The Rashtrakutas and their Times c14.2

c14.2

In order to understand properly the administrative machinery of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa empire, it would be necessary to recall to memory its wide extent. The empire usually extended over southern Gujarat, Marathi districts of the Central Provinces, Konkan, the whole of Maharashtra, practically the whole of the state of Hyderabad, Karnatak, and portions of the state of Mysore. Its northern boundary extended from Cambay to Houshangabad; the eastern boundary, which is rather difficult to determine precisely, probably ran through Houshangabad, Nagpur, Chanda, Warrangal and Cudappah. The southern boundary was formed partly by the Northern Pennar, beyond which extended the Bāṇa and the Noḷamba principalities, and partly by an imaginary line starting from the sources of the Northern Pennar and passing through Chitaldurg to the Arabian sea. The western boundary was, of course, the Arabian sea. Sometimes, as under Govinda III and Kṛṣṇa III, the empire embraced wider areas, but the annexation of territories beyond the boundaries above indicated was temporary, for the Rāṣṭrakūṭas did not succeed in permanently amalgamating them with their empire. It should not be supposed that all these areas were directly governed and administered by the imperial government from Malkhed; for there were numerous feudatories enjoying various powers of internal autonomy. How these were controlled by the imperial government will be indicated in a later chapter of this part.