Place · fortified Buddhist settlement · India
Dhulikatta
The early historic fortified settlement at Dhulikatta in Peddapalli district, Telangana, dated to the Satavahana period (2nd c. BCE to 2nd c. CE), with a Buddhist stupa complex excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India from 1975 under K.V. Soundara Rajan. The fortified mound covers about 11 hectares with earthen ramparts and a surrounding moat. The site yielded limestone sculpture panels of the Jataka stories (now in the Hyderabad State Museum), the earliest surviving life-size Buddha figures in the Telugu-speaking region, and Satavahana coinage of Satakarni I (3rd c. BCE), Hala and Pulumavi IV. Dhulikatta is thought to have been a frontier Satavahana trade settlement and Buddhist monastic ground on the trans-Deccan trade route to the Vidarbha-Mahakoshala region.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.590, 79.430
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyPhanigiri
Dhulikatta's fortified town with a stupa outside it and Phanigiri's hilltop monastery with an inscribed torana are the two best-published Buddhist sites in Telangana, and both are dated by Satavahana and Ikshvaku material. Between them they establish that the Buddhist Andhra of the textbooks was not only a Krishna-valley phenomenon but ran across the plateau too.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dhulikatta”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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