History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c7.s1.18

c7.s1.18

*Rājaśēkhara on the Pallavas.*—‘The words “Pahlava” and “Pallava” are philologically one, but we have good authority for taking it that the two terms refer historically to different peoples, thereby illustrating that the partition that separates philology from history is not always very thin. The poet Rājaśēkhara lived in the courts of the Gūrjara sovereigns Mahendrapala and Mahīpāla about the end of the ninth and the commencement of the tenth centuries A.D. just the period when the Pallavas were passing out of existence as the dominant South Indian power. He is the author of a geographical work named *Bhuvanakōśa* to which he actually refers for further information in ch. xvii of his *Kāvyamīmāṃsa*. In this work he makes a division of India into five, and allots to each division, the peoples, towns and rivers that belonged to it. In that section he allots the Pallavas to the southern division, or Dakshiṇāpatha, lying beyond Mahishmatī, while the Pahlavas he allots to the division Uttarapātha lying beyond Prithūdaka.³ This last name the “great water” probably stands for the Indus, and the people Pahlava are found associated with the Huns, Kambhoja, Bahlika, etc. In the estimation, therefore, of Rājaśēkhara who seems a much travelled man, and has really much interesting information to give of different parts of India in respect at any rate of the cultivation of Sanskrit learning, the Pahlavas and the Pallavas were distinct peoples, one of them belonging to the south and the other to the frontier on the other side of the Indus. Rājaśēkhara, no doubt is a late authority, but undoubtedly gives expression to the prevailing opinion of his time in regard to these two peoples.'¹