Journey
Satavahana Deccan & the rock-cut trade route
The Deccan's first empire did not build temples; it cut monasteries into the passes. Every one of these excavations sits on a route from a Konkan port up the Western Ghats to the plateau, and their inscriptions name the people who paid — merchants, guilds, bankers, a Greek, and the women of the royal house.
Stops (12)
- Sopara · Sopārā — the Konkan port
Western India's great early port, north of Bombay, where an Ashokan rock edict was found and where the Periplus trade came ashore. Everything cut into the ghats behind it was paid for by goods that landed here — the monasteries are a function of the harbour, and they stop when the harbour does.
- Kanheri caves · Kanheri — the monastery above the port
A hundred and nine excavations in a basalt hill inside what is now Mumbai, with rock-cut water cisterns, a great chaitya and an unusual number of donative inscriptions naming merchants, shipowners and guilds from Sopara and Kalyan. It was occupied for a thousand years, longer than any other cave site in the Deccan.
- Kārlā Caves · Kārlā — the greatest chaitya
The largest and best-preserved early chaitya hall in India, cut above the Bhor Ghat in the first century BCE, with a teak rib frame still in place and inscriptions naming a Yavana among the donors. An Ekvira temple in the forecourt is busier than the cave: Koli fishing families come up the ghat for her festival.
- Bhājā Caves · Bhājā — the earliest phase
Second century BCE, and among the oldest rock-cut excavations anywhere: an apsidal chaitya whose vault carried wooden ribs, fourteen stupas in a side cutting, and relief panels of a horseman and of musicians — a woman with a harp and another with a drum, the earliest depiction of the Indian harp.
- Bedsā Caves · Bedsā — the pillared capitals
A first-century BCE chaitya a few kilometres on, with the most elaborate capitals of the whole western group: bell forms carrying paired horses, bullocks and elephants with riders. Karla, Bhaja and Bedsa within fifteen kilometres of one pass are the entire first phase of Indian rock-cut architecture.
- Junnar cave groups · Junnar — two hundred excavations
The densest cave landscape in India, some two hundred excavations in four groups around one town at the head of the Naneghat pass — and the place where the Kshatrapa Nahapana's inscriptions are found, which is how his conflict with the Satavahanas over these routes is dated.
- Nāneghāṭ · Nāneghāṭ — the toll and the price list
A pass cut through the Ghats to carry goods to the plateau, with a rock-cut jar at the top for tolls and a cave inscription listing the sacrifices the royal house performed and the fees paid for each — a price list in stone, and among the earliest Satavahana records.
- Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi · Gautamīputra Sātakarṇi — the reconquest
The ruler who broke Nahapana's hold on these passes about 125 CE and restruck his silver with his own dies. His mother's eulogy at Nasik, cut after his death, is the fullest Satavahana document we have — and it is a woman's account of her son's reign, which is unique in Indian epigraphy of the period.
- Pandavleni, Nasik · Pandavleni, Nasik — the inscriptions
Twenty-four excavations above Nasik whose inscriptions record the donations that paid for them and the wars between the donors: Satavahana and Kshatrapa records in the same rock, with Gautami Balashri's eulogy of her son in Cave 3. The building is secondary; this is an archive.
- Paithan (Paithani) · Paithan — the capital and the loom
Pratishthana, the Satavahana capital and the southern terminus of the Dakshinapatha road from Ujjain — and still the town that makes the Paithani sari, a silk with a tapestry-woven gold border and pallu. The technique is old enough that the painted figures at Ajanta wear recognisable versions of it.
- Sātavāhana lead and potin coinage · The lead and potin coinage
The Deccan's first large currency, struck mostly in base metal rather than silver — small change for an economy of long-distance trade. The ship on the reverse of Yajna Sri's Andhra issues, two-masted with a high prow, is the earliest Indian depiction of a seagoing vessel on money.
- Amarāvatī Mahāstūpa · Amarāvatī — the eastern capital's stupa
The Satavahana mahachaitya on the Krishna, its casing slabs carved with the crowded narrative relief that became the Amaravati school and travelled to Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Mekong delta. Its sculpture is mostly in Chennai and London; what stands on site is a mound and a shed.