History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c7.24

v1.c7.24

This completes the list of important kingdoms* in Northern India which constituted the empire of Harsha. As we have already remarked, contemporaneous with this northern empire of Harsha, there was at this time the southern empire of Satyāśraya Pulakeśin II of Mahārāshtra, which included all the kingdoms in the Deccan and South India. These kingdoms were, most of them, visited by Hiuen Tsang and have been described by him. They were Kalinga or Rājamahendri, Kosala or Raipur, Āndhra or Warangal, Dhanakakata or Vengi, Chola or Nellore, Dravida or Kāñchī, Malayakuta or Madura, Konkanapura or part of Mysore and northern part of the western coast (the capital being probably Banavāsi above the Ghats) and lasty Mahārāshtra with its capital at Bādāmi, whose king Pulakeśin appears to have subdued all the other kingdoms noted above, (see Aihole and other inscriptions.) The Pallavas ruled in Kāñchī or Chola and Dravida, their king at this time being Narasinha Varman. In Malayakūta or Pāndya country (Madura and Tinnevelly) ruled the line of kings, called the Pāndyas who like the kings of Assam, ruled therefrom of old. In Vengi was Vishnu Vardhana, brother of Satyāśraya Pulakeśin. Who the king of Banavāsi was we cannot discover. Probably a prince of the Kadamba family ruled there. These kingdoms of the south were all tributaries of and subordinate to the empire of Pulakeśin II who conquered them between about 610 and 620 A. D. By a strange coincidence this southern empire of Pulakeśin which came into being at about the same time as that of Harsha in the north, also came to an end like its northern rival about the middle of the 7th century, Narsinha Varman of Kāñchī conquering and devastating Bādāmi.