CHAPTER Z INTRODUCTION The period of the 1st four centuries of the Christian era is a very iiiqportant and interesting period to study. The early medieval period of India was characterised as the 'dark period' (Chattopadhaya 1983:29) of India due to the 'absence' of the vast territorial empires in the period after the fall of the Gupta empire. The early Christian centuries witnessed similar conditions after the breakup of the Mauryan enqpire. Actually the period was one in which significant changes were taking place. The inroads made by the Central Asian tribes brought about a decentralised government as opposed to the highly centralised Mauryan government. The political conditions of the post-Mauryan period were drastically changed from those of the earlier years. The period of the early centuries of the Christian Era saw the establishment of a state in nuclear regions from the geographical and resource base point of view. The geological and topographical features of Gujarat are different from that of the Deccan. The Satavahanas ruled over the Deccan the same time as the Kardamaka Kshatrapas ruled over Gujarat. Both traded extensively with the west, i.e. the Romans, the Persian gulf, and the Arabian peninsula, etc (Schoff 1912: 3- 5) . Due to their geological, geographical and topographical differences, both regions offered differing resources and different trading conditions. Since this study is an archaeological one, the sites, their material culture and other influencing conditions will have to be taken into consideration. This thesis is a historico-archaeological study of a dynamic period in early Indian history. The aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the lifeways, political and economic conditions of the people in Gujarat during the period when India was in a state of flux after the break up of the Mauryan empire. There were a series of invasions in north India by foreigners. Some of them stayed behind to rule over various parts of India, others like the Indo-Greeks were defeated by the tribes coming in from the north and were also driven out of India by Kharavela in the 1st c. B.C. The ancestors of the Kardamakas and the Kshaharatas were among these invaders. The Kushans ruled over north India till the third century A.D. The Satavahanas ruled in the Deccan. The Kshatrapas ruled from the 1st c. AD to the 4th c. AD. They consisted mainly of two families, the Kshaharatas which was the earlier family led by Bhumaka and Nahapana who ruled over mainly Maharashtra as their inscriptions were found from Junnar, Nasik and Karle caves. The later family was the Kardamaka line founded by Chashtana who was a later contemporary of Nahapana. The inscriptions of the Kardamaka family are all from Gujarat, majority of which are from Kutch and Saurashtra. Only one inscription of the family is found from East Gujarat which is of Viradman's reign. Hence the sphere of our study includes only the Kardamaka family. Therefore Gujarat is the area of our study which is also connected with the Deccan area due to its geographical orientation, and therefore, the sites of the Deccan of the 1st four centuries A.D. will also be mentioned along with the sites of Gujarat. It was found in the course of these studies that there was a geographical grouping of the inscriptions of each of the families of the Western Kshatrapas. This will be explained further in Chapter II. The other kshatrapa families will also be mentioned and described in Chapter II since they were also known as the Western Kshatrapas. Each region of Gujarat state has a characteristic orientation towards land and sea which is often governed by geographical conditions like location in relation to land and sea, physical features and resources. Therefore, the settlement patterns and functions will be different form region to region. Of the material culture found in the Early Historic times from the various sites of Gujarat, the Red Polished ware is the most profuse. It is also found in the 5th c. AD layers at the excavated site of Amreli. This is after the end of Kshatrapa rule in Gujarat. However, this thesis is termed as Kshatrapa period because the earliest inscriptions of Gujarat are of the Kardamaka Kshatrapa rulers. Hence 3 Gujarat is considered to be of Kshatrapa domain which was taken over by the Maitrakas and then the Bhattarakas who are believed to have been the feudatories of the Guptas. Silver coins of the Guptas have been found from Amreli (Rao 1966: 81-88) which do not necessarily indicate the rule of a particular dynasty- over an area, in this case Gujarat. History of Research The earlier works done on the Western Kshatrapas are all mostly on Kshatrapa inscriptions and coins. None of the works are archaeologically oriented i.e. the study of the daily living of the people of the areas over which the above families ruled. Numerous district-wise explorations have been carried out in Saurashtra and Gujarat as shown in this thesis. A number of sites of the Early Historic period in Eastern Gujarat and Saurashtra have been excavated and reported, viz. Vadodara (Subbarao 1953), Devnimori (Mehta and Chowdhary 1964), Shamalaji (Mehta and Patel 1967), Dhatva (Mehta and Chowdhary 1975), Bharuch (lAR 1963-64), Nagara (Mehta and Shah 1968) etc. An article by Dr. R.N. Mehta C1983) on East Gujarat trade connections has been written. These works have appropriately been utilised in this thesis. The most valuable works on Saurashtra are by Burgess (1876) and Sankalia (1941). Burgess (1876) has given an account of the various caves of Saurashtra and all the architectural features of Gujarat including the temples and gateways of ancient towns found in Gujarat. This has not been included in the thesis except in connection with the new trends in motifs used to decorate the architecture. These works deal purely with architecture which is not needed in the thesis since it studies the settlements of Gujarat during Kshatrapa times. Sankalia's work also includes architecture but most of it is on the prehistory of Gujarat which does not concern us at all. Altekar (1926) enumerates the ancient towns found in Gujarat and Kathiawad in connection with towns like Boradaxima and others mentioned in the Periplus (Schoff 1912), towns like Valabhipur and Chara along the coast of Saurashtra and others which flourished as ports. Three major published excavations are Amreli (Rao 1966), Prabhas Patan (Nanavati £t &1. 1971) and at Dwarka (Mate and Ansari 1966). These three works are excavation reports which described the trenches dug and the material culture like pottery, coins, structures etc found in each exqavated layer and trench. The history of the Western Kshatrapas by ^apson (1967, Reprint) and Mirashi (1981) are the two well known works on the history of the Western Kshatrapas; the former has dealt with the coins of the families and the latter with their inscriptions. 5 Almost all the inscriptions have been dealt with by Mirashi. An inscription of Chashtana dated in his llth regnal y-ear, i.e. 89 AD (Gokhale 1968: 104) gives a good cultural account of the locality of Andhau in Khavda in northern Kutch. Jamindar (1975; 1994) has also deciphered a number of Kshatrap inscriptions. Jamindar has written a book on Kshatrap history in Gujarati (1975). Recently a new book has been written dealing with the coinage and the history of all the families of the Western Kshatrapa rulers in detail (Jha ajcid Rajgor 1994) . The date of Nahapana has also been fixed by them for 94 AD. For the region of Kutch, Thakkar (1877) gives an architectural account along with ethnoarchaeological aspects and Mrs Postans (1839) has given a traveller's account of Western India including that of Kutch. Joshi (1972; 1990) has reported on his explorations of Kutch which mainly deal with Harappan sites and has only fleeting references to Early Historic pottery which have been found from the same sites. It however provides a valuable description of the area surrounding the sites which were difficult to visit. The most valuable information on Gujarat's archaeological material is available from the various unpublished theses from M.S. University, Vadodara, on district wise archaeological explorations. The sites of Jamnagar district have been described in detail by Bhan (1983). The other districts which also have been taken into account for this thesis are Kheda district in central Gujarat (Momin 1981) , north Bhavnagar district (Jairath 1981), Ahmedabad district (Mirchandani 1983), Panchmahals district (Sonawane 1979). These works are an account of all the sites found in their particular areas irrespective of the period and deal with the occupation of the area from prehistory to medieval times depending upon the number of sites belonging to each period. The Bombay Presidency Gazetteers provide a mine of information on flora, fauna, natural resources, history and the native peoples residing in the area along with topographical description and historical finds from the various areas of Gujarat. The sites of the other areas like Rajkot and Junagadh districts have been known from Ghosh (1989) and Indian Archaeology: A Review which gives a list of sites along with pottery found from them, most of this pottery is Red Polished ware, a typical pottery found during the Early Historic period. The pattern seen in the Kshatrap inscriptional chronology found in Gujarat coincides with the pottery and other aspects of material culture patterns of Gujarat. The pottery from Kutch was described fleetingly as painted ware, and did not give evidence of why it was Early Historic. This has led to the exploration in Kutch, specially around Andhau where seven of the ten inscriptions from Kutch have been found.