History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s14: Southern India.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s14
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Southern India.
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If the records of the ancient history of northern India are unsatisfactory and untrustworthy, those of the southern part of the peninsula are much more so. The Dravidians have no ancient literature like that of the Vedas. They have no traditions which point to any seat of their race out of India, or of their having migrated from any country with whose inhabitants they can claim any kindred. So far as they know, they are indigenous and aboriginal. The utmost extent to which even their traditions extend is to claim for their leading race of kings—the Pândyas—a descent from Arjuna, one of the heroes of the Mahâbhârata. He, it is said, when on his travels, married a princess of the land, and she gave birth to the eponymous hero of their race, and hence their name. But in later times all the dynastic families got genealogies framed to trace their descent from gods and early heroes. It is true, indeed, that they produce long lists of kings, which they pretend stretch back till the times of the Pândavas. These were examined by the late Professor Wilson in 1836, and he conjectured that they might extend back to the 5th or 6th century before our era.¹ But all that has since come to light has tended to show that even this may be an over-estimate of their antiquity. If, however, “the Choda, Pada, and Keralaputra” of the second edict of Asoka represent the Cholas, Pândyas, Cheras, of more modern times, this triarchy existed in the 3rd century b.c. In fact, all we really do know is that, in classical times, there was a “Regio Pandionis” in the country afterwards known as the Pândyan, kingdom of Madhurâ, and it has been conjectured that the king who sent an embassy to Augustus in b.c. 27² was not a Porus, which would indicate a northern race, but this very king of the south. Be this, however, as it may, we do know, by the frequent mention of this country by classical authors, that it was at least sufficiently civilised in the early centuries of our era to carry on a considerable amount of commerce with the western nations, and there is consequently no improbability that one or more powerful dynasties may then have been established in the south. If one, that dynasty was certainly the Pândyan. The Chola and the Chera became important states only at a later date—preceded by the Pallavas.
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¹ ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ vol. iii. p. 202.
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² For an exhaustive description of this subject see Priaulx, ‘The Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana, and the Indian Embassies to Rome’ (London, 1873), pp. 65-87. We are now in a position to prove a connection between the north of India and Rome at that time. With the south it seems to have been only trade, but of this hereafter.
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The discovery in 1892, by Mr. L. Rice, of a copy of the Asoka inscriptions so far south as Mysore, indicates that even in the 3rd century b.c., the Kanarese country was in communication with, and subject to, the Maurya empire;³ and the civilisation of the north must even then have penetrated into the south.
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³ ‘Epigraphia Carnatica,’ vol. xi. pp. 1f.
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When we turn to their literature we find little to encourage any hope that we may penetrate further back into their history than we have hitherto been able to do. Dr Caldwell ascribes the oldest work in the Tamil, or any southern language, to the 8th or 9th century of our era,⁴ and it undoubtedly belongs to the Jains, who are originally a northern sect. According to the same authority, it was superseded by a Vaishnava literature about the 12th or 13th century, and that again made way for one of Saiva tendency about the latter date. There is no trace left of any Buddhist literature in the south, and but little, consequently, that would enable us to connect the history of the south with the chronology of Ceylon or northern India, nor am I aware of the existence of ancient Buddhist monuments south of the Krishnâ river which would help us in this difficulty.¹
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⁴ ‘Dravidian Grammar,’ 2nd ed. London, 1875, pp. 129 *et seqq.*
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¹ The Buddhist tower at Negapattarn, destroyed in 1867, will be noticed in Book I. chap. vi. p. 206.
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Not having passed through Baktria, or having lived in contact with any people making or using coins, the Dravidians had none of their own, and consequently that source of information is not available. Whatever hoards of ancient coins have been found in the Madras Presidency have been of purely Roman origin, brought there for the purpose of trade, and buried to protect them from spoliation.
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The inscriptions, which are literally innumerable all over the Presidency, are the one source from which we can hope that new light may be thrown on the history of the country, but, with the exception of the edicts of Asoka found in Mysore, none of these inscriptions hitherto brought to light go further back than the 5th or 6th century, and it is not clear that earlier ones may be found.² It is, at all events, the most hopeful field that lies open to future explorers in these dark domains; and, by the labours of epigraphists within the last thirty years, most important light has been derived from them for the mediæval history of southern India. Those on the raths of Mâmallapuram and the caves at Bâdâmi, are in Sanskrit, and consequently look more like an evidence of the northern races pushing southward than of the southern races extending their influence northward.
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² The Government of Mysore, with laudable beneficence, employed Mr. L. Rice with a staff of pandits for many years, collecting and publishing the inscriptions found in the state. The results fill twelve volumes, forming the ‘Epigraphia Carnatica’ (1886-1905), and when properly studied and analysed, these must yield valuable results. For Madras, Dr. E. Hultzsch was engaged in 1886 to collect the Tamil, Kanarese, and Telugu inscriptions of the Presidency, and the results of his work were published in six fasciculi of ‘South Indian Inscriptions’ (3 vols. 1890-1903), and, partly — with numerous Sanskrit records from the other presidencies,—in the ‘Epigraphia Indica,’ vol. iii. *et seqq.* Previous to 1894, many Sanskrit and Canarese inscriptions were published in the ‘Indian Antiquary’ (vols. i.-xxiii.), and in the ‘Epigraphia Indica,’ vols. i. and ii.
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From a study of the architecture of the south we arrive at the same conclusions as to the antiquity of Dravidian civilisation that Dr Caldwell arrived at from a study of their literature. The most important Buddhist monument yet discovered in the Presidency is that at Amarâvatî, on the Krishnâ; and from that vicinity northwards to Orissa there are remains showing that there must have been flourishing communities there both of Buddhists and Jains in early times. Whether the prevalence of such structures in this region was due to a colony or settlement formed by the northern Buddhists, at or near their port of departure for Java and their eastern settlements, may be doubted. The Andhras who ruled over the districts, were either Buddhists or very liberal patrons of the sect. At Guntupalle in the Godâvarî district have been found a group of rock-cut caves, a structural chaitya, and a stûpa, whilst at Chezarla, in the Nellor district, another chaitya has been discovered almost entire, though now used as a Hindû shrine.¹ And remains of stûpas have been excavated in the Kistna district—at Jaggayyapeta, Bhattiprolu, Gudivâda, Guntupalle and Ghantasâlâ;² unfortunately they have been utterly destroyed—some within living memory.³
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¹ See below Book I. chap. v. p. 166. These very interesting structures were surveyed several years ago, but the results have not yet been fully published. The caves are Buddhist of an early type.
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² 'South Indian Buddhist Antiquities,' by A. Rea, 1894; 'Epigraphia Indica,' vol. ii. pp. 323-329.
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³ The Gudivâda and Bhattiprolu stûpas, were demolished by the Public Works officers about thirty-six years ago, for bricks to use in road-making, and the marbles of the latter were built into the walls and floor of the Vellatûr sluice, or burnt for lime.—'Madras Government Orders,' No. 1620, of 1st Nov. 1878.
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The rock-cut temples at Bâdâmi and Mâmallapuram are the works of Hindûs in the 6th and 7th centuries, and the structural temples of Kailâsanâth and Vaikunthaperumâl at Conjivaram are of nearly the same age, and, with some others, they help materially to illustrate the history of the style till the 8th century. From that time forward their building activity was enormous. The style culminated in the 16th and 17th centuries, to perish in the 18th.
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When the history of the south does acquire something like consistency it takes the form of a triarchy of small states. The eldest and most important, that of Madurâ—so called after Mathurâ (or Muttra) on the Jamnâ—was also the most civilised, and continued longest as a united and independent kingdom.
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The Cholas rose into power on the banks of the Kâverî, and to the northward of it, about the year 1000, though no doubt they existed as a small state about Conjivaram for some centuries before that time. The third, the Chera, were located on the west coast, extending from the Tulu country southwards, and including Malabar and most of Travankor. Tradition assigns to them a dynasty of kings called Perumâls which ended in the 9th century. Chola and Chalukya inscriptions speak of their being frequently defeated, but we have no inscriptions of any Chera sovereign and, as yet, know very little for certain of their history. With the other southern states, they were, however, superseded, first by the Cholas, about A.D. 1000, and finally eclipsed by the Hoysala Ballâlas, a century or so afterwards. These last became the paramount power in the south, till their capital—Halebîd—was taken, and their dynasty destroyed by the Muhammadans, in the year 1310.
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With the appearance of the Muhammadans on the scene the difficulties of Indian chronology disappear in the south, as well as in the north. From that time forward the history of India is found in such works as those written by Firishta or Abul Fazl, and has been abstracted and condensed in numerous books in almost every European language. There are still, it must be confessed, slight discrepancies and difficulties about the sequence of some events in the history of the native principalities.¹ These, however, are not of such importance as at all to affect, much less to invalidate, any reasoning that may be put forward regarding the history or affinities of any buildings, and this is the class of evidence which principally concerns what is written in the following pages.
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¹ Much information on the history of these states will be found in Elliot and Dowson’s ‘History of India,’ and in other recent works.