History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c8: Chapter III. Early Pallavas of the Prakrit Records
History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c8
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Chapter III. Early Pallavas of the Prakrit Records
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THE materials for the reconstruction of the early history of the Pallavas are far from adequate. We are entirely dependent upon the few copper-plate charters in Prakrit and Sanskrit for our knowledge of the political history of the Pallava kings of Conjeevaram until about the seventh century when we are on more certain ground. As more than one scholar has remarked the copper plate charters of the early period are more useful for constructing a genealogical list than for writing the political history of the period. The facts contained in the records enumerate the names of the great-grandfather, the grandfather and the father of the donor of the grant and the details of the object of the grant. They do not furnish many particulars on the political condition of the period. It is too much to expect much information concerning the period from these charters as their professed object was merely to record donations to certain individuals. As we have already pointed out, it is only from the seventh century that the habit of recording the exploits of the ancestors of the king who made the grant came to be popular in South India.
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The Pallava inscriptions and copper charters are divisible as already indicated into three sections. To the first group belongs the Prakrit charters which though bearing no date in any known era have been on palæographical grounds assigned to the third and the fourth centuries of the Christian era. It is well known from the history of the Āndhras that they continued to be powerful in the southern region almost till the first quarter of the third century A.D. We know from the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta that about the middle of the fourth century A.D. there reigned in the region extending to the banks of the Krishna, a Pallava king named Vishṇugopa. The contemporaneity of Samudragupta with Vishṇugopa of Kāñchī, who was undoubtedly one of the early kings of the Pallava dynasty of Conjeevaram, leads to the conclusion that Vishṇugopa must have reigned some time about A.D. 340 to 350. But a recent attempt has been made to fix the initial date of the Gupta era at A.D. 200-201 which would put back Samudragupta's period to the middle of the third instead of the fourth century. But this theory rests at present on Jain tradition merely and has serious objections against it. If this date be accepted, Vishṇugopa of Kāñchī would have to be placed in the middle of the third century, the period of the Pallava kings of the Prakrit charters, and this would necessitate the putting back of the kings of the Prakrit charters to the second century—a position which would be difficult to accept in the present scheme of Āndhra chronology. Without taking up this matter we may proceed to put together the order of succession for the earliest period, which may be styled the age of the kings, of the Prakrit charters, circa A.D. 200-350. The three important Prakrit charters which are the earliest of the Pallava charters—the Mayidavōlu plates, the Hirahaḍagalli plates and the British Museum plates have been published in the *Epigraphia Indica* with text, translation and valuable notes by Bühler, Hultzsch, Leumann and others.
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The actual order of succession of the Pallava kings of the Prakrit charters is uncertain, but the following represents the most probable one so far as we could make out from the Prakrit copper-plates that are available :—
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Bappa Dēva
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Śivaskandavarman
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Buddhy (ankura)
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Vīravarman
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Vishṇugopa (A.D. 340).
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The earliest of the Prakrit charters that we have is dated from the capital city of Kāñchīpuram issued by Śivaskandavarman while he was yet a crown-prince and dated in the 5 tenth year of his father.¹ Śivaskandavarman is described as a Yuvamahārāja and affiliated to the Bhāradvāja-gotra of the Pallava family. The grant is addressed to the Viceroy at Dhānyakaṭa (Dharaṇikoṭṭa near Amarāvati) in the Āndhrapatha. It is thus plain that the kingdom of Śivaskandavarman’s father, who is called Bappa Dēva merely, included Āndhrapatha and Toṇḍamaṇḍalam. The capital of Āndhrapatha the Telugu region, appears to have been Dhānyakaṭaka, while Conjeevaram was the Imperial as well as the local capital of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam, their Tamil dominion. The next in point of time is the grant recorded in the Hirahadagalli plates found in Hirahadagalli in the Bellary District. The king who issued this grant is regarded by all scholars as the same as the Prince who issued the Mayidavolu grant. This is also issued from the city of Kāñchīpuram, and is dated in the eighth year of the king and refers to a grant of the village of Chillerēkaḍumka in the Sātāhaniraṭṭa probably identical with the Satahani-Āhāra of the Myakadoni record ² dated in the eighth year of king Puḷumāvi. The plates, besides recording the details connected with the gift, mention the fact that Śivaskandavarman performed the Aśvamedha, Agniṣṭoma and Vājapeya sacrifices. Of these, if there is any truth in the claim of the first we may reasonably presume that Śivaskandavarman made extensive conquests and that he had some subordinate kings under his rule. There is no means by which we could at present check the accuracy or otherwise of this claim.
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¹ Ep. Ind., vol. vi, p. 84ff. and plates.
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² Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 153.
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Next in order of time comes the Guṇapadeya or the British Museum plates of Chārudēvi.³ This record gives in genealogical order the names of Vijayaskandavarman, his son Yuvamahārāja Buddhavarman and his son Buddhyankura. This record is dated in some unknown year of Vijayaskandavarman’s reign and records an order of the Queen of the heir-apparent consisting of the gift of land to the temple of Nārāyaṇa at Dālūra. At present it is difficult to say what relation the Vijayaskandavarman of this record bore to Śivaskandavarman of the first two Prakrit charters. It has been attempted by certain scholars to identify the Śivaskandavarman of the Prakrit charters with the Vijayaskandavarman of the British Museum record as the prefixes Vijaya or Śiva are too insignificant to matter much. But as this relationship is not given in any of the numerous genealogical lists of later times we cannot be sure whether the members of the Prakrit charters and the members of the Sanskrit charters were connected with one another in this manner. One striking fact which is a decisive consideration in this identification is the close similarity of the palæography of the Hirahadagalli and the British Museum copper-plates. As regards the period of these kings we have alredy indicated that it is the age which followed the decadence of the Andhra power, that is, the period from about the middle of the third century to the middle of the fourth century. If we calculate back from the known date of Viṣṇugopa the contemporary of Samudragupta, allowing about 25 years for each generation we arrive at A.D. 215 for the reign of Bappa the earliest known Pallava sovereign of Kāñchī. This calculation is only approximate as it is unlikely that the reign-period of all the kings was the same and is based upon the supposed contemporaneity of Samudragupta and Viṣṇugopa, and the probability that Viṣṇugopa of the Samudragupta pillar inscription was a Pallava king.
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³ Ibid., vol. viii, p. 143.
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*The History of the Period.*—As we have already pointed out it is not apparent who was the first member of the Pallavas who established the Pallava power in Conjeevaram. So far as we know Toṇḍamān-Iḷam-Tiraiyan and Bappa are the earliest known names associated with the rule of the ancient city of Conjeevaram. The relation of the former with the latter is not known although certain scholars have advocated the view that he was the first member of the Pallava family. The entire absence of his name, and the name Tiraiyan itself or its equivalent in the Prakrit and Sanskrit records of the Pallavas lead us to reject this view. Our knowledge of this ruler is derived from Tamil literature and from tradition embodied in the Mackenzie MSS. The state of the city of Kāñchīpuram during the reign of this ruler is fully described in the early Tamil work, the *Perumbaṉāṟṟuppaḍai*, by the Śaṅgam poet Rudran-Kaṇṇanār. How the region passed from the hands of Iḷam-Tiraiyan into the hands of the Pallavas remains unknown. It is presumable that about the middle of the first quarter of the third century A.D. there was an invasion of the region from the north led by the Āndhra-Satavāhana rulers or generals in the wake of which the first member of the Pallava family must have acquired sovereignty over the region. A faint recollection of this invasion is recorded in the Mackenzie MSS. accounts concerning Toṇḍaman Chakravarti and Visvāvasurāja. Whether this was brought about by an immediate ancestor of Bappa or Bappa himself is not known. We may roughly fix the period of the passing of Toṇḍamaṇḍalam from the Chōḷa feudatories into the hands of the Pallavas about the closing years of the third century A.D.
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*Mahārāja Bappa.*—It is not clear whether the immediate ancestor of Śivaskandavarman of the Prakrit charters, who is called Bappa in the record found at Mayidavolu, was the actual founder of the rule of the Pallavas at Kāñchīpuram. In all probability he was not. Because, if this had been so we may reasonably expect the mention of such an achievement in the record issued by his son and heir-apparent, and dated in his own reign. The kingdom over which Bappa ruled included in addition to the districts around Kāñchīpuram known as Toṇḍamaṇḍalam or Tuṇḍākarāṣṭra, the Telugu country on both banks of the Krishna which had Dharaṇikoṭa or Dhānyakaṭaka for its capital. It may be presumed that during this age the Pallava kingdom was divided into two parts, the northern part comprising the Telugu districts with Amarāvati as capital, and the Tamil districts around Kāñchī with Kāñchīpuram for its capital. Thus the region bounded by the Pālāṛ on the south and the Krishna on the north formed the kingdom of the Pallavas during this period. The close resemblance of the Mayidavolu plates with the Koṇḍamuḍi plates of Jayavarman which again resembles the Karle inscription of Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi and the Nasik inscription of Vasiṣṭhīputra-Puḷumāvi, fixes the period of Bappa and Śivaskandavarman approximately as the early part of the third century A.D.¹—Prof. Jouveau-Dubreuil supposed, in his *Pallavas*, that Yuvamahārāja Śivaskandavarman of the Mayidavolu record was the grandson of the Āndhra king Śivaskandavarman.² But as he himself admits, this is based entirely on similarity of names such as those of Yuvamahārāja Śivaskandavarman and Śivaskaṇḍa Śātakarṇi.³ Apart from this there is no positive evidence to prove that the Pallavas were directly connected with the ruling Śatavāhana royal family or descended from them.
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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, vol. vi, p. 315.
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² *Pallavas*, pp. 8, 9.
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³ *Ibid.*, p. 9.
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Bappa is said to have given away as free gift numerous gold coins as well as a hundred thousand ox-ploughs to increase the prosperity of the Pallava family. This was presumably intended to bring under cultivation vast areas of uncultivated forest tracts in the Telugu country.
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Śivaskandavarman.—The Mayidavolu grant was issued while this sovereign was yet the heir-apparent. From the Hirahadagalli grant dated in the 8th year of his reign we learn that he had the title of Dharmamahārāja. This was evidently assumed after extensive conquests. We do not know with any definiteness what were the regions which he brought under the sway of Pallava rule. But from the fact that this record says that Śivaskandavarman was a performer of the *Aśvamedha*, *Vājapeya* and *Agniṣṭoma* we may reasonably infer that his suzerainty must have been recognized by several kings. Otherwise the performance of *Aśvamedha* would lose any significance attaching to it unless it is regarded as a false boast. It is not apparent which was the southernmost limit of the Tamil part of his kingdom, but it is presumable that his sway extended as far as the South Pennar while in the north his kingdom included the Telugu districts between the Godavari and Krishna. His capital was Kāñchīpuram while Amarāvati in the north appears to have continued as a flourishing seat of the Buddhists and their monasteries. The records of Śivaskandavarman give us a glimpse into the Asokan nature of the organization of government during this period. The kingdom was divided into divisions known as Vishaya, Raṭṭha and Grāma. The officers entrusted to rule these areas were known as Vishayikas, Raṭṭhika (Rāṣṭrikas), and Dēsādikata (Dēsādhikṛtas). These officers were chiefly recruited from the members of the royal family and the commanders of armies. The persons who were consulted by the king on administrative matters were the prime-minister and the private secretary (Amātya and the Rahasyātikata). It is significant that the names of the various heads of departments are all in Prakrit. It is probable that the Pallava kings continued the administrative system of Asoka on the lines of the Dharmaśāstras and Arthaśāstras. The taxes collected by these kings from their subjects are in accordance with the Sanskrit Dharmaśāstra rules. The taxes and other dues that these kings were entitled to are known as the eighteen kinds of taxes (Aṭṭarasajāti-Parihāra). Some of these included the taking of milk and curd from the subjects, the supply of cattle to the officers touring in the villages on royal duty, the supplying of lodging facilities and utensils, fire-wood, vegetables, flowers, menial servants, etc. A complete list of these is furnished in the later charters enumerating the exemptions secured by certain donees to whom free gifts of land were made.¹ During this period the manufacture of salt and jaggery were royal monopolies, and special license had to be obtained for private manufacture.
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¹ Compare the Kāśakkuḍi and the Vēlūrpāḷayam plates. S.I.I., vol, ii, p. 346ff. and 507.
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Inland and foreign commerce must have been in a flourishing condition during this period if we may judge from the writings of the classical writers which mention several seaport towns such as Kamara, Poduka, Sopatma, Melanga, Kodura, etc. Of these Kodura has been identified with Kudur and Melangus was obviously Malanka or Mavilangai probably Mahābalipuram or Seven Pagodas.¹ Sea-borne trade must have been flourishing at these various ports, and the presence of large numbers of ship-coins and Roman coins of an early period fully lend support to this view. So far as the port of Mahābalipuram is concerned it is clear, from the evidence of Tirumangai-Āḷvār, that in the early part of the eighth century the place was a busy harbour. This probably was the case in the days of Śivaskandavaraman also. The ship-coins discovered extensively between Cuddalore and Madras have been attributed by some to Pallava kings although it looks probable that they were issued under the auspices of the Sātavāhana kings of the Dakhan.
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¹ Ind. Ant., vol. xlvi, p. 72.
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Vijayaskandavarman, circa A.D. 280.—The order of succession of the Prakrit plates is not known. But we may presume from palæographical indications that Vijayaskandavarman of the British Museum copper-plates succeeded Śivaskandavarman in the interval between A.D. 275 and 340. All that we know about this sovereign and his times is the information given in this record.² From this we learn that his queen was called Chārudēvi, and that the heir-apparent to the throne was called Buddhyankura, and that the father of Vijaya-Buddhavarman was called Vijayaskandavarman who is presumably identical with Śivaskandavarman of the earlier charters. The record registers a grant of land to the temple of Nārāyaṇa at the village of Dalūra in the division called Kūlimaharaṭha. This is, so far as we know, the earliest Pallava record mentioning a royal gift to the temples. We do not know anything about the political events during the reign of Buddhyankura who flourished in the years immediately following the death of Vijaya-Buddhavarman. The next member of the Pallava family is Viṣṇugopa well known as the Pallava contemporary of Samudragupta.
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² Ep. Ind., vol. vi, p. 88 and vol. viii, p. 143.
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The connection of the Pallava kings of the Prakrit charters and those of the Sanskrit charters is not clear. According to some scholars the dynasties of the Prakrit charters and the Sanskrit charters are distinctly different, and not directly connected. According to others¹ all the members of the copper-plates and the stone inscriptions whether they are written in Prakrit, Sanskrit or Tamil are to be connected with one dynasty only the most ancient member of which was Bappa. Future research and the discovery of fresh copper-plate charters or other records alone can solve this question finally.
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Jouveau-Dubreuil, *Pallavas*, pp. 72-3, Genealogical Table.