic name Andhra often leads scholars to believe that they hailed from eastern Deccan. This is questionable because all the earliest Satavahana inscriptions come from western Deccan, like Nasik, Karla, Junnar, and the area around Nevasa (in the Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra). Their capital was located at Pratisthan or present-day Paithan in Aurangabad district. The records and activities of their earliest rulers seem to be associated primarily with western and central Deccan, rather than the eastern part of the Deccan, (Andhra Pradesh area). It would appear therefore that the rise of the Satavahanas was possibly from the area around Nasik, Nevasa and Pratisthan regions in Aurangabad district. Earlier scholars around the 1940s and 50s believed, on the basis of the Puranic descriptions, opined that the
Andhras were originally a part of the Mauryan realm under Asoka, and began to get independent soon after the dissolution of the Mauryan Empire. Their span according to these scholars thus seems to be from the late third century BCE. to 225 CE. - a period of four hundred and fifty years. These views have now been revised. Present scholarly opinion holds that the paleography of the Satavahana inscriptions (i.e. dating of alphabets, the script used) from Nasik and Nevasa, indicate that they cannot be prior to late first century BCE. One of the very early Satavahana rulers named Satakarni figures in Kharavela s (Chedi king) inscription. If Kharavela belonged to the late first century BC, his contemporary Satakarni, an early Satavahana ruler could not belong to the second or third century BCE. Present scholars thus feel that it would be more accurate to locate them chronologically in and around the second half of the 1 st century BCE and that their political existence continued up to 225 AD. The entire range points to a political
existence of the Satavahanas for about two hundred and seventy five or eighty years. According to the Puranas as well as inscriptions, the earliest ruler of the Satavahana Dynasty was Simuka or Shishuka, who appears to be the same He is possibly the Satavahana king whose name appears in a coin found from the excavations at Nevasa. Excavated material gives us a better chronological position. This ruler seems to have been in power around the late first century BC. The earliest inscriptions from Naneghat in Nasik indicate that two of the early rulers, Simuka and Krisna I rose to power from western-central Deccan, with their capital at Pratisthan or Paithan. The Satavahana ruler mentioned by Kharavela (Chedi king), in his Hathigumpha inscription, is also known as Satakarni I (there will be many Satakarni s later). His name figures in an inscription from Sanchi in Eastern Malwa. This could indicate, though not conclusively, that he possibly made conquests in the eastern Malwa region.
While the Satavahana power was growing, they had to come up against a stiff political challenge in westerncentral Deccan from the Saka adversary called Kshatrapa Nahapana. We know about Kshatrapa Nahapana from inscriptions and coins. Nahapana s inscriptions have been found from Nasik, Junnar, and Karla, which were areas that had earlier been under Satavahana occupation. It is obvious therefore that the Saka ruler rose to power at the cost of the Satavahana power in this area. His inscriptions also indicate that he was in occupation over an area called Dashapura (Mandasore), and the region around Ujjaini, and Prabhasa (in Kathiawar peninsula), thereby indicating that the Sakas under Nahapana s energetic and powerful military rule were posing a major challenge to the rise of the Satavahanas. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, written by an anonymous author in the late first century CE.. speaks vividly of the situation in coastal western India. The Greek author indicated that Nahapana ( Nambanus) put a blockade on the port of Kaliana (or Kalyan, a suburb of present day Mumbai), which was at that time a well
known port, and forced visiting ships to go to his own port Bhrigukuchcha (Broach), at the mouth of the Narmada. Politics and long distance commerce got intertwined, in this manner. The economic blockade of Nahapana proved to be successful as Kalyan lost its importance for a long period of time after the first century CE. This marked the first phase of Saka- Satavahana rivalry, in which the latter were definitely cornered. The tables were turned with the arrival of Gautamiputra Satakarni, the greatest of the Satavahana rulers, who ruled possibly about 106 AD to 130 AD. He is best known from a Prashasti or eulogistic inscription (Nasik inscription), which is attributed to his mother Gautami Balasri (the name Gautamiputra may have been due to this). It is categorically stated therein that Gautamiputra Satakarni established the fame and glory of his family (the Satavahana family) by exterminating the Saka- Kshaharatas, the dynasty to which Nahapana belonged.
Along with this clear statement about Gautamiputra Satakarni s victory over his Saka rival, the best corroborative evidence comes in the form of thousands of Nahapana s coins found from the Jogalthambi hoard in Nasik district, which include coins that were re-struck, and bore the legends and motifs of Gautamiputra Satakarni s coins, which constitutes a clear indication that the Satavahana ruler had indeed defeated his Saka rival. In the Nasik Prashasti, Gautamiputra Satakarni is credited with wide spread conquests of areas not merely located in Maharashtra, but in areas to the north of Maharashtra, like the area of Aparanta (Konkan coastal area), the area of Mahismati (Mandhata to the south of Narmada), Akara (eastern Malwa) and Avanti (Ujjaini region). He was the first Satavahana ruler to have conquered the eastern Deccan region or the Andhra coastal area lying between the Godavari and Krishna deltas. Gautamiputra is eulogistically described, as the destroyer of the Sakas, Pahlavas and Yavanas, the uprooter of the
Kshaharatas, the restorer of the glory of the Satavahanas and also as one whose chargers (cavalry) drank the waters of the three seas i.e. Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and perhaps even the Indian Ocean, which seems to suggest that his army reached the three extreme coastal areas. There may have been some amount of typical court poetical exaggeration in this claim, but his control over the western coast and also the eastern coast in the Deccan is beyond any doubt. He is also known to have been the master of the coastal region around Vijaydurg in Karwar. He was thus a very powerful ruler, who fittingly assumed the title Dakshina Patha Pati or the Lord of the Deccan. At the height of Satavahana power they had to face another stiff challenge from the Sakas, but this time from a different branch. If the first resistance came from the Kshaharata family, now the challenge came from another line of the Sakas called the Kardamakas under Rudradaman I, who were based essentially in the Kathiawar and Ujjaini areas. Rudradaman I first appears
in an inscription as a junior co-ruler along with his senior co-ruler, Chastana (his grandfather) in 130 AD. By 150 AD (Saka era 72) Rudradaman had commissioned the Junagarh rock inscription, - a Prashasti, and the first to be written in high flowing court poetical Sanskrit. This inscription proclaims his wide conquests over areas including Malwa, Saurashtra, Gujarat, northern Konkan and the Maheshwar area on the Narmada. It also states that he defeated Satakarni, lord of the Dakshinapatha twice, but that he did not destroy him, out of magnanimity. The Junagarh Inscription shows Rudradaman in possession of areas that were earlier held by Gautamiputra Satakarni, which point to Satavahana territory being conquered by the Saka ruler. There are indications in other sources that the Satavahanas and Rudradaman had entered into a marriage alliance (Rudradaman s daughter seems to have married Gautamiputra s son, Vashishthiputra Pulumayi). Rudradaman may have spared him on account of the closeness of relations with the Satavahana ruler. But the Satavahanas did not find themselves in a comfortable
position, as all their territories beyond the Narmada in Gujarat and in Avanti, Eastern Malwa were definitely lost because of the powerful Saka king, Rudradaman. If the Satavahana ruler who was defeated twice by his Saka adversary happened to be Gautamiputra himself, this goes to indicate that the victories of the latter were short lived. However it could even have been Gautamiputra s immediate successor Sri Pulumayi who was known in Ptolemy s geography as Seropulemaeos. Sri Pulumayi or Vashishthiputra Pulumayi was a powerful ruler whose inscriptions have come from Nasik, in the western Deccan. The capital remained intact in Pratisthan. His coins have been found from in different parts of Andhra Pradesh, which proves that he was definitely in command over the eastern part of the Deccan. A special type of Satavahana coins showing double-masted sailing ships were specifically minted and circulated in the Coromandel Coast area. Some scholars feel that it was he, who happened to be the king defeated by Rudradaman, while a third possibility is that it was Vashisthiputra Satakarni, another Satavahana ruler, who
could also have been a contemporary of Rudradaman and may have been defeated by him. The last known great Satavahana ruler, was Yajnashri Satakarni, who seems to have revived the struggle against the Sakas, and to recover the area of Nasik and western Deccan from them. He was probably the last Satavahana ruler to have been in control over both the eastern and western Deccan, after whom the Satavahanas gradually began to decline and fade out. There were some lesser known later Satavahana rulers, who were not mentioned in the Puranic king-lists and were known only through their coins. Among them were, Gautamiputra Vijaya Satakarni, Chanda Satakarni, Vashishthiputra Vijaya Satakarni and Pulumavi. With the waning of their power, the Satavahanas began to lose control over their traditional strong hold area in westerncentral Deccan. They now remained confined to the eastern Deccan in the Andhra area, and in the Bellary district of Karnataka. These were the last two areas held by the Satavahanas in the very last phase of their rule till
by about 225 AD the last vestiges of Satavahana rule in eastern Deccan were erased. They were replaced by a new dynasty called Ikshvaku in Andhra. They were perhaps originally feudatories of the Satavahanas and bore the title of Mahatalavara. Four Ikshvaku kings ruled from Vijayapuri, or the Nagarjunakonda area in Andhra Pradesh from 225 AD to 325 AD. Santamula I is supposed to have founded the dynasty, and was followed by rulers like, Sri Virapurusadatta and Santamula II. In the meanwhile the early kingdoms of Tamilakam, or the land between the Tirupati hills, and the southernmost tip of the peninsula also known as the Dakshin desha, was witnessing the rise of important principalities like that of the Cholas, in the Kaveri delta and basin, the Pandyas in the Vaigai delta and basin, and the Cheras in the western part of the Kaveri valley. The major sources of information on their political history are laudatory poems comprising the Sangam literature. It is difficult to date this text, but could be assigned between 200 BC and
300 AD. The main theme of these poems in Tamil language is the praise of heroes in battle, which often exaggerate the achievements of the rulers. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions corroborate the historicity and rough dates of some of the rulers mentioned in these texts. Unlike the situation in north India, this part of the subcontinent did not have a regularly established monarchical polity. There were many chieftains and small clans which dominated the different areas of Tamilakam, who have been referred to as vendar (crowned kings) in Sangam literature, possibly because the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas outshone other contemporary clans. Udiyanjeral was the earliest known Chera king. His son, Nedunjeral Adan has been described as having defeated seven crowned kings and winning the exalted title of adhiraja. Two almost identical second century BC inscriptions at Pugalur, mention three generations of Chera princes of the Irumporai line.
The Chola king Karikal is associated with many heroic exploits in Sangam literature. He is credited with having defeated a confederacy including the Pandyas, Cheras and their allies. Another important Chola ruler, mentioned in the poems, is Tondaiman Ilandiraiyan. The early Pandyan kings include Nediyon, Palshalai Mudukudumi and Nedunjeliyan, who have been credited with many victories over contemporary clans. It is interesting to note that all these three major chieftaincies were located in rice-growing areas of rich agricultural potential. Moreover the Cholas and the Pandyas had access to the coastal areas as well. These areas participated in the flourishing trade networks of the time, the major port of the Cholas being Puhar or Kaveripumpattinam, the major Pandya port being Korkai, while Tondi and Muchiri were the important Chera ports. Tamilakam poses a political scenario, where there was still no full-fledged monarchical setup, and was dominated by chieftaincy, the likes of which according to Romila Thapar had been observed in north Indian conditions before the days of the Mahajanapadas.