Nāyanikā (Nāganikā)
A figure from the books
#Nayanika
Nāyanikā (Nāganikā) · fl. c. 1st century BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Queenship and statecraft — chief queen of Sātakarṇi, patron of Vedic sacrifice at sovereign scale, and, by the best reading of the coins and the stone, regent of the Deccan's first empire.
“In a mountain pass where every trader paid his toll, a widowed queen carved the account of her sacrifices, her fees to the priests counted to the last cow and coin, and her family's portraits with their names overhead — and that ledger in the rock is where the documented history of Indian women's power begins.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“She is the first woman in Indian history whose rule we can prove — not from legend or later chronicle, but from a rock-cut inscription she commissioned and coins struck in her own name.”
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