The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.130

v3.c29.130

INDIA, south of the Vindhyas, always exhibited a tendency politically to fall into two well-marked divisions, the boundaries of which varied at different periods of history. About the year A.D. 1000 this tendency was working itself out by a new shifting of the powers under two large political divisions. The kingdom of the Chālukyas, called for distinction the later Chālukyas or even the Chālukyas of Kalyāni, had its capital at Kalyāni in the Nizām’s dominions. The Chālukyas may be regarded as a Deccan power whose original territory comprised the central and southern divisions of the Bombay Presidency and the western half of the Nizām’s dominions. Along the Arabian Sea coast their territory extended well past Goa and varied from time to time in regard to its exact southernmost limit. In the north their territory extended even to Gujarāt. But the simultaneous rise to power of the Paramaras of Mālwa kept them limited on this frontier to the region south of the Narbada, if not the Vindhya mountains themselves. The really uncertain and therefore the changing frontier was the eastern and southern. At the best, this frontier stretched so far as to take into the Chālukyan territory, the modern State of Mysore, and from there continued along the Tungabhadra till it joins the Krishna, proceeding north-eastwards through the middle of the Nizām’s dominions across to the east of Nāgpur in the Central Provinces. The most vulnerable part of this frontier was the part extending along the Krishna from its junction with the Tungabhadra almost to its source, so that the region between the rivers Krishna and Tungabhadra constituted the bone of contention between the rival powers throughout the eleventh century.