in the inscription. Gautamiputra therefore was so called because he was the son of Gautami, while his own proper name was Satakarni. Puḍumâyi is called Vâsiṭhi-puta or Vâsishthî-putra for the same reason. Vâsishṭhi, as I have pointed out, granted the field conveyed in the second charter in Inscription No. 25. She is there spoken of as the Queen of Gautamiputra, if we accept the interpretation given in the note; and even if we follow that adopted in the text, and understand them as issuing orders conjointly, there could be no reason why their names should be so coupled together unless that relation existed between them. Puḍumâyi therefore was the son of Gautamiputra, and not his father, as the late Dr. Bhau Daji thought.' Gautami is described as the mother of a king and grandmother of a king, while Vâsishthi is mentioned simply as the mother of a king. Gautami therefore appears to be the more elderly of the two, which she could not be if her son were the son of Puḍumâyi, whose mother was Vâsishthi.

No. 26 is dated in the year 19 of Puḍumâyi, when Gautami, who is spoken of as dedicating the cave in the present tense, must have been alive. Her son Gautamiputra Satakarni issued the charter No. 25 (first part) the next year, and is represented in No. 26 and No. 26A as having granted a village in the same year for the support of the inmates of the cave-monastery of his mother, though his name does not expressly occur. He must, therefore, have been alive when the cave was dedicated. As noticed above, Gautami is spoken of as the mother of the Great King and the grandmother of the Great King. There is no object in such a statement, unless the son and grandson were kings at the time when the statement was made. How could Puḍumâyi then come to be king during Gautamiputra's lifetime? Instances are not wanting in Indian history of sovereigns appointing their sons as governors or kings of distant provinces. Aśoka was King of Kashmere during the lifetime of his father, and Agnimitra, of Vidiśâ while Pushpamitra reigned at Pâțaliputra. In the same manner, Puḍumâyi seems to have ruled over this side of the country, since the inscriptions containing dates at Nâsik and Kârlen are dated from the commencement of his reign, while his father Gautamiputra Satakarni reigned at his own capital. Gautami

1 Journ. B.B.R.A.S. vol. viii. p. 237.

putra Sri Yajna Satakarni was one of their successors, whose name occurs in these inscriptions. The elder Gautamiputra is mentioned in No. 26 as having "established the glory of the Sâtavâhana race;" whence it appears that the dynasty called Andhrabhṛitya in the Purâņas was known by the name of Sâtavâhana.

Gautamiputra is spoken of in Nos. 25 and 26A. as "the Lord of Dhanakața, or Dhanakaṭaka." Hwen Thsang mentions a country of the name of Tonakietsekia, which name is properly considered as the Chinese representative of Dhanakaṭaka. This, General Cunningham identifies with the ancient Dharanikot, situated on the river Krishna, in the Guntur district of the Madras Presidency. From the bearings given by the Chinese traveller, it does appear that Dhanakaṭaka is to be looked for somewhere in that part of the country. That Gautamiputra's Dhanakaṭaka was the same as or situated near Dharanikot is confirmed by the fact that coins of the Satavahana dynasty are found in that district. These being leaden coins, the place where they are found may very reasonably be regarded as that of their original circulation. Some of these are figured by Sir Walter Elliot in plate xi. attached to his article in the Madras Literary Journal, vol. iii. new series. Of these, one (No. 96) has for its legend sata Kanisa ranno, another (No. 101) has Gotamiputasa, and a third (No. 105) Ranno Gotamiputasa sariyanna-satakanisa.1 The legend on a fourth (No. 100) may be read Putumavisa, though I am somewhat doubtful. The Purânic name of the dynasty also indicates that its original seat, or the province over which its kings immediately ruled, must have been somewhere in the Andhra or Tailanga country. At first, the princes of the family must have been subject to the paramount sovereigns of Pâțaliputra, and were hence called bhrityas or servants of those sovereigns; and afterwards they raised themselves to supreme power. The three princes named above are not the only ones of this dynasty that are named in the inscriptions. There is another of the name of Krishnarâja spoken of in No. 6 as belonging to the

1 General Cunningham reads this as Rajuya Gotamiputa Satakanisa, but I observe the letters sari after Gotamiputasa distinctly, and others further on which look like yanna. He reads the legend on No. 100 as Pudumâvisa, and does not give that on No. 101, but I have little doubt it is Gotamiputasa. (See Anc. Geogr. of India p. 541.)

The

race of Sâtavâhana. The characters in this inscription are far older than those in Nos. 25 and 26. The va, consisting of a circle with a vertical stroke above, is very much unlike the isosceles triangle of these latter, and this letter and the da, made up of a small rectangle with the left-hand side wanting and with two vertical strokes upwards and downwards, as well as the general style, look more like those of Asoka inscriptions than those of these later ones do. This in itself shows that a considerable interval of time must have elapsed between Krishnarâja and Gautamîputra. And this is confirmed by the Purâņas, which, though there is not so much agreement amongst them as might be desirable, in the case of this dynasty, place about nineteen kings between Krishnaraja, who stands second in the list, and Gautamiputra. There are two other circumstances that deserve remark. In the time of Krishnarâja the capital of the province seems to have been Nâsik (Nâsika), for his officer or general resided there, as we gather from No. 6, while in Gautamiputra's time it was Govardhana. There is still a village near Nâsik of the name of Govardhana, as I have observed before. other circumstance is that while out of the five kings, beginning with Gautamiputra, the names of three occur in the cave inscriptions on this side of India, not one out of the nineteen successors of Krishnarâja is mentioned. This would tend to show that the Sâtavâhanas possessed these provinces in the time of Krishnarâja, but that some time after him they were deprived of them by another race of kings, who must have held them till 'Gautamiputra regained them and reestablished the power of his dynasty. And in No. 26 he is mentioned as having exterminated the race of Khagârâta and "established the glory" of his race. The dynasty of Khagârâta therefore must have ruled over these provinces during the interval. But what other indications have we of the existence of this dynasty? In the first place we have the inscriptions of Ushavadâta, which mention a king of the name of Kshaharâta Nahapâna, who is also called Kshatrapa or Satrap. Kshaharâta looks very much like Khagârâta, and the characters in these inscriptions occupy a middling position between those of No. 6 and No. 26. Kshaharâta Nahapâna therefore may well have been the founder of the dynasty which displaced the Sâtavâhanas some

1 See Wilson's Vishnu Purâņa, chap. xxiv. book iv.

time after Krishnarâja. And coins of a race of kings calling themselves Kings and Kshatrapas or Satraps have been found in Gujarat and elsewhere, and amongst them one of Nahapâna himself. There are two inscriptions also in Gujarat, which mention some of these kings. Very likely therefore it was this dynasty that Gautamiputra displaced.

A passing examination of the coins of the Sâtavâhana dynasty mentioned above points to the same conclusion. If we look at the figures of the coins bearing the devices of a horse, four wheels, and a pyramid composed of arcs of circles with a wavy line below and a crescent on the top, we shall find that these are alternative emblems. Some of the coins have the first and the second, others the first and the third, and the rest the second and the third. The first two occur on No. 96 and No. 92, the former of which bears the legend Satakanisa Ranno. This was the name of one of the earlier kings of the dynasty. Of the coins which bear the third emblem, those which have a legend at all contain the names of Gautamiputra and his successor. Now this third device is universally seen on the reverse of Sâh coins; it does not occur on a Sâtavâhana coin of a king earlier than Gautamiputra, while it does occur on his and on those of his successors. This would show that the device was borrowed from the Sâhs, and was perhaps used by the Sâtavâhanas to indicate their conquest of them. And since it occurs first on Gautamiputra's coin, it must have been he who overthrew them. An examination of more coins of this dynasty, if available, would throw further light on this subject. But so far as my present information goes, the fact tends to confirm what we have gathered from other sources, viz. that Gautamiputra put an end to the Sâh dynasty.

These inferences would be rendered highly probable, or almost certain, if what is known or believed with regard to the dates of these kings were made to harmonize with the similar information we have with regard to the dates of Krishnarâja and Gautamîputra. The coins of the Satrap or Sâh dynasty bear dates, but it is not known to what era they are to be referred. For the dates of the Satavahana kings the only authorities are the Purâņas. Though there is no very satisfactory agreement amongst them as to the names and number of the individuals composing the dynasty,

the period of its total duration, given by all, nearly corresponds. Starting from the date of Chandragupta Maurya, which is generally believed to be 315 B.C., and deducting 294, the number of years for which the intervening dynasties reigned, we have 21 B.C. as the date of the foundation of the Andhrabhṛitya dynasty; and going on further in the same way we have 2 A.D. for Krishnarâja's accession; and 319 A.D. for that of Gautamiputra. Now if we take Nahapâna to be the founder of the Saka era, and refer all the Sâh dates to that era, the information got from the caves and the inferences based on it are perfectly consistent with these dates. Nahapâna's career of conquest must have ended in A.D. 78, when the era began; and this agrees with what we have stated above that the Satavahanas were deprived of the province of Nâsik some time after Krishnaraja. In the same manner, if the statement that Gautamîputra exterminated the race of Khagârâta is true, the last of the Sâh dates must come up near enough to 340 A.D., that being the date of Gautamiputra's death, or of the end of his reign. This last date, if the era is Saka, is, according to Mr. Fergusson,2 376 A.D., in which case it would not agree with the other, but there is a mistake here. Mr. Justice Newton, whom he follows, assigns 2353 A.D. to Svâmi Rudra Sâh, the 25th in his list, on the supposition that the era is Vikrama's, whence it appears that he reads the figure on the coin of that monarch as 291. But if we turn to the copies of the figures given by him at page 28, vol. vii. Journ. B.B.R.A.S., we shall find that there must be some mistake as to the right-hand stroke on the mark for a hundred in the last of the three dates given under Svâmî Rudra Sâh. For the first of these is 224, the middle figure being the mark for 20, since the circle has one diameter; and the second 192, the mark for a hundred having no side stroke. It is impossible then that the king, whose date is 192, should be reigning in 291. It is extremely probable that this king, No. 18 in Mr. Newton's first list (Journ. B.B.R.A.S. vol. vii.) or No. 25 in his second (vol. ix.), whose date appears thus to have been misread, or improperly engraved, is the same

1 Wilson's Vishnu Purâṇa, chap. xxiv. book iv.

2 Journ. R.A.S. vol. iv. new series.

3 Journ. B.B.R.A.S. vol. ix. p. 18.

See the numerals in the Nâsik Cave Inscriptions and my paper p. 67, vol. x.

Journ. B.B.R.A.S.