The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s4.18

c35.s4.18

In war Mahendravarman encountered a formidable rival in the person of the ambitious Chalukya monarch, Pulakēsin II, who boasted of having inflicted a severe defeat on the Pallava king about A. D. 609 or 610. At or about the same time the Chalukya king annexed the province of Vengī, the northern portion of the Pallava dominions, and made it over to the government of his younger brother, the founder of the Eastern Chalukya dynasty. It is probable that the loss of Vengī stimulated the Pallavas to push forward their southern frontier, and it is certain that Mahendravarman held Trichinopoly. He appears to have been a Jain originally, and to have been converted to faith in Siva by a famous Tamil saint. The king, after his conversion, destroyed the large Jain monastery at Pātaliputtiram in South Arcot, replacing it by a Saiva fane. It is interesting to find the name of the old imperial capital brought down to the neighbourhood of Madras, presumably by the Jains.