the area around their capital Pratishthana (modern Paithan, Maharashtra) and then expanded their territory to eastern Deccan. Carla Sinopoli cautions that the inference about the western Deccan origin of the Satavahanas is "tentative at best" given the small sample of early inscriptions. Kanha's Pandavleni mentions the term maha-matra (officer-in-charge), which indicates that the early Satavahanas followed the Mauryan administrative model. C. Margabandhu theorised that the Satavahanas were called Andhras because they were natives of eastern Deccan (the Andhra region), although they first established their empire in western Deccan after having served as Mauryan subordinates. Himanshu Prabha Ray (1986) opposes this theory, stating that the Andhra was originally an ethnic term, and did not come to denote the geographical region of eastern Deccan until well after the Satavahana period. According to Vidya Dehejia, the writers of the Puranas (which could have been written after the Satavahana period) mistook the Satavahana presence in eastern Deccan as evidence for their origin in that region, and wrongly labelled them as "Andhra". Puranas called the Satavahana kings as Andhrabhrityah. Andhra is both a tribal and a territorial name, the latter territorial denotation of present Telugu lands came into usage only well after the Satavahana period had ended, which meant that the term Andhra represented only the Andhra tribe (who had originated in North India along the Yamuna river banks as per Rigveda) and not the present Andhra region or its Telugu people. The term Andhrabhrityas (Andhra servants) may imply two things, one being that the Andhras were originally servants of the Mauryas or the Sungas. The other one, as per some scholars is that the expression is taken to indicate the servants of some other Andhra rulers. These scholars also suggest Kannada origin for the Satavahanas meaning that the dynasty originated in present-day Karnataka, and initially owed allegiance to some Andhra rulers. A Satavahana inscription found on a slab of the upper drum (medhi) of the Kanaganahalli mahastupa mentions year 16 of Vasisthiputra Sri Chimuka Satavahana's reign, which can be dated from ca. 110 BCE. V. S. Sukthankar theorised that the territorial division Satavahani-Satahani (Satavahanihara or Satahani-rattha), in present-day Bellary district, was the homeland of the Satavahana family. However, Dr. Gopalchari challenged Sukthankar's theory by pointing out that not a single inscription of the early Satavahanas is found in Bellary District and that the only Satavahana inscription in Bellary District was that of Pulumavi, who