Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c8.s6: 6. Pallavas
Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c8.s6
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6. Pallavas
c8.s6.1
To revert to the earlier history.—The Kadambas, as previously stated, succeeded the Śātavāhanas in the west of Mysore, but the Pallavas were their successors throughout the Telugu countries in the east of the Dekhan, and Pallava inscriptions are found as far south as Trichinopoly. These kings are first met with as the Pahlavas, who, with the Sakas and Yavanas, are said to have been destroyed (early in the second century) by Gōtamiputra Sātakarṇi (ASWI. iv. 108).
c8.s6.2
A little later a Pallava named Suvisākha, the son of Kulaipa, was minister to the Kshatrapa Rudradāman (EI. viii. 49). Pahlava is a Prākrit form of Pārthava, meaning Parthian, here especially the Arsacidan Parthians.
c8.s6.3
According to tradition, their progenitor, descended from Śālivāhana who ruled at Pratishṭhāna (Paithan on the Gōdāvari), was a Mukunti Pallava, who introduced Brāhmans into the South in the third century. A principal seat of the Pallavas was Vengi (between the Krishnā and Gōdāvari in the east), but Kānchī (Conjeeveram, near Madras) was their chief capital. It was so in the third century when Mayūra-śarmma, the Kadamba student, went there (Sk 176), and both are mentioned in the Samudra Gupta inscription of the fourth century. The Pallavas may have ousted the Mahāvalis or Bāṇas from the coast regions, and driven them eastwards inland. The ancient inscriptions now at Mahābalipur are Pallava.
c8.s6.4
But the chief enemies of the Pallavas, to the eighth century, were the Chalukyas, who describe them as by nature hostile, as if there were some radical cause of animosity between them. If the Chalukyas, as their name suggests, were by origin Seleukian, this would account for the enmity of Arsacidans. A series of continual wars ensued. In the sixth century the Chalukyas, after defeating the powers in the west, wrested Vātāpi (Bādāmi, in the Bijāpur District) from the Pallavas, and made it their capital. Early in the seventh they captured Vengi, and established there the separate Eastern Chālukya¹ dynasty. The Pallavas now destroyed Vātāpi, but the Western Chālukyas, who had held it, before long recovered their power, and in the eighth century, inflicting a severe defeat on the Pallavas, entered Kānchī in triumph, the city, however, being spared (Kl 63). The Gangas of Mysore had also been attacking the Pallavas. They took some of their possessions in the sixth century, and completely conquered them in the seventh and eighth.
c8.s6.5
¹ After the separation the name appears with the long ā.
c8.s6.6
But the Western Chālukyas, shortly after they had triumphed over the Pallavas in the middle of the eighth century, were themselves overcome by the Rāshṭrakūṭas, who retained the supremacy for two hundred years. They made the Pallava king pay tribute, and imprisoned the Ganga king. Early in the ninth century, however, they released and reinstated the latter, the Rāshṭrakūṭa and Pallava (or Ganga-Pallava) kings united performing his coronation.
c8.s6.7
The earliest mention of the Pallavas in the inscriptions of Mysore is in Sk 176, which relates how the Kadamba Mayūraśarmma went to their capital to study, felt himself insulted, became an outlaw for the purpose of revenge, and was eventually recognised by them as king over a Kadamba kingdom in the west. This was in the third century. The Pallavas next appear in Dg 161, in which their king Naṇak-kāsa is said to have totally defeated the army of Krishṇavarmma, evidently the Kadamba king, probably in the fifth century. At the end of the same century the Ganga king Durvvinīta captured Kāḍuveṭṭi¹ on the field of battle. Narasimhapōtavarmma must have been the Pallava defeated by the Ganga king Bhūvikrama in the seventh century, and Pallava princes were in the custody of his successor Śivamāra I (Md 113). In Kl 63 Narasimhapōtavarmma is named as having erected certain of the temples in Kāñchī, and Nandipōtavarmma as the Pallava who suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Western Chālukya king Vikramāditya Satyāśraya in about 733. The Pallava from whom the Ganga king Śrīpurusha in the eighth century took away the title of Permmānaḍi is called, as usual, Kāḍuveṭṭi. Then we have (Yd 60, Nl 60), in about 813, the Pallava king Nandivarmma, who took part (perhaps as being a Ganga-Pallava) in the coronation of the Ganga king Śivamāra II.
c8.s6.8
¹ This is the common designation in Ganga inscriptions for the Pallava king. It survives in the name of Kārveṭi-nagara in North Arcot District. The Pallavas are also called Kāḍavas.