THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRESinscriptions. But it might be this empire about which Pliny the Elder (AD
23–79) wrote in his Naturalis historia: ‘The royal city of the Calingae is
called Parthalis [i.e. Toshali]. This king had 66,000 foot soldiers, 1,000
horses and 700 elephants, always caparisoned, ready for battle.’
The Central Indian state of the Shatavahana dynasty showed a much
greater continuity and stability than Kharavela’s short-lived realm. The
Purana texts even maintain that the dynasty ruled for 460 years, but
these texts do not always provide reliable historical evidence. Nothing is
known about the antecedents of this dynasty which belonged to the great
Central Indian tribe of the Andhras, according to the Puranas. This tribe
is listed among the non-Aryan tribes in the Aitareya Brahmana text of
about 500 BC.
Satakarni I, who seems to be identical with the king mentioned in
Kharavela’s inscription, was the first great ruler of this dynasty. He
claimed to have fought against the Greeks and Shakas in the west and
northwest and then extended his kingdom to the east along the river
Godaveri. His capital, Pratisthana (Paithan), was located on the banks of
the Godaveri in what is now the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. Due
to this advance along the Godaveri towards the southeast he could proudly
call himself ‘Lord of the South’ (dakshinapatha-pati). Pliny reports that in
his time the Andarae, as he calls the Shatavahanas, had 30 fortified cities,
100,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry and even 9,000 war elephants. They were
thus the strongest power in South India. Nevertheless they were deprived
of the central part of their realm on the upper Godaveri by the Shakas who
were pushed to the south by the Kushanas.
Only King Gautamiputra was able to restore the Shatavahana realm to
its earlier greatness in about AD 125. Gautamiputra’s son, Vasishthiputra,
alias Shri Pulumavi, ruled the Shatavahana kingdom around AD 140 at the
time of Ptolemy, who referred to Shri Pulumavi as Shri Polemaios. The
Shatavahanas had consolidated their hold on the East while being forced to
concentrate on it for nearly a century until they could reclaim the western
part once more. As their empire then stretched more or less from coast to
coast they became very important for international trade which linked
West and East Asia (see Map 5).
The Shatavahana inscriptions contain some information about their
administrative system, but details are missing. The empire was divided into
districts (ahara) headed by imperial officers (amatya) who probably had
functions similar to the Mahamatras of the Maurya empire. We do not
know whether there was an additional level of administration or not. In
general, the Shatavahanas seem to have copied the Maurya system of
administration with the important difference that they tried to take local
interests into account and inducted allodial lords into their administration
hierarchy. Furthermore, cities and guilds enjoyed a great deal of autonomy
under Shatavahana rule. This was an important feature of later South