History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c15.3

v1.c15.3

Along with the Chālukyas, the Pallavas were the most powerful people in the south who contended with them for the overlordship of the southern empire during the seventh and the eighth centuries A. D. They were settled at Kānchī (modern Conjeverum) in the midst of the traditional Dravidian peoples, the Chola, Pāndya, Kerala and Kalabhra whom they had subdued. But they were evidently not one of them. They were outsiders in the Madras Presidency, so to speak, of those days. They did not even speak the language of the Dravidian people. Hiuen Tsang who visited Kānchī in 639 A. D. distinctly states that the people of Kānchī spoke a language similar to that of Mid-India. The same position is supported by the fact that the records of these Pallavas are all of them in Sanskrit and not in any Dravidian language as those of the Chola, Pāndya and Kerala kings are. In fact the records of the early Pallavas are even in the Prakrit as we shall presently show. The Pallavas, therefore, were evidently out-siders in the Madras Presidency from the north. Who were they ?