History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c5.10.2

c5.10.2

These rulers for some reason or other issued their charters always in Sanskrit, and called themselves invariably rulers of Kanchi, although some of their charters were issued from various ‘victorious camps’ of which there are as many as three or four capable of location in the Nellore District, that is, the region north of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam proper. With these few main facts, which may be taken as established, we have to build up the history of the period from such glimpses as we get of details by setting them in a reasonable order on the basis of what is generally known. One general fact of Pallava history of this period—the period of the Sanskrit charters—is that it was a period of some amount of confusion, in which the succession to the throne itself could not have been in any very regular established order. There had been wars to the north, and wars to the south, and confusion in the interior of the territory of the Pallavas themselves. That seems to have been a period in which the Kadambas rose to power and the Gangas came into historical view on the one side. The Cholas almost passed into oblivion and the Tamil country suffered some kind of a confusion, as to the nature of which we have been in the dark till the Veḷvikudi plates threw some light upon it by stating categorically that a certain set of rulers, at the head of the people Kaḷabhras, overthrew the Tamil rulers of the south, the famous three crowned kings of Śangam literature.