The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s3.12

c35.s3.12

Literary references indicate that, in the second or third century after Christ, the power of the Chola and other Tamil kings declined, and was superseded by the rise of the Aruvalar and similar tribes, apparently distinct in race from the Tamils.¹ The earliest known Pallava inscriptions, dating from about the beginning of the fourth century, show that at that time a Pallava prince was reigning at Kānchī in the middle of the traditional Chola country; and it may well be that the opposition of the tribes alluded to was organized and directed by the foreign or semi-foreign dynasty of the Pallavas, who, as hereafter stated, may perhaps have been connected by descent with the rulers of Maṇi-pallavam or the Jaffna peninsula in Ceylon.² However that may be, a Pallava king certainly was established at Kānchī when Samudragupta raided the South, about A. D. 350 (*ante*, p. 300), and the Chola dominions at that time must have been much diminished in consequence.³ Nothing further is known about Chola history until the seventh century.