Satavahana dynasty

Several rival kingdoms had emerged in its place.

The Satavahana dynasty controlled territories in the Deccan region of central and southern India.

Its precise boundaries and chronology remain debated, but it was an important political and commercial power around this time.

In northwestern India, Indo-Scythian rulers and other regional dynasties controlled territories that had previously experienced Greek, Persian, and Mauryan influence.

So you have powers that are ruling from what is now Gujarat, the Western Shatrapas, the Western Satraps, who are there for a few hundred years.

You have the Satavahana dynasty based on the Deccan Platinum.

toe, you have small middling dynasties like the Shvakus and the Mabodjas sort of at the sort of very edge of this larger sort of kingdom.

But still, we're not really dealing with an empire as such.

Right.

So as I was just saying, you know, on the one hand, we have to sort of think of a diversity of possibilities just because the political economies are different.

So let's say a coin is arriving towards the north of the subcontinent, towards, you know, the Kushans or Guptas, or even towards the Western satraps or the Satavahanas.

These are political entities that are at least in some ways familiar with the technology of coinage.

Most accounts place him somewhere in southern India in the 1st through 3rd century CE, corresponding temporally and geographically with an early, nascent Mahayana movement in India.

He's thought to have served as an advisor to a king of the Satavahana dynasty, The Satavahana of kingdom occupied and ruled the Deccan Plateau in the second century.

Their northern borders would correspond roughly to modern-day Jaipur, and the southern border would be around Bengaluru, and the east and west borders were the east and west coasts of the Indian subcontinent.

In this capacity, he would have lived at a monastery with at least some, perhaps mostly, Mahayana practitioners while being called to advise the king on various decisions.

The Staviras said yes, but the Mahasamgikas said no.

This set the Mahasamgikas as the quote-unquote progressive side of the schism, which continued as Mahayana eventually emerged among Mahasamgika practitioners.

The fact that Nagarjuna was likely Southern Indian, likely served as an advisor to a king of the Satavahana dynasty in the second or third century, and likely encountered early Mahayana is all that is known.

And even this is all educated speculation.