Localities, Coins and the Transition to the Early State in the Deccan

Abstract

Looking from the perspective of different localities while making the numismatic data central to our analysis, this article not only raises critical questions about the transition to early state, but also interrogates the nature of this state in the Deccan. Localities cannot be understood as isolated historical entities, but in the context of region-based studies they cannot be treated as mere peri-pheries either. Since this task necessarily entails a minute and an in-depth study of the sources, we shall take two illustrative examples of localities in what we call the Telangana and Andhra areas of the present-day state of Andhra Pradesh, with their nodal points and spread around the sites of Kotalingala–Dhullikatta–Peddabankur and Amaravati–Bhattiprolu–Vaddamanu respectively. The coins under discussion shall necessarily be related to the broader archaeological and material profile of these two localities. There is a general tendency among historians to first look at the history of a region from its broadest definition and then move to its smaller units. Here we prefer to first focus on the history of small entities or localities, and then move both vertically and horizontally to etch out the historical moorings of early society and state in the region as a whole—the Deccan in this case study.