History of the Pallavas of Kanchi c9.25

c9.25

The historical portion of the Vēlūrpālayam grant which supplies a detailed genealogy of the Pallava kings after giving the legendary origin of the Pallavas from Vishnu to Pallava, through Brahma, Angirasa, Brahaspati, Samyu, Bhāradvāja, Drōna, Aśvatthāman, etc., proceeds to enumerate certain quasi-historical names such as those of Aśokavarman, Kalabhartr and Chūta-Pallava. The break after the king Aśokavarman indicated in the record (verse 5)¹ suggests that the Pallava kings of the Prakrit charters—Śivaskandavarman, Vijaya-skandavarman, Buddhavarman have to be included here. The omission of these names is probably attributable to the fact that the writer of the document had only a foggy notion of the kings of the early period, living as he did several generations after these kings, when their memory had almost faded away. The historicity of Kalabhartṛ, Chūta-Pallava and Vīrakūrcha is confirmed by the mention of these names in the Vāyalūr pillar inscription of Rājasimha apparently in the order of succession. This latter contains many repetitions and should be used with much care. For example, although it is one of the earliest known list of Pallava kings and belongs to the seventh century, it is impossible to regard that all the kings mentioned in it were ruling kings. On the other hand it appears to have been a list made up in the reign of Rājasimha by a writer, who was obviously labouring under the difficulty of accommodating a number of real and quasi-real kings that tradition and copper-plates had preserved, and who, in doing so, was unable to allow for similarity of names. Being in these difficulties he put together all the names he got at, in an order of his own. This seems to be the only explanation for the repetitions that one notices in the list on the Vāyalūr pillar when compared with other genealogies. Prof. G. Jouveau-Dubreuil in his *Pallavas*² expresses the opinion that the Vāyalūr inscription gives a complete list of the Pallava kings in the order of their succession. . In the portion earlier than Mahēndravarman I, the Vāyalūr record includes names like Vimala, Konkaṇika, which occur exclusively in Western Ganga lists of kings. Viṣṇugopa is mentioned three times, Kumāra-viṣṇu twice, which is just possible. However Skandavarman is mentioned five times and Simhavarman four times which appears less probable. But the record is doubtless of great value to us as establishing a connection between the members of the Prakrit, Sanskrit, and Simhavishnu dynasties which have been hitherto looked upon as different dynasties. As we have seen it is impossible to agree with those who hold that the Vāyalūr list¹ gives a complete list of forty-two names of the Pallava kings in their order of succession.