History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c5.4

c5.4

The Pallavas seem nevertheless to have been foreign to the locality as far as our evidence takes us at present. The rulers of Kanchi had continued to be known as Toṇḍamāns all through historical times. The people of the locality were similarly known as Toṇḍaiyar, the region occupied by the people consequently Toṇḍamaṇḍalam. These names are all traceable in South Indian literature in the period of prominence of the Pallavas and even before. The name Pallava however is used generally in the charters ever since the Pallavas issued charters, so that historically speaking we would be justified if we took Pallava and Toṇḍamān to be synonymous, and this receives support in the use of the compound expression in one of the poems of Tirumaṅgai Āḻvār, ‘the Pallava, who is the ruler of the Toṇḍaiyar’ (*Pallavan Toṇḍaiyar Kōn*). Therefore it is not as if literature did not know the term; much rather literary use regarded the two as synonymous, so that the Pallavas, whoever they were, were Toṇḍamāns, rulers of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam undoubtedly.