Place · Buddhist rock-cut caves · India
Pandavleni, Nasik
The Satavahana and Western Kshatrapa Buddhist caves at Pandavleni, 8 kilometres from Nashik city — 24 Hinayana Buddhist excavations cut between the 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE. The Nashik Prashasti inscription by the Satavahana queen Gautami Balashri (c.130 CE) in Cave 3 records her son Gautamiputra Satakarni's defeat of the Shaka king Nahapana — one of the most important epigraphic documents of the Deccan dynastic wars. The caves preserve inscriptions in Prakrit Brahmi recording donations by merchants, princes, nuns and queens — including Nahapana's son-in-law Ushavadata's gifts, which were later re-inscribed by the Satavahana victors. The war between the donors is written into their own donation records.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Patron dynasty
- Satavahana
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 19.940, 73.750
Connections (3)
- Imperial inscription atNāneghāṭ
The Nasik caves and the Naneghat pass carry inscriptions of the same royal house a hundred kilometres apart, and together they show how a Deccan dynasty actually worked: Naneghat lists sacrifices performed and the fees paid for them, a royal price list at the head of a trade pass, and Nasik records the donations of merchants and of the queen Gautami Balashri, along with the wars between Satavahanas and Kshatrapas over the same routes.
- Imperial inscription atGautamīputra Sātakarṇi
Gautami Balashri's inscription in Cave 3 at Nasik, cut after her son's death, is the fullest Satavahana record in existence: it lists his conquests, calls him the destroyer of Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas, claims he stopped the mixing of the four varnas, and records her gift of the cave to the sangha. It is an Indian dynastic eulogy composed by the ruler's mother, which happens nowhere else in the epigraphy of the period, and everything we know of his reign rests on it.
- Trade routeTagara / Ter
Ter (ancient Tagara) and the Satavahana cave complex at Pandavleni Nashik sit on the Dakshinapatha trade route — Ter being named by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) and by Ptolemy as a major trading entrepot between Pratishthana (Paithan) and the Coromandel ports. Pandavleni's 1-century BCE to 3-century CE Satavahana cave inscriptions (including Gautami Balashri's Nashik Prashasti) document the same Satavahana trade economy that supported Ter's urban prosperity.
On these journeys
Sources
History of India — Wikipedia
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