# Gautamiputra Satakarni and the Nashik caves
**गौतमीपुत्र सातकर्णि और नासिक की गुफाएँ**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/satavahana-nashik/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 106 CE – 130 CE (± 50 years)
- Where: Pandavleni caves, Nashik, Maharashtra (19.941, 73.748)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

A queen mother's inscription at Nashik praises her son Gautamiputra Satakarni for crushing the Shakas and restoring Satavahana power.

नासिक में राजमाता गौतमी बलश्री का अभिलेख अपने पुत्र गौतमीपुत्र सातकर्णि की प्रशंसा करता है, जिसने शकों को हराकर सातवाहन सत्ता लौटाई।

## Account

The Satavahanas ruled the western Deccan from Pratishthana, modern Paithan, and grew rich on the trade between the Ganga plain, the Deccan and the ports of the west coast. Before Gautamiputra Satakarni, the Kshaharata Shaka ruler Nahapana, whose family left inscriptions in the caves at Nashik and Karle, held the coast and the Nashik country. Gautamiputra defeated him and restruck his silver coins in his own name; a hoard found at Jogalthembi near Nashik in 1906, most of it restruck, shows it happened.

The inscription in Cave 3 at Nashik, set up by his mother Gautami Balashri in the nineteenth regnal year of her grandson Vasishthiputra Pulumavi, calls Gautamiputra the destroyer of Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas and lists the regions he ruled. The Satavahana chronology is disputed: a long chronology begins the dynasty in the third century BCE, a short one in the first. Proposed dates for Gautamiputra's reign run from about 60-85 CE to 106-130 CE; the range shown follows the later, more often cited dating, with a wide margin.

## Sources

- Senart, E., 'The inscriptions in the caves at Nasik', Epigraphia Indica 8 (1905-06) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69971
- Shastri, A. M., The Satavahanas and the Western Kshatrapas (1998)

## Image

Pandavleni Caves Nashik. Katyare, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APandavleni_Caves_Nashik.jpg

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