The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c35.s4.31

c35.s4.31

The perennial conflict continued during succeeding reigns. In about A. D. 740 Kānchī was captured once more by Vikramāditya II Chalukya, who inflicted on Nandivarman Pallava a defeat so decisive that the event may be regarded as the beginning of the end of the Pallava supremacy. Nandivarman, who had succeeded Parameśvara-varman II about A. D. 720, was a distant relative of that prince, being descended from a brother of King Simhavishnu. The change in the line of succession is stated to have been the result of a popular election; and a curious series of sculptures, accompanied by unfinished labels apparently intended to have been explanatory, still extant in a mutilated form at the Vaikuntha Perumāl temple in Conjeeveram (Kānchī), seems to have been designed as a contemporary record of the dynastic revolution.¹