History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c5.13.2

c5.13.2

Karikāla is supposed to have introduced the arts of agriculture and civilization into the bulk of the region constituting Toṇḍamaṇḍalam, and the viceroyalty was held with distinction by Chola princes immediately following him and subsequently by an illegitimate scion of the Chola family, Toṇḍamān-Iḷam-Tiraiyan, before it passed into the possession of the Pallavas of the inscriptions. There is not the slightest hint of all this in the various charters, of which we have information, and Bappa Dēva’s civilizing effort in the region farther north seems almost to indicate an extension of the effort of Karikāla. Looked at from any point of view therefore, it seems impossible to postulate a Chola interregnum in the middle of the succession of Pallava rulers of the Sanskrit charters and the effort seems to us futile. We have almost fifteen generations of rulers subsequent to the Samudragupta invasion. Although we cannot be very definite about the order of succession or of the detailed history of the period, the general trend seems clear enough to rule out the possibility of this interregnum. There is the evidence of the Śaṅgam literature by itself and the evidence of the later Pandya charters leading thereto, and they seem alike to negative this possibility.