Chapter I HISTORICAL NOTB The thesis aims at the presentation of the data re­ garding the material culture of the ancient places in the Deccan, more especially the western part of the region covered by the present districts of Ahmednagar, Dhulia, Jalgaon, Kolhapur, Nasik, Poona, Satara,Sangli and Sholapur, The period covered by the study is roughly 500 A.D. to 1300 A.D., that is, eight hundred years. In order to make this picture intelligible a brief chronological outline of the cultural and political history of the region is given in the following few paragraphs. During the last ten years the history of this region has been taken back by some one hundred fifty thousand years. In 1949 the Department of Archaeology in India and 6 the Deccan College, Poona, organised an expedition for developing research in prehistory and the geochronology of India, more especially of Peninsular India. From then on­ wards the large scale explorations and excavations carried out by Prof. Sankalia and his associates throughout the Deccan have yielded valuable information about the pre- 1 historic and early historic cultures of the Deccan. Explo­ rations and excavations by other agencies have confirmed the findings of these researches. The cradle of these early cultures was mainly the Pravara-Godavari basin while other river valleys like those of Bhima (the ancient Bhimarathi) and its tributaries like the Kula-lV^.utha also served as abodes of early man. The nature of the material culture of this man as revealed by these studies is briefly narrated below. The earliest human remains belong to the Middle Pleiestocene period. Various stone tools like cleavers, hand-axes, flakes, choppers, hammer-stones, and cores mostly of Dolerite occur. At Nevasa particularly, where the stratigraphic record is as complete as could be hoped for, the earliest layers formed of cemented gravel contained cleavers and flakes in association with a fragmented jaw 2 of Bos namadicus. ’ a typical Middle Pleijsrstocene fossil’ . 1 See Bibliography. 2 Sankalia, Deo and others. From Pre-history History at Nevasa. 67* Similar stone implements have been discovered at Bel Pandhri and at Gangapur near Nasik on the Godavari and at Poona. The next period called the Middle PalJ^olithic by Prof. Sankalia and dated to around twentyfive thousand years, is fairly widespread in the region. The entire Godavari and Pravara valleys yield various types of tools like scrapers, points, borers, etc. made of stones like Jasper, Chalcedony, Bloodstone, etc. Of the various places yield­ ing these implements at Kalegaon was discovered a complete skull of Bos namadicus Falc embedded in the gravels in association with a number of tools. "The same tooltypes are repeated in the industry occuring in this gravel. Thus there is no doubt about the contemporaneity of the skull 3 and the industry.” The data regarding the next period, technically called the Chalcolithic period, opens a vista of a highly developed human culture. The gap between the Middle Pai^eolithic and the Chalcolithic periods is considerable. The exact observations and recordings of stratigraphic evidence, the use of geochronological dating and that of the latest methods of dating like the Carbon 14 have given an exacti­ tude to the chronological sequence at Nevasa. The first side which incidentally is the type-site of the particular kind of pottery was Jorwe on the Pravara. Here excavations carried out by the Deccan College, exposed the cultures 3 Ibid.. 102. f. wherein man used small stone tools or microliths along with a limited number of copper tools and objects and a pottery which is remarkable for the evenness of the wall- thickness, the fine and tough texture,the high metallic ring. The pottery is covered with a reddish orange slip. Application of coloured decoration is fairly widely applied, the colour used being black (red in some cases as noted at Sawalda) and although at Jorwe "animal - including human designs are conspicuous by their absence,” Nevasa has yielded several potsherds with animal designs. Along with this fine wheelmade pottery, several types of handmade— ware like huge storage jars and other terracotta objects like lamps, figurines, etc. occur. A characteristic feature of this Chalcolithic culture is the Urn burials. The burials exposed at Nevasa were in almost all cases those of children. Generally two urns of grey fabric with rounded bottom and a flaring mouth were placed face to face at a level not much below the floor level. In the case of grown up children a series of pots have been used with the bottoms of the central urns removed. Small bowls and spouted pots were often placed in these burials along with the skeletal remains. These funerary objects some­ times consisted of beads of faience and carnelian. Generally the urns have a north-south orientation. The evidence re­ garding the habitations of the Chalcolithic people was much more complete at Nevasa than at other places. Here also it is evident that the first settlers came and made their 0 houses on the black soil. "There were a number of suc­ cessive habitations after that, each of which could be demarcated with the clusters of burials associated with each habitational level. The practice of these people was 4 to bury their dead below the occupational floor.” There is some evidence to believe that these people might have known silk or silk fibre. The dates assigned to the Chalcolithic period on the basis of the C-14 dating are roughly 1500 B.C. to 1000 B.C. Sites like Prakasha, Bahurupa and Sawalda (Dhuliaj, Diamabad and Bahai in the Jalgaon district have revealed 5 similar Chalcolithic cultures. In the survey of the various places carried out by the author he was able to locate two Chalcolithic sites. One is near Balgavade in the Sangli district. Here, just outside the present inhabitation is a mound that has yielded some potsherds and a number of Chalcedony flakes. On a comparison with material from Nevasa in the Ahmednagar district, these finds could also be assigned to the same period as at that place. At Ite on the Bhima river in the Sholapur district similar potsherds were discovered from a large habitation mound. However, no flakes or blades as in the Chalcolithic phase at Nevasa were found. The excavated sites in the Deccan yield no evidence 4 Ibid. , 17-lS. 5 Indian Archaeology, a Review. 1956-59, 15-16 and 1959-60, 29-30. 10 about the period between the end of the Chalcolithic phase (1000 B.C.) and the beginning of the Satavahana Empire. And probably as indicated by Kevasa there was a gap between the two. During this period of nearly a thousand years when great strides in the religious, cultural, and poli­ tical fields were taken in Northern India, there seems to be a comparative dearth of evidence regarding tne inhabit­ ants of the Deccan, their political and cultural achieve­ ments, with the advent of the i3atavahanas and a century or so prior to that event, this darkness fades away and all sorts of data presents themselves to the student. This period is marked, as is noticed in the section on Monuments, by the excavations of the rock-cut temples at Bhaja, Bedsa, Pitalkhora, etc. This in its turn testifies to the great advance Buddhism had made in this region. In the first century E.G. the oatavahanas became pre­ dominant in the upper Deccan. The kings of the Satavahanas were styled 'Lord of Dakshinapatha^ . ’’The name Dakshina- path, however, was not always used in the same geographical sense, sometimes it indicated the whole of the trans- Vindhyan India, but often only the present Maratha country with the adjoining eastern and western regions. ...The aforesaid title at least in regard to the early Satavahanas appears to point to their hold of Dakshinapath in the 6 narrow sense." Pratisthan, that is, modern Paithan in the 6 Majumdar and Pusalkar, History and Culture of the Indian People (H.C.I.P.), Vol. 2, 191* l i Aurangabad district was the headquarters of the Satavahanas. The latest available evidence indicates that the Satavahana dynasty was found^somewhere aroundthe third quarter of the first century, before Christ. Upto the end of the first century B.C. various kings of this dynasty amongst whom Satakarni I was the most illustrious, ruled over this country. Spigraphic data speaks of the varying limits of the kingdom. From the end of the first century B.C. to the beginning of the second century A.D. a large part of the Satavahana kingdom especially most of the northern Maharashtra was under the rule of the ^akas. The last of these is the most famous, viz. Nahapana Kshatrapa. By the end of the first quarter of the second century of the Christian era Gautamiputra Satakarni overthrew the ^aka rulers and re-established Satavahana rule. ’'The direct rule of this king, therefore, seems to have extended over the whole land from Krishna in the south to Malwa and Kathiawar in the north and from Berar in the east to the 7 Konkan in the west.” Epigraphic, literary, and numismatic data have made our knowledge of the political history of this period tolerably complete. The sites so far excavaied in the Deccan have given a very good idea of the day to day life of the people of this period. People seem to have lived in well built houses of burnt bricks. Soak pits lined with wedge shaped bricks or 7 Ibid. , 201. 1 3 with terra-cotta rings were often dug for the maintenance of proper sanitation. Iron implements like chisels, nails, pick-axes, etc. have been discovered from these layers.