Vijayapuri of the Ikshvakus: the monasteries of Nagarjunakonda

The founder, Vasishthiputra Chamtamula, seized part of the kingdom of the declining Satavahanas. The four kings known from inscriptions — Chamtamula, Virapurushadatta, Ehuvala Chamtamula and Rudrapurushadatta — are dated by Upinder Singh to about 210–325 and by K. Krishna Murthy to about 227–309. Buddhism had reached the valley before them: a Buddhist inscription of the sixth regnal year of Vijaya Satakarni, one of the last Satavahanas, was found there. Chamtamula was praised as a performer of the Agnishtoma, Vajapeya and Ashvamedha sacrifices, and under Ehuvala several Hindu shrines were built, among them those of Pushpabhadra-svamin (Shiva), Nodagishvara-svamin and Sarvadeva, ‘all the gods’. Chamtamula’s sister Chamtasri was the chief patron of the ‘new work’ on the Mahachaitya, the earliest dated monument of the Ikshvaku period, whose inscriptions describe it as enshrining a relic of the Buddha; the work was completed, and its āyaka pillars set up, in the sixth regnal year of her nephew Virapurushadatta, who married a daughter of the king of Ujjain, probably one of the Saka Western Satraps.

Inscriptions name at least four Buddhist schools: the Aparamahavinaseliyas and the Bahushrutiyas, branches of the Mahasanghikas, the Mahishasakas, and the Mahaviharavasins from Sri Lanka, who had a monastery of their own. One inscription honours teachers who had converted the peoples of Kashmir, Gandhara, the Yavanas, Vanavasi and the island of Tamraparni (Sri Lanka). The dated Ikshvaku inscriptions span the years from the sixth year of Virapurushadatta to the eleventh year of Rudrapurushadatta. Around the middle of the 4th century the rising Pallavas took the lower Krishna valley, and Vijayapuri fell into obscurity.

The ruins were discovered in 1926 and excavated by A. H. Longhurst in 1927–1931. When the Nagarjuna Sagar dam threatened to flood the valley, a large rescue excavation was carried out in 1954–1960, and several monuments were moved to the top of the hill, which became an island with a museum opened in 1966. The modern name recalls the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, but there is no evidence that he had anything to do with the site.