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Dhulikatta

Village on the Hussaini Vagu in the old Karimnagar district, beside an early walled town of 18 hectares. V. V. Krishna Sastry dug its south gate, a palace complex with a granary and a Buddhist stupa a kilometre to the north, which he dated from the late 3rd century BCE. Coins of the local king Samagopa and a silver portrait coin of the Satavahana king Sivasri Pulumavi were found here.

Dhulikatta is a village on the right bank of the Hussaini Vagu, a stream in the old Karimnagar district.1 Beside it lies an early town, walled with mud ramparts.1 V. V. Krishna Sastry dug its gate, a palace complex and a Buddhist stupa (relic mound) nearby.123 He called Dhulikatta the only Buddhist centre in the north-west of the Andhra country.4

The walled town

Dhulikatta lies about 10 km west of Peddabankur, upstream on the same stream.15 Krishna Sastry suggested that the name comes from Dhuli Kota, which means a mud fort.1 The villagers still call the old site the Kota area.1

The town covers 18 hectares and stands about 6 m above the plain.1 Mud ramparts surround it, made of earth dug from outside, so that the trenches served as a moat.1 Krishna Sastry contrasted it with Peddabankur, which was an open village.1

The south gate

The rampart still stands 3 to 5 m high, with a gateway at each of the four directions.2 Krishna Sastry dug the south gate.2 Behind a gatehouse he found guard rooms, two long halls with a path 4.40 m wide between them.2 The halls had brick floors.2

In the side of the gatehouse a small niche with steps was cut into the wall.26 Krishna Sastry took it for a hiding place for armed guards.6 The road through the gate was paved with rubble and covered with gravel and sand.4

The palace complex

In the middle of the walled area the dig found a palace complex with three phases of building.37 The earliest had a large enclosure wall on a rubble footing.3 Krishna Sastry thought it was about as old as the stupa.3

In the third phase there were large halls with brick floors, buildings of more than one storey, granaries and wells with drains.7 Krishna Sastry read this as a time of wealth.7 The main building had four halls round an open courtyard.7

Inside the palace complex stood a brick granary.8 It held many earthen pots in full, half and quarter sizes, which Krishna Sastry took for grain measures.8 One drain at Dhulikatta was made of terracotta pipes fitted into each other.5

The stupa

Krishna Sastry found a Buddhist stupa about a kilometre north of the mud fort, and later dug it.19 According to him it was built in the last quarter of the 3rd century BCE.10 In the first quarter of the 2nd century BCE it was decorated with carved slabs.10

The stupa has a brick drum 2 m high on a rubble base.10 Over it rises a brick dome about 5 m high, once topped by a stone umbrella.11 Later builders widened the drum and added platforms on the four sides.11

Forty-seven carved slabs were fixed to the drum, and most survive whole.12 One shows the snake king Muchilinda with five hoods, guarding the Buddha, who appears only as his feet.12 It has a short label in early Brahmi letters (an early Indian script) of about the 2nd century BCE.12 Other slabs show the wheel of the law and the stupa itself.12

Nowhere is the Buddha shown in human form.12 So Krishna Sastry assigned the stupa to the Hinayana school of Buddhism.912 Two metres to its north-west he found a row of monks’ cells with a verandah.13

Coins

Coins of the local king Samagopa, best known from Kotilingala, were found at Dhulikatta.1415 Ajay Mitra Shastri reports a silver portrait coin of the Satavahana king Vasishthiputra Sivasri Pulumavi from the excavation here.16 It shows the king’s head on the front.16 The legend on the back is in a Dravidian form of Prakrit.16

Footnotes

  1. V. V. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (PhD thesis, Karnatak University, 1978), p. 208 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  2. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 222 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 228 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 226 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  5. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 341 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  6. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 223 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  7. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 229 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 335 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  9. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 209 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  10. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 242 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 243 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2

  12. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 244 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  13. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (1978), p. 245 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  14. Rachna Shamji Lodaya, An Integrated Approach to the Pre-Satavahana Coinage of the Deccan (PhD thesis, Deccan College, Pune, not before 2011), p. 124 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  15. Lodaya, Pre-Satavahana Coinage of the Deccan (not before 2011), p. 130 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩

  16. Ajay Mitra Shastri, Early History of the Deccan: Problems and Perspectives (1987), p. 31 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

People

Samagopa

King known only from his coins, found at Kotilingala, Peddabankur and Dhulikatta in the old Karimnagar district and at Chandrapur in Maharashtra. He issued more coins than any other Kotilingala king. Rachna Lodaya takes him for the last local king before the Satavahanas, ousted by Simuka about 52 BCE; P. V. Parabrahma Sastry took him for a Sunga king.

References

Sources (3)
  1. V. V. Krishna Sastry, Proto and Early History of the Karimnagar Region (opens in a new tab), Karnatak University, Dharwar (PhD thesis, supervisor B. K. Gururaja Rao), 1978, pp. 208–209, 222–223, 226, 228–229, 242–245, 335, 341. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  2. Rachna Shamji Lodaya, An Integrated Approach to the Pre-Satavahana Coinage of the Deccan (opens in a new tab), Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune (PhD thesis, guide V. D. Gogte), not before 2011, pp. 124, 130. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]
  3. Ajay Mitra Shastri, Early History of the Deccan: Problems and Perspectives (opens in a new tab), Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi, 1987, pp. 31. Cite-only; paraphrased. [All rights reserved (cited, not reproduced)]

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