History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c5.8

c5.8

From what is stated in the foregoing pages, it would have become clear that the Pallavas of the charters starting from the south-eastern marches of the Sātavāhana territory gradually occupied the region of Kurnool, Nellore and part of the Cuddapah Districts, and extended southwards till they gradually appropriated the town of Kanchi itself and the territory dependent thereon, in other words, what is known to the Tamils as Toṇḍamaṇḍalam. In this process of gradual conquest and appropriation of the territory intervening the south-eastern frontier of the Andhra kingdom and the northern viceroyalty of the Cholas, they must have dislodged the people who were in occupation of the territory under the elder Tiraiyan of Pavattiri, and latterly the chiefs of Vēṅgaḍam, of whom Pulli's name is familiar to the Śaṅgam literature. It is this dislodgement of the tribe of people known hitherto as Kaḷvar, but more appropriately speaking, Kaḷavar, that brought about the disorder in the territory lying immediately to the south of the Nellore District extending southwards to the banks of the Kaveri. It is this region that gets involved in the Kaḷabhra¹ trouble and the process of expansion of the Kaḷabhras is reflected in the disorder and unsettlement which is noticeable even in the kingdom of the Pallavas of the Sanskrit charters. The period beginning therefore with the middle of the third century and extending onwards is the period of these migrations of the Kalabhras from their original home in a general southward movement, which overturned the territory of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam, created confusion and disorder and brought about even the ultimate extinction of the well-established monarchies of the Tamil land. It is a movement like what is actually under reference in the details that we get of a Kalabhra interregnum, as the epigraphists call it, from the Veḷvikudi plates of the Pandyas of the latter half of the eighth century A.D.