208 AD - 320 AD : Ikshvakus or Ikshavakus of Vijayapuri came to power in Telangana after Satavahanas.
Language : Sanskrit, Prakrit, Telugu
Religion : Hinduism, Budhism
Ikshvakus were originally feudatories of the Satavahanas and bore the title Mahatalavara.
Ruled Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar and Khammam regions in Telangana.
The sprawling remains of its capital city, Vijayapuri, and its monuments, were discovered only in 1920. This kingdom supported multiple religions, traded with Rome, and built the only amphitheatre found in ancient India. It hosted Nagarjuna, also known as ‘the second Buddha’, and founder of Madhyamaka, or the influential Middle Path school of Mahayana Buddhism.
Vijayapuri, had at least 18 Brahminical temples, mostly along the Krishna riverfront. Archaeologists have also found 30 Buddhist monasteries on some of the best real estate in the city, and a giant stupa said to contain relics of the Buddha. The finds suggest that this kingdom was more Buddhist than Brahminical. It was in fact part of the early heartland of Buddhism in Eastern India, extending from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh. That’s why this eastern belt is dense with archaeological remains of Buddhist sites.
Curiously, Vijayapuri’s religious faiths also had a gendered bias. The kings mostly patronized Brahminism, worshipped Shiva and Vishnu, and imagined themselves as descendants of Rama. But queens and other wealthy women of Vijayapuri mostly patronized Buddhism. They made large financial contributions and actively participated in the spiritual life of that community. This made Vijayapuri a great and famous centre of Mahayana Buddhism. One such teacher and philosopher, a woman called Srimala, even wrote a significant Mahayana Buddhist text, The Lion’s Roar, where she advanced the idea of female Buddhas. She saw women as no less capable than men at being teachers and philosophers. Here is another depiction of her by East Asians.
Trade and Economic Divides
Vijayapuri also had a beautifully designed ghat on the Krishna River. Next to it was a customs house. Boats arrived and departed laden with goods for trade. The Ikshvakus even traded with Rome. There were so many Roman coins in circulation that fashionable youngsters began punching holes in them and wearing them as exotic earrings!
An economic class system is plainly visible in Vijayapuri. The royal family lived in a citadel on a hill. Senior officials and merchants lived in fancy homes with stone floors and walls, tiled roofs, and indoor plumbing. The less well-off lived in homes made of bamboo and thatch. In the rich and cosmopolitan households of Vijayapuri, one could even find such Roman amphorae.
Public Spaces and City Sculpture
The city had dozens of memorial pillars honouring their famous people—mostly warriors, but also a master artisan and a queen mother. The city featured bars, dance halls, hospitals, and bathing tanks. The city’s main streets had stores and workshops that sold jewellery, pottery, shoes, furniture, tools, clothes, and tailoring services. On platforms under shady trees, people gathered to play dice and other board games. At one time, the locals even struggled with the problem of fake currency. Such creativity, too, has deep roots in India.
Many foreigners came to Vijayapuri, including Kushans and Sakas from the northwest, and Romans. They were even portrayed on local sculpture, with their distinctive attires. The city had rest houses for traders, pilgrims, and students. Buddhist students came from many parts of India and Sri Lanka, so a university is sometimes claimed here. Student monks stayed in rooms like this one, but their monasteries are small compared to those in the centuries ahead.
A lot of fine sculpture has survived. It depicts Brahminical gods, yakshas & yakshis, and scenes from the Buddha’s life. Secular scenes include dancers and musicians; people bathing; courtly events; war scenes; wrestlers contesting; or stories from the Jataka Tales. By now, amorous couples have started appearing in monumental religious art. They’re all lovey-dovey, holding hands, being coy, but not going much further. Such depictions of loving couples were a significant and charming development in Indian religious art—until it disappeared. More on this topic in a later episode.
Excavations at Vijayapuri have also turned up a truly amazing and unique structure! — the only amphitheatre ever found in ancient India. Based on its design, it’s likely that it was inspired by the Romans. It was consciously designed to produce good acoustics, and was used to stage musical events, theatre, religious discourses, debates, and rip-roaring wrestling fights.
Changing Religious Trends
Archaeology has also revealed that the Buddhists of Vijayapuri were transitioning from the Hinayana school to the relatively new Mahayana school. How do we know this? The Mahayana school was more inclined to raise stupas and idols of the Buddha—a practice that the Buddha had opposed himself. Early Buddhists did not depict him in human form, which is why there are no images of the Buddha on the Sanchi stupa. But times were changing, and raising idols may have made Mahayana Buddhism more satisfying to its followers. This trend was rising in Vijayapuri, where the sculptures increasingly depict the Buddha and the iconic events of his life.
At this time, the rising practice of cremations coexisted with the older custom of burying the dead. Archaeologists have found relief carvings of the goddess Sati and other clues in sculpture at a cremation site that indicate what may be the earliest instances of sati in south India. Not too surprising—sati was a part of the advancing Indo-Aryan cultural front at Vijayapuri.
Nagarjuna, the Second Buddha
Vijayapuri is also where the famous thinker Nagarjuna lived in his later years. Often called ‘the second Buddha’, he is easily one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He is said to have lived and taught in one of the excavated monasteries. He expanded on the Buddha’s ideas and pioneered a new school of Mahayana Buddhism called Madhyamaka, or The Middle Way school, which later became influential around the world. The term Middle Way is a little tricky to understand. It refers to the notion of dependent origination, which is the idea that there is no objective, mind-independent reality that’s accessible to us. He spoke of shunyata, the idea that things have no innate essence independent of the observer. And what we make of reality inevitably depends on the cognitive structure of our minds. We understand the world through concepts, and there is no escape from our conceptual categories, no firm foundation we can reach beyond them.
Nagarjuna’s philosophy differed from the leading Brahminical school of Vedanta, which held that behind the veils of illusion, or Maya, there is a true and universal reality, of Brahman. The human mind, with effort, can come to know it. And knowing it became a precondition for attaining moksha, or liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. This view first appeared in the Upanishads and was developed later by Adi Shankara. Nagarjuna held the opposite view. He denied the possibility of knowing any ‘ultimate reality’. Even today, this is a fundamental disagreement between Mahayana Buddhists and Advaitin Hindus.
We can only try to imagine how sophisticated the intellectual culture of Vijayapuri must have been to produce a great thinker like Nagarjuna. After all, such people don’t appear in isolation. They come up through a vibrant tradition of dissent and debate. Nagarjuna’s thought echoes in the work of the 20th century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Folk Religions
The finds in Vijayapuri have also revealed a temple to a goddess called Lajja Gauri, who had a lotus head. To her devotees, she represented abundance, fertility, and sexuality. Such divinities were quite popular. Remember that, back then, the vast majority of Indians did not live in cities. And most Indians followed neither Buddhism, nor Brahminism, but preferred local folk deities—of fertility, harvests, prosperity, protection from disease, and even animistic deities, based on serpents, eagles, trees, and so on. Both Buddhism and Brahminism were minority religions, though, as in Vijayapuri, they were allied with state power and wealth. They had the resources to build all the sturdy objects and monuments whose remains we see today. So it’s easy to get an inflated sense of their actual prevalence.
How Big Religions Spread
Big religions have always competed on at least two fronts: funding and followers. Around 2000 years ago, Buddhism and Brahminism competed fiercely on both fronts. Their strategies differed. Vedic Brahminism, in particular, gained followers by embracing a powerful and syncretic process with two key ingredients.
(1) Brahminical theology became more porous. It began absorbing popular non-Vedic spiritual ideas and folk gods into its pantheon. Countless dark-skinned folk and animistic deities came in as avatars of the big Brahminical gods, such as Vishnu, Parvati, or Durga. This co-option benefited Brahminism. Take Sheetala Mata, for example, a folk goddess who cured people from diseases like smallpox. Making her an avatar of Parvati made Parvati’s elite religious culture more palatable to the devotees of Shitala mata.
(2) In parallel, Brahminical ideas began trickling down to non-Vedic groups and forest tribes. This included ideas of caste, purity and pollution, patriarchy, Vedic rituals, cremation, and others. In time, whether through pressure or consent or out of self-interest, many less powerful groups absorbed at least a few ideas and customs of the dominant Brahminical ideology. Doing so was likely a path to upward mobility. To borrow a term from sociology, their gods and customs were gradually Sanskritised.
The Emergence of Hinduism
In time, this syncretic process produced a sea of overlapping faiths that we now call Hinduism. Some scholars see in this a form of colonisation, in which Vedic Brahminism injected its ideas, beliefs and values into the prior cultural fabric of India. In fact, this process is still underway, especially with Adivasi groups who’re being ‘Hinduized’. Unlike Brahminism, this larger thing we call Hinduism has no mandatory beliefs or dogma or central authority. Its organic and decentralised evolution gave it the amazing diversity it is known for.
But while Hinduism remained theologically flexible, it evolved oppressive social hierarchies in the form of caste distinctions — making it the mirror opposite of Christianity and Islam, which are theologically rigid but socially egalitarian. Brahminical scriptures, including the Bhagavad Gita, produced elaborate justifications of social hierarchy and privilege. Concepts like karma explained inherited inequality as an outcome of deeds in a previous life. They blamed individual conduct in past lives—and not the current social order—for people’s outcomes in this life!
Meanwhile, Buddhism displayed its own theological flexibility by embracing local yakshis and deities like Tara, Hariti, Mahakala, Jambhala, and others. But it stood for a more egalitarian social order. This compounded its adversarial dynamic against Brahminism. More on this in the next episode.
The Fall of the Ikshvakus
Going back to the Ikshvaku Kingdom, why did it come to an end? Scholars have proposed two theories. (1): Over a decade or two, the Krishna River rose dramatically and began flooding the capital city regularly. This was so disruptive that people began moving out. (2): There is also evidence of plunder, destruction, and the breaking of statues by an invading army of the Pallavas from the south. The Pallavas were an expanding military power in the early 4th century. The British archaeologist AH Longhurst, who excavated Vijayapuri, wrote, ‘The ruthless manner in which the buildings have been destroyed is simply appalling … so many of the pillars, statues and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces.’ This included the breaking of some temples, stupas, and religious sculptures. Such targeted destruction of religious sites in rival kingdoms was not uncommon in the subcontinent, long before any Muslim invasions of India.
Between the floodings and the invasion, Vijayapuri’s fate was sealed. It was mostly abandoned by around 320 CE. It got covered by earth and shrub and was forgotten … until its rediscovery a mere hundred years ago.
Submersion by the Nagarjunasagar Dam
Sadly, the ancient city has been lost once again. It now lies beneath a lake created by the Nagarjunasagar dam in 1960. This happened after a spirited parliamentary debate in the 1950s on ‘heritage vs. development’. What was more important: preserving a major heritage site, or building a dam that could feed millions? The pro-dam lobby prevailed, and a decision was made to sacrifice the site. But for six years before that, the ancient site was excavated, mapped, and photographed. Many of its monuments were saved and relocated to higher ground. And that’s what we see today on the island of Nagarjunakonda, and at a nearby site called Anupu. But the charm of wandering the streets of an ancient city was tragically lost forever, just 40 years after its rediscovery.
Founder : Vashishthiputra Sri Santamula (Santamula I)
Capitals : Vijayapuri (Present Nandikonda in Nalgonda district), (Nagarjunakonda)Language : Sanskrit, Prakrit, Telugu
Religion : Hinduism, Budhism
Ikshvakus were originally feudatories of the Satavahanas and bore the title Mahatalavara.
Ruled Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar and Khammam regions in Telangana.
Curiously, Vijayapuri’s religious faiths also had a gendered bias. The kings mostly patronized Brahminism, worshipped Shiva and Vishnu, and imagined themselves as descendants of Rama. But queens and other wealthy women of Vijayapuri mostly patronized Buddhism. They made large financial contributions and actively participated in the spiritual life of that community. This made Vijayapuri a great and famous centre of Mahayana Buddhism. One such teacher and philosopher, a woman called Srimala, even wrote a significant Mahayana Buddhist text, The Lion’s Roar, where she advanced the idea of female Buddhas. She saw women as no less capable than men at being teachers and philosophers. Here is another depiction of her by East Asians.
Trade and Economic Divides
Vijayapuri also had a beautifully designed ghat on the Krishna River. Next to it was a customs house. Boats arrived and departed laden with goods for trade. The Ikshvakus even traded with Rome. There were so many Roman coins in circulation that fashionable youngsters began punching holes in them and wearing them as exotic earrings!
An economic class system is plainly visible in Vijayapuri. The royal family lived in a citadel on a hill. Senior officials and merchants lived in fancy homes with stone floors and walls, tiled roofs, and indoor plumbing. The less well-off lived in homes made of bamboo and thatch. In the rich and cosmopolitan households of Vijayapuri, one could even find such Roman amphorae.
Public Spaces and City Sculpture
The city had dozens of memorial pillars honouring their famous people—mostly warriors, but also a master artisan and a queen mother. The city featured bars, dance halls, hospitals, and bathing tanks. The city’s main streets had stores and workshops that sold jewellery, pottery, shoes, furniture, tools, clothes, and tailoring services. On platforms under shady trees, people gathered to play dice and other board games. At one time, the locals even struggled with the problem of fake currency. Such creativity, too, has deep roots in India.
Many foreigners came to Vijayapuri, including Kushans and Sakas from the northwest, and Romans. They were even portrayed on local sculpture, with their distinctive attires. The city had rest houses for traders, pilgrims, and students. Buddhist students came from many parts of India and Sri Lanka, so a university is sometimes claimed here. Student monks stayed in rooms like this one, but their monasteries are small compared to those in the centuries ahead.
A lot of fine sculpture has survived. It depicts Brahminical gods, yakshas & yakshis, and scenes from the Buddha’s life. Secular scenes include dancers and musicians; people bathing; courtly events; war scenes; wrestlers contesting; or stories from the Jataka Tales. By now, amorous couples have started appearing in monumental religious art. They’re all lovey-dovey, holding hands, being coy, but not going much further. Such depictions of loving couples were a significant and charming development in Indian religious art—until it disappeared. More on this topic in a later episode.
Excavations at Vijayapuri have also turned up a truly amazing and unique structure! — the only amphitheatre ever found in ancient India. Based on its design, it’s likely that it was inspired by the Romans. It was consciously designed to produce good acoustics, and was used to stage musical events, theatre, religious discourses, debates, and rip-roaring wrestling fights.
Changing Religious Trends
Archaeology has also revealed that the Buddhists of Vijayapuri were transitioning from the Hinayana school to the relatively new Mahayana school. How do we know this? The Mahayana school was more inclined to raise stupas and idols of the Buddha—a practice that the Buddha had opposed himself. Early Buddhists did not depict him in human form, which is why there are no images of the Buddha on the Sanchi stupa. But times were changing, and raising idols may have made Mahayana Buddhism more satisfying to its followers. This trend was rising in Vijayapuri, where the sculptures increasingly depict the Buddha and the iconic events of his life.
At this time, the rising practice of cremations coexisted with the older custom of burying the dead. Archaeologists have found relief carvings of the goddess Sati and other clues in sculpture at a cremation site that indicate what may be the earliest instances of sati in south India. Not too surprising—sati was a part of the advancing Indo-Aryan cultural front at Vijayapuri.
Nagarjuna, the Second Buddha
Vijayapuri is also where the famous thinker Nagarjuna lived in his later years. Often called ‘the second Buddha’, he is easily one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He is said to have lived and taught in one of the excavated monasteries. He expanded on the Buddha’s ideas and pioneered a new school of Mahayana Buddhism called Madhyamaka, or The Middle Way school, which later became influential around the world. The term Middle Way is a little tricky to understand. It refers to the notion of dependent origination, which is the idea that there is no objective, mind-independent reality that’s accessible to us. He spoke of shunyata, the idea that things have no innate essence independent of the observer. And what we make of reality inevitably depends on the cognitive structure of our minds. We understand the world through concepts, and there is no escape from our conceptual categories, no firm foundation we can reach beyond them.
Nagarjuna’s philosophy differed from the leading Brahminical school of Vedanta, which held that behind the veils of illusion, or Maya, there is a true and universal reality, of Brahman. The human mind, with effort, can come to know it. And knowing it became a precondition for attaining moksha, or liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. This view first appeared in the Upanishads and was developed later by Adi Shankara. Nagarjuna held the opposite view. He denied the possibility of knowing any ‘ultimate reality’. Even today, this is a fundamental disagreement between Mahayana Buddhists and Advaitin Hindus.
We can only try to imagine how sophisticated the intellectual culture of Vijayapuri must have been to produce a great thinker like Nagarjuna. After all, such people don’t appear in isolation. They come up through a vibrant tradition of dissent and debate. Nagarjuna’s thought echoes in the work of the 20th century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Folk Religions
The finds in Vijayapuri have also revealed a temple to a goddess called Lajja Gauri, who had a lotus head. To her devotees, she represented abundance, fertility, and sexuality. Such divinities were quite popular. Remember that, back then, the vast majority of Indians did not live in cities. And most Indians followed neither Buddhism, nor Brahminism, but preferred local folk deities—of fertility, harvests, prosperity, protection from disease, and even animistic deities, based on serpents, eagles, trees, and so on. Both Buddhism and Brahminism were minority religions, though, as in Vijayapuri, they were allied with state power and wealth. They had the resources to build all the sturdy objects and monuments whose remains we see today. So it’s easy to get an inflated sense of their actual prevalence.
How Big Religions Spread
Big religions have always competed on at least two fronts: funding and followers. Around 2000 years ago, Buddhism and Brahminism competed fiercely on both fronts. Their strategies differed. Vedic Brahminism, in particular, gained followers by embracing a powerful and syncretic process with two key ingredients.
(1) Brahminical theology became more porous. It began absorbing popular non-Vedic spiritual ideas and folk gods into its pantheon. Countless dark-skinned folk and animistic deities came in as avatars of the big Brahminical gods, such as Vishnu, Parvati, or Durga. This co-option benefited Brahminism. Take Sheetala Mata, for example, a folk goddess who cured people from diseases like smallpox. Making her an avatar of Parvati made Parvati’s elite religious culture more palatable to the devotees of Shitala mata.
(2) In parallel, Brahminical ideas began trickling down to non-Vedic groups and forest tribes. This included ideas of caste, purity and pollution, patriarchy, Vedic rituals, cremation, and others. In time, whether through pressure or consent or out of self-interest, many less powerful groups absorbed at least a few ideas and customs of the dominant Brahminical ideology. Doing so was likely a path to upward mobility. To borrow a term from sociology, their gods and customs were gradually Sanskritised.
The Emergence of Hinduism
In time, this syncretic process produced a sea of overlapping faiths that we now call Hinduism. Some scholars see in this a form of colonisation, in which Vedic Brahminism injected its ideas, beliefs and values into the prior cultural fabric of India. In fact, this process is still underway, especially with Adivasi groups who’re being ‘Hinduized’. Unlike Brahminism, this larger thing we call Hinduism has no mandatory beliefs or dogma or central authority. Its organic and decentralised evolution gave it the amazing diversity it is known for.
But while Hinduism remained theologically flexible, it evolved oppressive social hierarchies in the form of caste distinctions — making it the mirror opposite of Christianity and Islam, which are theologically rigid but socially egalitarian. Brahminical scriptures, including the Bhagavad Gita, produced elaborate justifications of social hierarchy and privilege. Concepts like karma explained inherited inequality as an outcome of deeds in a previous life. They blamed individual conduct in past lives—and not the current social order—for people’s outcomes in this life!
Meanwhile, Buddhism displayed its own theological flexibility by embracing local yakshis and deities like Tara, Hariti, Mahakala, Jambhala, and others. But it stood for a more egalitarian social order. This compounded its adversarial dynamic against Brahminism. More on this in the next episode.
The Fall of the Ikshvakus
Going back to the Ikshvaku Kingdom, why did it come to an end? Scholars have proposed two theories. (1): Over a decade or two, the Krishna River rose dramatically and began flooding the capital city regularly. This was so disruptive that people began moving out. (2): There is also evidence of plunder, destruction, and the breaking of statues by an invading army of the Pallavas from the south. The Pallavas were an expanding military power in the early 4th century. The British archaeologist AH Longhurst, who excavated Vijayapuri, wrote, ‘The ruthless manner in which the buildings have been destroyed is simply appalling … so many of the pillars, statues and sculptures have been wantonly smashed to pieces.’ This included the breaking of some temples, stupas, and religious sculptures. Such targeted destruction of religious sites in rival kingdoms was not uncommon in the subcontinent, long before any Muslim invasions of India.
Between the floodings and the invasion, Vijayapuri’s fate was sealed. It was mostly abandoned by around 320 CE. It got covered by earth and shrub and was forgotten … until its rediscovery a mere hundred years ago.
Submersion by the Nagarjunasagar Dam
Sadly, the ancient city has been lost once again. It now lies beneath a lake created by the Nagarjunasagar dam in 1960. This happened after a spirited parliamentary debate in the 1950s on ‘heritage vs. development’. What was more important: preserving a major heritage site, or building a dam that could feed millions? The pro-dam lobby prevailed, and a decision was made to sacrifice the site. But for six years before that, the ancient site was excavated, mapped, and photographed. Many of its monuments were saved and relocated to higher ground. And that’s what we see today on the island of Nagarjunakonda, and at a nearby site called Anupu. But the charm of wandering the streets of an ancient city was tragically lost forever, just 40 years after its rediscovery.
Ikshvaku coins were found in the interior Telangana, Keesaraguta assumes great importance due to the fact that the early unadulterated Brahmanical faith flourished here.
Ikshvaku coins are also found at – Nagarjuna konda, Phanigiri, Nelakondapalli, Vaddemanu (Mahaboobnagar dist.), Eleshwara in Nalgonda district. This indicated the extent of their kingdom.
Ikshvakus were originally feudatories of the Satavahanas and bore the title "Mahatalavara". Although the"Puranas" state that seven kings ruled for 100 years in total, the names of only four of them are known from inscriptions.
After the decline of the Sātavāhanas, the transition from Prakrit to Sanskrit as an epigraphic language is apparent in the Ikṣvāku inscriptions.
While the rulers were followers of Brahmanism and performed Vedic sacrifices, their consorts were devotees of the Buddha and erected buildings for the Buddhists settled at Nagarjunakonda and made pious donations to the stupas. Most of these buildings owed their existence to the piety of certain queens and princesses belonging to the royal house of Ikshvaku, the principal founder being a princess named Chamtisiri.
The kings are given the title of Rajan. Sometimes they bear both the titles of Rajan and Maharaja. Santamula I and Santamula II are given the additional title of Svami also.
Besides the rulers, and the princes called Malidrajakumara and Kumdra, the administrative machinery included such posts as Senapati, Talavara, Mahasenapati, Mahatalavara, Mahadandanayaka. Maharahin and Rathika. Members of the royal house, like princes and husbands of princesses held some of these posts. It is noteworthy that the wife of Mahutalavara is called Mahdtalavari and the wife of a Mahasenapati is called Mahasenapatim. A female officer Bhagavata was holding the office of Antahpura-maharatika (in charge of royal harem). Reference to Bhojikas occurs in a record. Mention is made of theoffice of amatya and the minor office of ganapaka (an accountant or astrologer).
They had two subordinate and related families, the Pugiyas and Hiranyakas.
The inscriptions give us information about some individuals and members of some feudatory families who were related to the royal house and who held important positions in the administration of the kingdom. They included the following :
(1) Mahnsenapati, Mahatalavara Skandasri of the Pukiya family.
He was the husband of Santisri, sister of King Santamula I
(2) Mahasenapati, Mahatalavara, Mahadandanayaka Skandavisakha of the Dhanaka family.
He was the husband of Atavi-Santisri the daughter of Santamula I and sister of Virapurushadatta I
(3) Mahasenapati, Mahatalavara, Vasishtiputra Skandasitakirana of the Hiranyaka clan.
He was the husband of Chula-Santissrinika of the Kulahaka family.
(4) Talavara Elisri, son of Gapdi, and grandson of Senapati Atlikki. (The name of his clan is not given).
(5) Mahatalavara Skandagopa of the Pushya- skandiya family.
He was the grandfather through his son Skanda- pula, of Kripanasri, the queen of Maharaja Ehavula Santamula I
(6) Talavara Uttara
His daughter’s daughter was Kripanasri, the queen of Santamula I
(7) Mahasenapati Samtapula of the Kulahaka family.
He is described as the subduer of the (enemy’s) camps, the destroyer of the arrogance of enemies and the captor of the wicked elephants of Olabaka. He was stationed at Mangalaranya
(8) Senapati Kumara Karadaru.
He was probably a prince. But the details of his parentage are not known.
(9) Permadi (details are not known)
His soldier Sisaba, resident of Mahgalaranya was a member of the Maraba clan. His soldiers who were residents of Mahgalaranya are mentioned.
(10) Rathika (i.e. governor) Bhakta (particulars of the clan to which he belonged are not known).
(11) Mahasendpati, Talavara, Ary aka AryabhQti (the name of the family to which he belonged is not known).
He was in ail probability related closiely to the royal family.
(12) Senapati Rataputa (the details of his descent are not known).
He was residing at Mangalaranya.
(13) Rathika (i.e. governor) [Haraka] (details of his descent are not known).
He was residing at Mangalaranya.
Another important inscription was found engraved on the stone floor of an apsidal temple situated on a rocky hill about two furlongs to the east of the Great Stupa, and known locally as Naharallabodu. This temple and a monastery standing alongside of if were built by a lady named Bodhisiri and dedicated to the fraternities of Ceylonese monks settled at Nagarjunakonda.
The dating is of the year - season - paksha - day method.
Adavi Chamtisiri, daughter of Santamula was given in marriage to Mahnsenapati Mahatalavara Mahadandanayaka Khamda-Visakhamnaka of the Dhanaka family.
An inscription dated to the 20th regnal year of Virapurushadatta mentions Chamtamula's death, dated in the victorious year (vijayasamvacharra - 273 A.D) 1 Padhama 2 divasa. It is possible that Chamtamula lived up to this time, having given up the throne at an earlier date; alternatively, it is possible that the inscription merely commemorates his death anniversary.
By the great village chief, the great talavara, the great commander, Sivaseba of the Peribidehas of the Kuasika gotra this image of lord Astbhujasvamin, made from udumbara wood, which had never been moved from Sanjayapuri from its place, by the kings Saka Rudradaman of Avanti and Visnurudra Sivalanda Sataakrni of Vanavasa has been installed on Sedagiri.
The engraver is Vardhamanaka belonging to sembaka family Suryavamsi reads last line as Abhira Samvat 100, 303 AD. Sarma reads last line as 47 year Rksadesa/kalacuri-ceda era 295 AD
Mahadevi Khaitduvula, is the wife of Maharaja Ehavala Chantamula.
The Shakas (the Western Kshatrapas) appear to have greatly influenced the Ikshvaku kingdom during Ehuvala's rule. Some of the inscriptions issued during this period use the Shaka title svamin for the king. An inscription to commemorate Vammabhatta, issued during the 11th regnal year of his son Rudrapurushadatta uses this title svamin for all the preceding kings.
Mahatalavaras, or subordinate rulers, were employed by Ikṣvhaku rulers to administrate their territory, and members of this ruling class married into the Ikṣhvaku royal family.
208 AD - 253 AD : Vasithiputra Sri Santamula (Santamula I)
208 AD - 253 AD : Vasithiputra Sri Santamula (Santamula I)
Sisters : Chamitisri, Hammasiri
He is attested by the Rentala and Kesanapalli inscriptions.
The Rentala inscription, dated to his 5th regnal year, calls him "Siri Cāṃtamūla" dated in the victorious year (vijayasamvacharra - 213 A.D) 5 (pachama), 1 Padhama 1 divasa
The 4-line Kesanapalli inscription, dated to his 13th regnal year, and inscribed on the pillar of a Buddhist stupa, names him as the founder of the Ikshvaku dynasty, performed the "Asvamedha", "Agnihotra", "Agnistoma" and "Vajapeya" sacrifices. Santamula performed the Asvamedha sacrifices with a view to proclaiming their independent and imperial status. It had become a common practice among the rulers of the subsequent dynasties to perform the Asvamedha sacrifice in token of their declaration of independent status. From this fact, it can be inferred that it was Santamula I who first declared his independence and established the Ikshvaku dynasty. Santamula's mother was Vasisti, as evident from his name.
Chamtisiri sister of Santamula married to Mahnsenapati, Mahatalavara Skandasri/Kamdasiri’s of the Pukiya family.
253 AD - 278 AD : Virapurushadatta
Wife's : Mahadevi Bhatiidevi / Bappisri, Rudradhara-bhattarika
Daughter : Kodabalisiri
Virapurushadatta was the son and successor of Santamula I through his wife Madhari.
Ayaka pillar found on the north side of the Mahachaitya at Nargarjunakonda in the regnal year 6 by by the Mahatalavan Santisri (Chatisri)
The importance of the Pukiyas is shown by the marriage of Camtisiri and Kamdasiri’s daughter Khamdasagarannaka to the king, he also married Bapasiri and Chathisiri who were his cross-cousins, daughters of Hammasiri or Hammasri, who was the sister of Siri Camtamala.
Ruled for at least 24 years, as he is attested by an inscription dated to his 24th regnal year. He was the son and successor of Santamula through his wife Madhari and married three daughters of his paternal aunts (Chamtasri and Hammasri).
Madhariputra Srivira- purushadatta followed the Brahmanical faith in the early period of his reign and during the later years he patronized Buddhism. Almost all the royal ladies were Buddhists. An aunt of Virapurisadata Chamtasri built a big Stupa at Nagarjunikonda. Her example was followed by other women of the royal family. The mahisi Mahavallabhika Yakhilinika was another of his queens and her name suggests that she probably came from the family of some ruler in northern Maharashtra. (Another
of his queens was Rudradharabhattarika who is referred to as the daughter of the maharaja of Ujjain. But none of these queens was the mother of the next king, Ehuvula Camtamula. His mother was a Vasisti and is referred to as mahadevi Bhattideva, and her genealogy is not known.He also married Rudradhara-bhattarika, the daughter of the ruler of Ujjain (Uj(e)nika mahara(ja) balika), possibly the Indo-Scythian Western Kshatrapa king Rudrasena II (256 A.D -278 A.D)
The Saka-Ikshvaku marriage was undoubtedly of some political significance. It may have checked the advance of Abhiras into Eastern Deccan.
By the great village chief, the great talavara, the great commander, Sivaseba of the Peribidehas of the Kuasika gotra this image of lord Astbhujasvamin, made from udumbara wood, which had never been moved from Sanjayapuri from its place, by the kings Saka Rudradaman of Avanti and Visnurudra Sivalanda Sataakrni of Vanavasa has been installed on Sedagiri.
The engraver is Vardhamanaka belonging to sembaka family Suryavamsi reads last line as Abhira Samvat 100, 303 AD. Sarma reads last line as 47 year Rksadesa/kalacuri-ceda era 295 AD
The Ikshvaku kingdom seems to have suffered multiple foreign invasions during Ehuvala's reign. The Sarvadeva temple inscription credits his commander Anikke with victories on the battlefield. The memorial pillar of his general Mahasenapati Chamtapula, a Kulahaka chief, also alludes to battle victories.
278 AD: Astbhujasvamin Nagajunakonda Inscription
variously read as 9, 20, 30 of Abhira King Vasisthiputra Vasusena (c.248 A.D - c. 280 A.D) the Abhira fortnight 6 of the rainy season 2 day 1 which is 257, 268 or 278 278 AD - 302 A.D : Ehuvula Santamula (Santamula II)
Santamula II was the son and successor of Virapurushadatta. The most famous lksuvaku king was Ehavala Chamtamula (Chamtamula-II).Records dated second year of his reign are in Prakrit whereas those from Eleventh year are found in Sanskrit . Ruled for at least 24 years, and is attested by inscriptions dated to the regnal years 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14,15,16, 18,19, 20 and 24. 280 AD : Queen Bhartrideva, the daughter-in-law of Chantamula 1, the wife of Virapurushadatta and the mother- of Ehuvula Chantamula built monastery on the 10th day in the 4th fortnight in the 2nd regnal year of Ehuvula Chantamula.
289 AD : Nagarjunakonda Inscription by Ehuvla Canatamula, who is known to have married a princess from the family of Kshatrapas of Ujjayini it is dated regnal year 11 Magha suklapaksha 11.
289 AD : The Kottampalugu inscription, dated 11th year of king Ehuvula Camtamula II records the construction of a vihara of Kodabalisiri (Kundavallisri), Mahadevi of the Maharaja of Banavasaka daughter of Virapurushadatta.
His reign witnessed the completion of a Devi Vihara, the Sihala Vihara, a convent founded for the accommodation of Sinhalese monks, and the Chaitya-ghara (Chaitya hall) dedicated to the fraternities (Theriyas) of Tambapanni(Ceylon). Ceylonese Buddhism was in close touch with Andhra. The sculptures of Nagarjunakonda, which includelarge figures of Buddha, show decided traces of Greek influence and Mahayana tendencies.
The Ikshvaku kingdom reached its zenith during his reign.Several Hindu and Buddhist shrines were constructed during his reign. His Patagandigudem inscription is the oldest known copper-plate charter from the Indian subcontinent.
Hariti-putra Virapurushadatta, the son of Ehuvala and queen Kapanashri (Kapanaśrī), bore the titles of an heir apparent: Maharaja Kumara and Mahasenapati. However, he did not ascend the throne, probably because he died before his father.
Ehuvala was succeeded by Rudrapurushadatta, who was his son from Vammabhatta, the daughter of a Mahakshatrapa (the Western Kshatrapa ruler).
The Shakas (the Western Kshatrapas) appear to have greatly influenced the Ikshvaku kingdom during Ehuvala's rule. Some of the inscriptions issued during this period use the Shaka title svamin for the king. An inscription to commemorate Vammabhatta, issued during the 11th regnal year of his son Rudrapurushadatta uses this title svamin for all the preceding kings.
Ehuvula Camtamula (II) had at least three queens.
One of them is Kupanasiri of Pusyakandiya lineage.She is referred to in an inscription of her son Maharajakumara Vlrapurisadatta. Both her father's and mother's families carried the title of mahatalavara. Although she is not related to the Iksvakus, this marriage must have brought the Pusyakandiyas into an alliance with the ruling dynasty.
Another queen is mahadevi Khaijduvula whose genealogy is not known.
The third queen is Mahadevi Siri Vammabhatta of the Brhatpalayana gotra. This queen is a daughter of Mahakhatapa and gives us a second instance of a marriage alliance with the Kshatrapas of western India. The Ksatrapas are, however, not known to have used Brahmanical gotra names like Brhatpalayana. Unless this is an exception, we come to a second possibility: that is Vammabhatta retained her mother's gotra.
Hariti-putra Virapurushadatta, the son of Ehuvala and queen Kapanashri bore the title Maharaja but could not ascend the throne, as he died before his father. Ehuvala was succeeded by Rudrapurushadatta, who was his son from Vammabhatta, the daughter of a Mahakshatrapa.
302 AD - 320 AD : Rudrapurushadatta
Ikshvaku inscription was found in Phanigiri on a pillar in Sanskrit and Prakrit languages and Brahmi characters. It belongs to Ikshvaku king Rudrapurusha-datta and was issued in his 18th regnal year. The inscription contains four verses in adoration of Lord Buddha.
“The discovery of this inscription is important for the history of Ikshvaku dynasty, as the regnal year mentioned in this inscription extends the reigning period of the king by seven years, from 11 to 18. This inscription records the erection of a pillar containing the Dharmachakra by the chief physician (aggra-bhishaja) of the king.
302 AD - 320 AD : Rudrapurushadatta
was the name of an Ikshvaku ruler found in inscriptions from Gurajala in Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh. He could have been a son of Ehuvula Santamula. Rudrapurushadatta ruled for more than 18 years. He was probably the last important ruler of the Andhra Ikshvaku family. After him there were three more unknown rulers according to the Puranas.
“The discovery of this inscription is important for the history of Ikshvaku dynasty, as the regnal year mentioned in this inscription extends the reigning period of the king by seven years, from 11 to 18. This inscription records the erection of a pillar containing the Dharmachakra by the chief physician (aggra-bhishaja) of the king.
The last of the Ikshvaku kings and Chutus were probably overthrown by Pallava ruler Simhavarman I and Pallava Siva Skanda Varman around 320 A.D
Pallava prince Chutu ruler Siva Skanda Varman son of Simhavarman married daughter of Skandanaga and might have inherited the kingdom after his death.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24665991
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44140697
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44140697
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44304270
https://thewire.in/history/watch-indians-episode-4-the-ikshvakus-of-andhra-pradesh
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