History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c5.12

c5.12

The Kaḷabhras then were the Kaḷavar of the region immediately north of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam, who being dislodged by the pressure of the Andhras, penetrated the Toṇḍamaṇḍalam itself, and as the Andhra power itself advanced, moved southwards, occupying the territory gradually till in the course of generations, they subverted the Chola rule and spread themselves farther south, to the occupation of the territory of the Pandyas so as to produce the interregnum referred to in the Veḷvikudi plates in the Pandya country. This interregnum followed when the grant of the village Veḷvikudi was made to the Brahman and had been enjoyed for a considerable length of time by him and his successors. The interregnum itself must have lasted for some considerable time, and to justify the lapse of the grant being forgotten for five or six generations after the restoration of Pandya rule. The Pallavas of the Sanskrit charters therefore had to advance into the country dependent upon Kanchi, dislodge the Kaḷabhras or Kaḷavars that were in occupation as a normal continuation of the struggle which must have begun between them and the Kaḷabhras somewhat earlier, till they could master possession of the region. It is probably in this process of conquest that the invasion of Samudragupta introduced another element of confusion, to provide against which an alliance with the more powerful neighbour, the Chūṭu Nāgas of the west, must have been felt to be necessary by the Pallavas of Kanchi. Whether the Vishṇugopa of Kanchi referred to in the Harisena inscription of Sumudragupta is Kāṇagopa identified with Kumāraviṣṇu I is more than we can assert at present. It is possible that the Kāṇagopa of the later charters had a name Kumāraviṣṇu or Viṣṇugopa. But in the absence of any lead, such a statement would be nothing but a guess, and it may be safer to leave Viṣṇugopa the contemporary of Samudragupta unidentified with any of the names in the genealogy of the Pallavas of the Sanskrit charters for the present. When the Pallavas of the Sanskrit charters established themselves in the region of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam, their struggles with Kaḷabhras of the south must have begun, as a continuation of the struggle that dislodged them from the territory of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam. It is this that is reflected in the statement that Kumāraviṣṇu retook the capital from some enemy undescribed, and that Buddhavarman, one of the rulers of this dynasty, won victories against the ‘ocean-like army’ of the Cholas, which at the time could only mean the Kaḷabhras established in the Chola territory, as about that time we do hear of a Kaḷamba ruler by name Acchyutavikrānta holding rule at the Chola capital, Puhār over the Chola Rāṣṭra, according to Buddhadatta, a contemporary of Buddhagosha. The establishment of the Kaḷabhras in the Chola country therefore seems to have been a settled fact by the middle of the sixth century. They were found there by Simhavishṇu at the end of the sixth; by Narasimhavarman I in the middle of the seventh, and by the Caḷukyas about the end of the seventh and almost the middle of the eighth centuries. It seems to be these Kaḷabhras that come into view later on near Tanjore and Koḍumbāḷūr as Muttaraiyaṉ chiefs bearing names and titles very much like that of Acchyutavikrānta. We come to the spectacle in the eighth century of the Tanjore chiefs being feudatories of the Pallavas and the Koḍumbāḷūr chiefs those of the Pandyas, and fighting against each other in consequence. The Kaḷabhra migration, the movement of the Kaḷavar southwards from their orignal home, seems thus to provide the explanation for the disappearance of the settled order in the Tamil country as portrayed in the Saṅgam literature and offers the explanation of the interval of obscurity and oblivion in Chola rule till the rising of the later Cholas to power in the latter half of the ninth century.