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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9: Part IV. The Chāḷukyas of Bādāmi

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9

Language
English

Contents

Part IV. The Chāḷukyas of Bādāmi

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By* PROFESSOR K. A. NILAKANTA SASTRI

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I. Introductory remarks, sources—Inscriptions, the name of the dynasty, legends of origin.

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II. Rulers of the dynasty; Pulakēśin I; Kīrtti-varman I; Maṅgaḷēśa, Pulakēśin II, Vikramāditya I, Vinayāditya, Vijayāditya, Vikramāditya II, Kīrtti-varman II, Minor lines—Chāḷukyas of Muḍugoṇḍa and Vēmulavāḍa.

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III. Government and Social life—the king, royal titles, princes, queens, courtesans, oral orders, administrative divisions, village taxation, weights and measures, the people, army and navy, learning, arts, the temple, religion, literature—Sanskrit, Kannaḍa.

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Introductory Remarks

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THE Cāḷukyas were the most important dynasty of rulers that held sway in the Deccan before the foundation of Vijayanagar. With Vātāpai (Bādāmi) as their first capital they brought about the political unification of the Deccan in the sixth century A.D. and held their own for well over two centuries (except for a short interval of about fifteen years) against powerful antagonists like the Pallavas in the south and Harshavardhana in the north. At the same time they established semi-independent kingdoms ruled by their collaterals in Gujerat and in Vengi. The Eastern Cāḷukyas of the Vengi kingdom (Andhradeśa) kept up their rule continuously for four centuries and more, and when their western kinsmen suffered eclipse from the rise of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas they kept their independence with the aid of the Chōḷas, with whom their relations became more and more intimate until in the latter part of the eleventh century a single ruler came to occupy the thrones of both the Vengi and Chōḷa kingdoms. Towards the close of the tenth century the power of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas waned, and the main line of the Cāḷukyas emerged from the obscurity of two centuries, and once more filled the stage of Deccan history with Kalyāṇapurī, ‘the best of all cities in the world’, for their capital, dividing and contesting with the Chōḷas of the Tamil country the sovereignty of India south of the Vindhyas. War and politics were by no means the only concerns of the Cāḷukyas. They were great builders, and one dominant style of Indian architecture derives its name from them. Kannada and Telugu literatures drew sustenance from their patronage, and Vijñāneśvara, perhaps the greatest jurist of ancient India, was proud to count himself among the courtiers of the illustrious Vikramāditya VI. The fortunes of the Cāḷukyas of Gujerat lie beyond the scope of the present volume; the other three lines will claim our attention in the order in which we have named them above.

Sources: Inscriptions

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Inscriptions form our main source, and they are found engraved on stone slabs and pillars or on copper plates. They are written in Sanskrit and Kannada in the western half of the Deccan, and in Sanskrit and Telugu in the eastern zone, and are usually donative or dedicatory in purpose. The inscriptions of the Cāḷukyas of Bādāmi number a few score only; those of the Cāḷukyas of Vengi, mostly on copper plates, do not amount to many more; but those of the Cāḷukyas of Kalyāṇī, the bulk of them on stone, exist in great quantities, though their historical value is by no means proportionate to their numbers. Even this most reliable class of our sources, however, offers problems, not all of which can be solved to satisfaction. Dates are often given in the Śaka era with details which can be verified, but they do not always fall into a consistent system; mutually contradictory statements of fact and of chronology are thus not uncommon; and when the inscriptions of contemporary dynasties with whom the Chālukyas came into contact are also considered, as they must be, these contradictions multiply. Invention and embellishment are constantly at work, later inscriptions sometimes professing to give more detailed and widely different accounts of subjects more summarily treated in earlier records, and this treatment is applied to legends as well as to historical occurrences. The data from inscriptions have therefore to be worked up with discretion, and it would be tedious to set forth fully the reasons governing the choice in every case. Spurious copper-plate grants have been ignored altogether. Fresh inscriptions are being discovered every year, but few of them are as important as the Bādāmi rock inscription of Ś. 465 (A.D. 543)—discovered in 1941—recording the erection of the hill fort of Vātāpi by the Chālukya Vallabheśvara. Notwithstanding this the main outline of Chālukya history may be regarded as now well established, and there is little likelihood that new discoveries will demand revolutionary readjustments on any large scale.

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The information yielded by inscriptions we may eke out with the aid of literature, monuments, and coins. But little help is to be had from these sources for the Bādāmi period; the only important literary sources for this period are the notes of Hiuen Tsang on the country of Mahārāṣṭra, its rulers and its people, and a notice in the Persian historian Ṭabarī which was once held to support the interpretation of some paintings in the first cave at Ajanta as representations of the Persian monarch Khusrau II and his celebrated consort Shirīn, and of Pulakēśin II receiving a Persian embassy. No coins of the Western Chālukyas of this period are known, though several gold and silver pieces of the Vengi branch have been found.¹

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¹ See, however, *MAR*, 1933, p. 98 for a 'boar and lotus' doubtfully assigned to Pulakēśin I.

The name

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'Chalkya' seems to have been the original form of the dynastic name; by the insertion of a euphonic vowel, this became Chalukya, which was later embellished into Chālukya, Chaulukya, the last being a derivative form applied to the later collateral lines of Gujerat and farther north. Possibly Khamda Chaliki Remmanaka, i.e. Remmanaka the Son of Khanda Chaliki of one of the Nāgārjunikonda inscriptions,² who was *mahāsenāpti* and *mahātalavara* under the Ikshvāku ruler Virapurisadata, is the earliest Chālukya chieftain known to history; but this is by no means certain as he is called Vāsiṭhiputa—the Chālukyas were Hāritiputras—and belonged to the family of Hiramnaka. Whether this official was a Chaliki or not, there is now little room for doubt that the Chāḷukyas, like the Chutus and the Kadambas to whom they bear many resemblances, and like the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, were an indigenous clan which rose to importance in the service of the later Sātavāhanas and their successors. They belonged to the Karṇāṭaka country, sometimes called also by the name Kuntala, and their mother tongue was Kannaḍa. There is little evidence to support the view often expressed by earlier writers that they were a foreign tribe who entered India along with the Huns. One of the earliest literary references to them occurs in a Tamil lexicon of about A.D. 800 called Divākaram which mentions Chaḷukkai-Vēndar (Chāḷukya kings) as rulers of Vēlpulam who had the boar-banner (Kēḷal-koḍi) as their emblem; the meaning of Vēlpulam (Vēḷ country) has not been satisfactorily elucidated.

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² *EI*, xx, 18, B. 4.

Legends of origin

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A Bādāmi inscription of A.D. 578 is the earliest record among those which deal with the family legend of the Chāḷukyas; here it is stated in its simplest form, and they are said to be meditating at the feet of the sacred Svāmi (Kārttikeya as later inscriptions show), to be Hāritiputras of the Mānavya gotra, and to have had their heads purified by the final ablutions after the performance of the agniṣṭoma, agnichayana, vājapeya, pauṇḍarīka, bahusuvarṇa, and aśvamedha sacrifices. It should be noted that the Brāhman dynasty of the Kadambas, and before them the Chutus who called themselves Sātavāhanas, were also Hāritiputras of the Mānavya gotra. The Kadambas were also devotees of Kārttikeya, and being Brāhmans of kingly race, were naturally given to the performance of Vedic sacrifices. This identity of family legends at the beginning of the story, particularly of those concerning the metronymic and the gotra, is sure proof of a definite historical connexion most probably dating back to the days of the Sātavāhanas. The long epithet naming the sacrifices, first applied to the family as a whole, is found twenty-five years later applied in the Māhākūṭa inscription to the first great ruler of the line, Pulakēśin I. The legend grew in the course of time in length and complexity; during the Bādāmi period the variations were not great, and very soon a standard form was reached which was subsequently kept unchanged. The Māhākūṭa pillar inscription (A.D. 602), unique in many ways, includes a whole line from the Raghuvamśa of Kālidāsa¹ in the praśasti of the family, but this was not repeated in other records; it also praises the energy, wisdom, strength, and courage of the rulers of the line, their devotion to their parents, and their generosity and beneficence. The definitive form of the praśasti for the Bādāmi period is found first in the Haidarabad grant (A.D. 612) of Pulakēśin II, and speaks of ‘the family of the Chāḷukyas who are Hāritiputras of the Mānavya-gotra which is praised throughout the world; who have been nourished by the Seven Mothers who are the mothers of the seven worlds;

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¹ yathāvidhi hutāgnīnām yathākāmārcitārthinām.

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who have acquired an uninterrupted continuity of prosperity through the protection of Kārttikeya; who have had all kings made subject to them at the sight of the boar-crest which they acquired through the favour of the divine Nārāyaṇa’. Let us note that even in these early legends we find the devotion of the line directed both to Kārttikeya the son of Śiva, and to Viṣṇu, to whose favour they owed their all-victorious boar-crest. This crest was adopted to indicate the nature of their work, that of protecting the earth from molestation by bad rulers, by suggesting a comparison with the task achieved by Lord Nārāyaṇa in his boar-incarnation.

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About the beginning of the eleventh century A.D. a fresh crop of legends grows up and begins to fill a large place in epigraphy and literature; that was the time when all the dynasties of South Indian rulers gave themselves respectable pedigrees with the aid of their court poets, generally claiming descent from the sun or the moon. In the case of the Cāḷukyas, these legends run in two main streams, one western and the other eastern; there is no agreement between them, and no useful purpose will be served by seeking to analyse such late and discordant traditions in any detail. Fifty-nine kings of the Cāḷukya line ruling at Ayodhyā, after them sixteen kings ruling over dakṣiṇāpatha (Deccan), a temporary obscuration of the line, followed by a restoration under Jayasiṃha who overthrew 500 kings besides the Rāṣṭrakūṭa Indra, with the 800 elephants in his army—these are the chief features of the western version starting with the Kauthem grant (A.D. 1009) of Vikramāditya V. Other inscriptions found in the same region trace the descent of the line from Manu through Mānavya and Hārita to Cāḷukya; yet others carry the ancestry back to the moon, or to Brahmā, while Bilhaṇa produces a story that the eponymous ancestor of the line issued from the Chuluka (the cupped palm) of Brahmā in response to Indra’s appeal to the creation of a hero who should put an end to the growing godlessness on the face of the earth. The eastern version beginning with the Raṇastipūṇḍi grant of Vimalāditya (A.D. 1011) is more comprehensive; it includes Brahmā, the moon, and the fifty-nine emperors of Ayodhyā, with Udayana among them, in the pedigree; then it says that Vijayāditya, a member of the family, went on an expedition to the south, and lost his life in battle with Trilocana-Pallava. His widowed queen gave birth to a posthumous son whom she called Viṣṇuvardhana, in honour of the Brāhman Viṣṇubhaṭṭa Sōmayājin of Muḍivēmu with whom she had found refuge in her distress. When he grew up, Viṣṇuvardhana made pūjā to Gaurī, the goddess of the Cāḷukya hill, and by her grace he regained the royal insignia of his line and established its rule in the entire seven-and-a-half-lakh country of the dakṣiṇāpatha, extending from the Narmadā river in the north to Rāmeśvaram (Setu) in the south. Interesting as the beliefs cherished by the members of a historic dynasty for several generations, these puerile stories are of course no value as factual history.

Rulers of the Dynasty

Pulakēśin I

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History must treat Pulakēśin I as the first ruler and founder of the dynasty of the Chāḷukyas of Bādāmi. The name of the king is curious; Fleet was inclined to explain it as half Kannaḍa and half Sanskrit, and draw the meaning ‘tiger-haired’. It seems much more likely that the first half of the name is also Sanskrit and connected with the root *pul*, meaning ‘to be great’ (Monier-Williams); this derivation, if it were accepted, would explain both the forms Pula- and Pola-kēśin, and kēśin means ‘lion’, so that the whole name means ‘the great lion’. The names of Pulakēśin’s father Raṇarāga, and grandfather Jayasiṃha are first given in the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription of A.D. 602 with some ornamental epithets obviously devoid of any historical import; they may possibly have been obtained from some grant of Pulakēśin I drawn up in accordance with *dharmaśāstras* and therefore giving the names of his father and grandfather. An inscription discovered in 1941 on a boulder in the fort at Bādāmi records that by Ś. 465 (A.D. 543-4) the hill fort at Vātāpi had been fortified above and below by the Chāḷukya Vallabheśvara, who performed several sacrificial rites, including the Aśvamedha; this ruler was doubtless Pulakēśin I. The choice of the capital was dictated by strategic considerations, and its neighbourhood soon became studded with Chāḷukya monuments. Vātāpi itself stood on a defensible eminence within three miles of the Malaprabhā river; among the hills to the east is Mahākūṭa: five miles farther in the same direction and on the river is Paṭṭadakal, and another eight miles down the river is Aihoḷe—all these witnesses of the age of Chāḷukyan ascendancy being noted for their ancient temples and inscriptions.¹ The Aihoḷe inscription of Pulakēśin II also mentions particularly the occupation of Vātāpi by Pulakēśin I and his performance of the Aśvamedha. He was therefore the real founder of the Chāḷukyan kingdom; he must have established his independence from Kadamba rule by fortifying Vātāpi and making himself master of the surrounding territory. The fame of his horse sacrifice, the symbol of sovereignty, is recalled in several inscriptions, even as late as the twelfth century A.D. He also performed the costly *Hiraṇyagarbhadāna*, the gift of the golden egg. He is praised in the Nerūr grant of Maṅgaleśa for his wisdom in counsel and his knowledge of the Laws of Manu, and of the epics—the *Rāmāyaṇa* and *Mahābhārata*. In the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription he is given the *birudas* Satyāśraya (the asylum of truth), Śrī-pṛthivī-vallabha (the beloved of fortune and the earth)—a title which equates him with Viṣṇu—and Raṇavikrama (valorous in war). He is said to have followed the advice of the elders and of respected Brāhmans. His queen was Durlabha-devī of the Batpura family. He had two sons, Kīrtti-varman and Mangaleśa, who succeeded him on the throne.

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¹ *IA*, vi, 354. Vātāpi was the name of an Asura famous in the Agastya legends. *Ram.*, iii, ii, 56 ff. His capital is called *durjaya* in *Mbh.*, *Vana* 94, 1 (Kumbakonam ed.).

Kīrtti-varman I

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The 12th regnal year of Kīrtti-varman (fame-armoured) fell in Ś. 500 (Bādāmi cave inscription); consequently he must have ascended the throne after his father in A.D. 566-7. In the inscriptions of his son Pulakēśin II he is called the first maker of Vātāpi and the night of death (kālarātri) to the Naḷas, Mauryas, and Kadambas. Vātāpi having become the capital under Pulakēśin I, his son must be taken to have adorned it by the construction of temples and in other ways. His successes against the Naḷas, the Mauryas, and the Kadambas doubtless marked important stages in the expansion of the newly established kingdom, and their memory is preserved in the praśastis of the line issued in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The expansion of the Chāḷukya power was effected at the expense of that of the Kadambas, and they were indeed the chief power attacked by Kīrtti-varman. In inscriptions of the second half of the seventh century he is said to have, by the exercise of his valour, occupied Vanavāsi and other kingdoms (maṇḍalas) belonging to his enemies. The contemporary Kadamba ruler reduced to subjection by Kīrtti-varman was perhaps Ajavarman. The Naḷas were at that time probably ruling the territory known as Naḷavāḍi which ‘lay in the direction of Bellary and Karnul’.¹ An early stone inscription of the Naḷas comes from the border between the Jeypore agency and the Bastar state, and it shows that as early as the second half of the fifth century A.D.

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the dynasty had already experienced many violent changes of fortune.² The Mauryas were ruling in Konkan with their capital at Purī described as ‘the Lakshmī of the Western ocean’. It is clear that under Kīrtti-varman the sway of the Chāḷukyan kingdom was extended in all directions, and we may well believe that he fought many victorious battles, performed the Agniṣṭoma and Bahusuvarṇa sacrifices, and earned the title of puru-raṇaparākrama, ‘puissant in many battles’. But the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription asserts that the hostile rulers of Vanga, Aṅga, Kaliṅga, Vattūra (?), Magadha, Madraka, Kerala, Gaṅga, Mūshaka, Pāṇḍya, Dramila, Cōḷiya, Āluka, Vaijayanti, and other kingdoms were overcome by Kīrtti-varman; we can accept this only as a measure of the knowledge of Indian geography possessed by the writer of the praśasti. The same inscription states further that an extremely beautiful cave temple to Viṣṇu was constructed under the king’s orders by his younger brother Mangaleśa; the work was completed and the image of Viṣṇu consecrated perhaps after the death of Kīrtti-varman, during Mangaleśa’s reign. From an inscription of Pulakēśin II we learn that his mother, Kīrtti-varman’s queen, was a sister of Rājā Śrīvallabha Senānanda of the Sendraka family which held a subordinate position in the Nāgarakhaṇḍa division of the Banavāsi province, at first under the Kadambas and then under the Cāḷukyas;

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the marriage alliance of Kirtti-varman with the Sendrakas confirms the evidence of other records regarding the southward expansion of the Cāḷukya power at the expense of the Kadambas. A certain Dhruvarāja-Indravaram began his rule in Konkan as a subordinate of the Cāḷukyas about A.D. 590; he was stationed in Revatidvīpa (Goa) and was governor of four viṣayas and maṇḍalas; he is called Satyāśraya, an ornament of the ādi-mahā-Bappūra-vamśa, probably the same line as that of Durlabhadevī, the queen of Pulakeśin I. The date of Dhruvarāja-Indravarman’s appointment as governor here shows that he became ruler of a new province added to the growing Cāḷukyan empire after Kirtti-varman’s conquest of Konkan; in this capacity he continued for at least twenty years, for his Goa copper-plate grant, which yields these particulars, is dated in Ś. 532 (A.D. 610-11) and in the twentieth year of his government. But if Goa was conquered for the first time only by Mangaleśa, as seems probable, Indravarman must have ruled his province from some other centre before he moved his capital to Goa. Considering his title Satyāśraya, and the dating of his records in his own regnal year, it seems probable that he was a member of the royal family.

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¹ Fleet, DKD, p. 345.

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² EI, xxi, 154.

Mangaleśa

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Kirtti-varman was succeeded after his death in A.D. 597-8¹ by his younger brother, possibly a half-brother, Mangaleśa (prosperous lord), whose Mahākūṭa pillar inscription states that the Vaiśākha Paurṇamī of the Sid-dhārtha year (12 April, A.D. 601) fell in his 5th regnal year. While contemporary inscriptions offer no direct explanation for this apparent deviation in the line of succession, those of the Kalyāṇī period contain a stereotyped verse saying that Mangaleśa took upon himself the burden of administration during the nonage of his elder brother’s son and duly returned the kingdom to Satyāśraya when he grew up to be a young man; the verse points the moral at the end with a question asking: ‘who indeed among the Cāḷukyas would swerve from the path of dharma?’ This protestation on behalf of Mangaleśa rouses our suspicion, and it is, in fact, only a belated attempt to gloss over occurrences mentioned in the Aihoḷe inscription of Pulakeśin II which may be reserved for discussion at the end of the reign.

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¹ IA, xix, 10, and 12 n.

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Mangaleśa continued the policy of expansion, and one of his earliest wars of conquest was directed against the Kalachuris or Kalatsuris. As this event is mentioned in the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription, it must have occurred before A.D. 602. The Aihoḷe inscription of Pulakeśin II says that the cavalry of Mangaleśa raised canopies of dust on the shores of the eastern and western oceans; there is no evidence to support this rhetorical reference to the eastern ocean, as Cāḷukya power was still, at the close of Mangaleśa’s reign, confined to the western half of the Deccan. Of the Kalachuri war the same inscription says that Mangaleśa obtained on the field of battle the hand of the lady who had brought prosperity to the Kalachuris. The Nerūr grant (undated) of Mangaleśa states that the king put to flight Buddharāja, the son of Śankaragaṇa, who had elephants, horses, infantry, and treasure. And in the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription we read that Mangaleśa made up his mind to conquer the northern quarter, and first of all overcame King Buddha and seized all his wealth; then, eager to plant a religious pillar of victory (*dharma Jayastambha*), he, with his mother’s approval, made the endowments recorded on the Mahākūṭa pillar in favour of Makuṭeśvaranātha—a name which shows that Makuṭa, not Mahākūṭa, is the original name of this celebrated group of temples.

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From the provenance of the contemporary Kalachuri inscriptions it is clear that a branch of this celebrated dynasty was then ruling a fairly extensive territory comprising portions of Gujerat, the Khandesh, and Malwa; three generations of this line are now known, viz. Kṛishṇarāja, his son Śankaragaṇa, and his son Buddharāja, the foe of Mangaleśa.¹ The Chāḷukyan invasion of the Kalachuri territory was clearly nothing more than a successful raid marked by a battle which ended favourably for the invader and put him in possession of much booty; we have inscriptions of Buddharāja which show that very soon after this invasion, about A.D. 609 and 610, he was ruling in full regal splendour as an independent monarch, and Fleet’s view that as a result of his northern invasion Mangaleśa acquired the whole of the northern territory up to the river Kim, if not to the Mahī, must be given up. There is nothing in the early Chāḷukyan inscriptions² calculated to support the ascription of any permanent results to this campaign.

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¹ *EI*, ii, 21; ix, 296; vi, 294; xii, 30.

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² The Kauthem grant (A.D. 1009) and later records imply accession of territory.

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In Konkan proper Mangaleśa continued his brother’s work with better results, and his reduction of the Revatidvīpa is described in considerable detail in the inscriptions. ‘When he was desirous of taking the island of Revati’, says the Aihoḷe inscription, ‘his great army with many bright banners, which had ascended the ramparts, as it was reflected in the water of the sea appeared like Varuṇa’s forces, quickly come there at once as his word (of command).’³ The later Chāḷukyan inscriptions assert that Mangaleśa had sufficient troops to occupy all the islands and that his forces crossed the sea by a bridge of boats to attack the Revatidvīpa. The Nerūr grant has nothing to say of this island, but mentions that Mangaleśa killed a certain Svāmirāja of Chāḷukyan descent who had been victorious in eighteen battles. It appears probable that after Kīrtti-varman’s conquest of the Konkan, Svāmirāja was posted as viceroy in Revatidvīpa, and that the attack on the island was rendered necessary by his rebellion against the central power. The rebel was killed and his stronghold reduced, and another viceroy already functioning elsewhere in the Konkan, Dhruvarāja-Indravarman, was put in charge of the island after its reconquest

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³ Kielhorn, *Aihole Inscription*, *EI*, vi, 8.

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Mangaleśa had the titles Raṇavikrānta, valorous in war, and parama-bhāgavata, most devoted worshipper of Bhagavān (Viṣṇu). He was a great builder, and to him was entrusted by his brother the construction of the Mahāviṣṇu-gṛha at Bādāmi, a cave-temple of wonderful workmanship well-proportioned in all its parts, viz. the ground floor (bhūmi-bhāga), the adjuncts (upa-bhāga), and the upper circuit (upari-paryanta). He endowed the temple at the time of the consecration of the image of Viṣṇu after the construction was completed, and later. But he was no narrow sectarian, and Makuteśvara, a form of Śiva, was, as noted above, equally the subject of his benefactions. He gets high praise for learning, character, and liberality, and for his great knowledge of the political arts.

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But the manner in which Mangaleśa’s reign closed does not bear out the high praise bestowed on his ability and character by the court poets who wrote the praśastis. What exactly happened is not easy to determine since the language of the Aihole inscription, our only source of information about this matter, is enigmatic. It says that Mangaleśa’s elder brother’s son, Pulakēśin, who had the dignity of Nahusha, was a favourite of fortune (Lakṣmī); he saw, however, that his paternal uncle was envious of him on that account, and so he made up his mind to lead the life of an exile. But in due course Mangaleśa’s strength was reduced on all sides by the application of the gifts of good counsel and energy with which Pulakēśin was endowed, and Mangaleśa had to abandon three things at the same time, viz. his effort to secure the kingdom for his own son, that vast kingdom itself, and his own life. It is clear that Pulakēśin was kept out of his rights for some time by Mangaleśa’s attempt to secure the kingdom for his own son; probably Mangaleśa made his son Yuvarāja, though Pulakēśin had the better claim and greater fitness for the place.¹ Pulakēśin left his uncle’s hostile court, and from his exile planned and carried out a successful attack on Mangaleśa, killed him, and proclaimed himself king. Who Pulakēśin’s allies were in this enterprise we are not told.

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¹ EI, vi, 9, n. 1.

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Whether the differences between Pulakēśin and his uncle arose at the very beginning of the latter’s reign, or after he had reigned in peace for some years and Pulakēśin had had time to grow up, cannot be ascertained; however that may have been, it is clear that Pulakēśin and his successors during the Bādāmi period never recognized Mangaleśa’s right to the throne, and consistently passed over his name in the official genealogies in their charters. But his reign reappears in its proper place in the grants of the Kalyāṇī period and with fairly reliable details and a belated gloss over his conduct towards Pulakēśin—which shows that the history of the reign must have been carefully preserved in archives of some sort.

Pulakēśin II

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The Hyderabad copper-plate grant of Pulakēśin II which is dated Ś. 534 mentions a solar eclipse in the third year of his reign, and this shows that his assumption of sovereignty must have taken place some time during A.D. 609-10.¹ Pulakēśin was a great soldier, and all his martial ability was needed to accomplish the tasks that faced him on his accession to the throne. The civil war of the closing years of Mangaleśa's reign had brought ruin on the Chālukyan empire, and at the time when Mangaleśa's power was overthrown, the world was, in the words of Ravikīrtti, the author of the Aihole inscription, 'encompassed by the darkness of enemies'. Pulakēśin found himself master of Vātāpi, but that was all; he had to begin the work of building up the Chālukyan power all over again. But he was equal to the task and succeeded very soon in inaugurating the dawn of the brightest day in the annals of the Chālukyas of Bādāmi and making his power respected throughout all India, and even in the court of Khusrau II of Persia. He brought the whole of the Deccan under his sway, started the eastern branch of his line on its long career in the Telugu country, and paved the way for another branch which came into existence in southern Gujerat in the reign of his son Vikramāditya I. But unfortunately there was something in the too ardent militarism of Pulakēśin that roused the implacable animosity of his foes, and his reign ended in a gloom worse than that from which it had emerged; but his work had been so well done that the empire he had built up survived even his fall and the civil strife that followed, and once more, under his son Vikramāditya, avenged itself on the enemy who had cut short the career of Pulakēśin while it was still at its apogee.

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¹ DKD, pp. 351, 356; EI, xviii, 260-1.

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The campaigns of Pulakēśin's reign are best studied with the aid of the Aihole inscription, and according to that record the first enemies to be dealt with by Pulakēśin were Āppāyika and Govinda who, desiring to gain some territory for themselves in the prevailing confusion, made their appearance to the north of the Bhīmarathī river with a considerable host of elephants; one of them was repulsed in battle while the other became an ally and was received into favour. From the way they are mentioned we can only infer that Āppāyika and Govinda were mere military adventurers with no hereditary claims to royalty. Next came the turn of the Kadamba capital Vanavāsi, which, as described by the poet Ravikīrtti, rivalled the city of the gods in its wealth and was adorned by a girdle of swans sporting on the high waves of the Varadā river; when it was being besieged by the ocean of Pulakēśin's forces which surrounded it, Vanavāsi, though a land fortress, bore the appearance of a castle in the sea. The enthusiasm of Ravikīrtti's description, and the practical disappearance of the early Kadambas from history about this time, warrant the assumption that Pulakēśin's campaign against Vanavāsi was a complete success. The Ālupas and Gangas who are said to have become the constant attendants of Pulakēśin must have felt the weight of his arm about the same time as did Vanavāsi.

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The Ālupas were a minor dynasty of local chieftains who had ruled in the South Kanara District for several centuries, as their stone inscriptions discovered in recent years, particularly in the Udupi *tāluk*, go to show. The Gangas were doubtless the celebrated Western Gangas of Taḷakāḍ. These and the Ālupas are indeed included in the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription among the rulers subdued by Kīrtti-varman I; but there is good reason to doubt the truth of that statement, and to give to Pulakēśin II the credit of having first brought them under the overlordship of the Chāḷukyas. The Ganga ruler at the time was most probably Durvinīta, and there is some evidence, though this is relatively late, to lead us to suppose that Durvinīta gave one of his daughters in marriage to the conqueror, and that this princess became the mother of Vikramāditya I.¹ Pulakēśin then turned against the Konkan where he reduced the Mauryas with ease, and attacked Purī, the Lakshmī of the western ocean, with a fleet comprising hundreds of ships that looked like arrays of rutting elephants. Purī was most probably on the island of Elephanta near Bombay.² Purī was a very prosperous seaport town, and Pulakēśin was naturally eager to make himself master of it. The Lāṭas, the Māḷavas, and the Gurjaras then offered submission one after another; and the frontier of the Chāḷukyan empire was thus extended right up to the river Mahī.

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Lāṭa in this period was a small territory south of the river Kim, and had its capital at Navasārika, the modern Nausāri in Baroda territory.³ This was the country where Buddharāja of the Kalachuri line was ruling at the time of Mangaleśa's inroad and for some years later; after its conquest Pulakēśin seems to have entrusted it to the care of some member of the royal family as it was held in A.D. 643 by a certain Vijayarāja of Chāḷukyan extraction.⁴ The Gurjaras ruled the territory between the Kim and the Mahī rivers, and these, like the Lāṭas to their south and the Māḷavas to the east, must have formed part of the Kalachuri dominions just before they offered their submission to Pulakēśin, if not at the time; but if Buddharāja had been still living and ruling at the time of Pulakēśin's northern conquests, Ravikīrtti, who mentions his defeat at the hands of Mangaleśa, would not have omitted to include his name among the vassals of Pulakēśin. There is no indication that Pulakēśin's power ever actually extended into the Malwa country; and it seems possible that the alliance of this nation as well as the submission of the Lāṭas and Gurjaras was dictated by the rapid spread of Harshavardhana's growing empire over practically the whole of northern India.

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¹ N. Venkataramanyya, *Durvinīta and Vikramāditya I*, Trivēṇi, i, pp. 112-30.

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² Gadre, *Important Inscriptions from the Baroda State*, p. 45.

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³ Fleet, *DKD*, p. 310.

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⁴ Ibid., pp. 359-60.

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The inevitable conflict between the conquerors of northern and southern India was thereafter not long delayed. There was a battle in which Harsha lost heavily, particularly in elephants; and the Narmadā was the frontier successfully held by Pulakēśin who did not send his elephants into the difficult Vindhya terrain, but guarded the passes with powerful divisions of infantry. This is confirmed by the testimony of Hiuen Tsang who writes: ‘The great king Śīlāditya at this time was invading east and west, and countries far and near were giving in allegiance to him, but Mo-ha-la-ch’a (Mahārāṣṭra) refused to become subject to him.’ His biographer, doubtless basing himself on the notes of the pilgrim, supplements this statement, and says that the proud Śīlāditya was unable to prevail against Pulakēśin though he marched against him at the head of troops gathered from all the Northern countries and was accompanied by their best generals.¹ This was in fact the only check to the otherwise victorious career of Harshavardhana.

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¹ Watters, ii, 239; Beal, Life of Hiuen Tsang, p. 147.

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The Hyderabad grant (A.D. 612) does not mention Śrī Harshavardhana, the lord of the entire Uttarāpatha, by name, but says that Pulakēśin obtained the title of Parameśvara by defeating a hostile king who had given himself to the contest of a hundred battles. Later inscriptions dating from the reign of Vikramāditya I are more explicit, but use almost the same expressions and mention only this and no other achievement of Pulakēśin. There can be doubt that Harsha is also meant by the composer of the Hyderabad grant, and the battle between Pulakēśin and Harsha must have occurred before A.D. 612. And this is in conformity with Hiuen Tsang’s statement that the first six years of Harsha’s rule (A.D. 606–12) were crowded with wars and campaigns, while the rest of his long reign was relatively much more peaceful. But the date of the Aihole inscription is A.D. 634–5, and that of Hiuen Tsang’s visit to Mahārāṣṭra still later (A.D. 642); their testimony is of value as showing that the balance of power reached after the first shock of conflict before A.D. 612 remained undisturbed for thirty years; but this does not preclude constant vigilance on the part of the Parameśvara of the south, or fresh attempts to renew the trial of strength by the Parameśvara of the north.²

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² R. Mookerji, Harsha, p. 36 n.; Smith, EHI, 4, p. 353 and n. 3.

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The repulse of Harsha was a fitting finale to Pulakēśin’s campaigns in the Western Deccan, and this is well recognized in retrospect by Ravikīrtti who devotes one verse to the portrayal of the position reached by Pulakēśin at this stage, before proceeding to an account of his further achievements elsewhere. He says that, possessed of many noble qualities and being almost the equal of Indra by virtue of the powers of mastery, good counsel, and energy which he had gathered by legitimate means, Pulakēśin attained the sovereignty of the three Mahārāṣṭras, comprising 99,000 villages. It seems probable that this empire included the region between the Narmadā and the Tapti comprising the modern Betul district and its neighbourhood in the Madhya Pradesh, where the rule of Rāṣṭrakūṭa chieftains in this period is attested by the Tivarkhed plates of Nannarāja dated Ś. 533. (A.D. 611);¹ if that was so, then we may trace to this fairly early period the beginning of the hostility between the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and Chāḷukyas which lasted for several centuries and formed a dominant feature of the history of the Western Deccan during that long period.

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¹ EI, xi, 279.

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Soon after this Pulakēśin installed his younger brother Viṣṇuvardhana as Yuvarāja, left him in charge of the home territory, and began an extensive campaign in the Eastern Deccan. The victorious march is described by Ravikīrtti in regular stages from north to south, and we may well assume that the description follows the actual course of the expedition, though it is just possible that the poet imposed his own rhetorical arrangement on the campaigns of the reign up to date in order to give to Pulakēśin’s digvijaya the appearance of a pradakṣiṇa round the Deccan. However that may be, we must follow Ravikīrtti’s guidance, which is all that we have. The rulers of (Southern) Kosala and Kalinga, who had inflicted defeats on other rulers, showed signs of fear at the approach of Pulakēśin’s forces and submitted. The fortress of Piṣṭapura, modern Piṭhāpuram on the coast in the Godāvari district, was then attacked and reduced. In the next stage, fighting centred round Kunāla, Colair lake, whose waters were dyed red with the blood of men killed with many weapons in battle. This is the famous Vengi-deśa proper, then in the hands of Viṣṇukuṇḍins, who offered opposition to the invader and suffered defeat. The Viṣṇukuṇḍins were still the leading power in the Andhradeśa at the time of Pulakēśin’s invasion, and probably Kalinga, and certainly Piṣṭapura, fell within their sphere of influence if they did not actually form part of their kingdom. A certain Pṛthivīmahārāja was ruling in Piṣṭapura at this time with some claim to independence; he describes himself as the grandson of Raṇadurjaya, and son of Vikramendra,² a name which betrays the original feudatory relation of these rulers to the Viṣṇukuṇḍins. Pṛthivīmahārāja was deprived of his territory either by Pulakēśin II himself or by his younger brother Viṣṇuvardhana, who made Piṣṭapura his capital thereafter. The Viṣṇukuṇḍins continued to rule with diminished power for some years after this invasion.

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² EI, xxiii, no. 15, Taṇḍivāḍa grant.

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South of the Viṣṇukuṇḍin Kingdom lay the territory ruled by the Pallavas of the Simhaviṣṇu line whose rapidly growing power rivalled that of Pulakēśin himself.³ The Aihoḷe inscription asserts that the forces of Pulakēśin, flushed with victory in many battles, caused the splendour of the lord of the Pallavas first to be obscured by the dust they raised, and then to vanish behind the walls of Kāñchīpura. The lord of the Pallavas at that time was most probably Mahendravarman I, who is said in the Kaśākuḍi plates to have gained a victory against an unnamed enemy at Puḷḷalūra (Pollilore), fifteen miles north of Kāñchīpuram on the route which must have been taken by Pulakēśin. Though it is a little difficult to reconcile the two versions, there is yet no doubt that they refer to the same event. Probably the Pallava forces offered battle to the invader in an effort to save the capital; they were indeed forced to retreat, but the Chāḷukya was nevertheless in no position to follow up his victory or to inflict any great loss on the Pallava people. This was the first move initiating what developed into one of the most persistent lines of conflict in South Indian history; it became almost a social law that kingdoms centred in Karṇāṭaka and those centred in the Tamil country should not tolerate each other, but should keep up an almost perpetual war in which the rulers of the Mysore country and the Andhradeśa mingled and took sides, sometimes in their own interest, at others in that of their suzerains.

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³ This seems to be the real meaning of the phrase ākrānta-ātmabalonnatim (v. 29) of the Aihoḷe inscription, which Kielhorn rendered by: ‘who had opposed the rise of his power’—a rendering that has led to much speculation as, e.g. at p. ii of SII, xi (i). See Journal of Andhra History and Culture, i, 166-71.

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After the battle of Puḷḷalūra, and possibly an ineffective attempt to besiege Kāñchī, Pulakēśin may be taken to have returned to his capital. In the absence of details in the inscriptions, the chronology of Pulakēśin’s campaigns can only be vaguely surmised. His younger brother Viṣṇuvardhana already bears the titles *Viṣamasiddhi* and *Śrī-pṛthivīvallabha-Yuvarāja* in his Satara grant, dated in the eighth year of Śrī-mahārāja, i.e. Pulakēśin II (A.D. 618). In his later but undated Timmāpuram plates issued from Piṣṭapura he is said to have earned the name *Viṣamasiddhi* by successes (*siddhi*) achieved against impregnable (*viṣama*) fortresses on land and sea (*sthala-jalādi-durga*);¹ this naturally leads one to suppose that Viṣṇuvardhana took part in the campaigns against Vanavāsi, Purī, and other places, and was rewarded with the rank of Yuvarāja soon after Pulakēśin’s coronation, if not at the same time. Yuvarāja Viṣṇuvardhana’s presence in the Western Deccan may indicate that Pulakēśin’s campaigns in the Eastern Deccan occurred round about this date, say A.D. 617-20.² In the 21st year of Pulakēśin’s reign, A.D. 631, the date of the Koppāram plates, we find both brothers in the Eastern Deccan, for the Vallabha (Pulakēśin) is said to have been present when a grant was made by Pṛthivīyuvarāja (Viṣṇuvardhana); and by this time Viṣṇuvardhana had overcome many enemies by the strength of his own arm and had secured the kingdom of Vengi for his son’s descendants, and accordingly very soon after he seems also to have been styled Mahārāja (Timmāpuram plates) as was his brother Pulakēśin. We may assume that shortly after Pulakēśin returned to Bādāmi from his *digvijaya*, his brother, the Yuvarāja, was sent to the eastern districts as yet only half-conquered so that he might complete the process of conquest, and establish the Chāḷukyan power firmly in that region, work which he had nearly accomplished by A.D. 631 when his brother came once more to the Eastern Deccan. Probably it was then that a definite understanding was reached that, in return for the invaluable services that Viṣṇuvardhana had rendered, and with a view to making sure that he did not follow in the footsteps of Maṅgaleśa, Pulakēśin would promote Viṣṇuvardhana to equal dignity with himself, making him and his successors sole rulers of the eastern territories. The undated Timmāpuram record is the earliest evidence of the new arrangement, and it shows that the new kingdom had its centre at Piṣṭapura. Possibly the Viṣṇukuṇḍins still dragged on a lustreless existence in the region of Vengi.

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¹ Hultzsch’s rendering, EI, ix, 319, overlooks the force of the technical phrase I have cited last. The Chipurapalle grant (IA, xx, 16) is more explicit, and Fleet gives the correct rendering.

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² This date casts a doubt on synchronism no. 12 on which Geiger relied for his system of chronology in his *Cūḷavaṃsa* (1929), i, p. 70, n. 9, and ii, p. xix.

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In the interval between Pulakēśin's return to Bādāmi from the digvijaya and his second visit to the east must have taken place the dispatch of a complimentary embassy by Pulakēśin to the Persian court, an occurrence clearly attested by the Persian historian Ṭabarī. In the 36th year of the reign of Khusrau II, A.D. 625-6, Pulakēśin sent ambassadors carrying letters and presents, which last included an elephant, to that monarch and his sons. A return embassy may have been sent to India from Persia, but about this we have no information. Some have sought to identify two panels of the paintings in Cave I at Ajaṇṭā, on the ceiling, as a representation of Khusrau and his beautiful consort Shīrīn, and the other, on the wall of the front aisle, as showing Pulakēśin receiving the return embassy from Persia. Good reason has been shown for doubting the correctness of this view of the paintings in question, but the evidence of Ṭabarī, who is known to have followed Pehlevi sources dating from before the Arab conquest of Persia, is clear enough.¹

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¹ Yazdani, Ajaṇṭā, pt. i, pp. 46-9; also K. A. N. Sastri, Foreign Notices of S. India, p. 9.

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Before Pulakēśin's second visit to the Eastern Deccan, a change of rulers had occurred in the Pallava country, Narasimhavarman I having succeeded his father Mahendravarman I. This event seems to have roused hopes of better success in the mind of the Chālukyan emperor, who had had no great reason to be pleased with the results of his last expedition against Kāñchīpuram. There is indeed some evidence to show that after that expedition the Pallavas were active against the Chālukya power and extended their sphere of influence. An undated stone inscription² from the Gooty tāluk of the Anantapur district mentions the subjugation of Raṇavikrama by Ereyitiyadigal, and a grant of a village made with the consent of the Bāṇa king in the Bāṇarājavishaya. Here is obviously a victorious campaign of Pulakēśin against the Bāṇas; the name of the Bāṇa ruler Raṇavikrama shows that his line became vassals of the Chālukyas in the days of Pulakēśin I, while that of the engraver of the inscription, Mahendra Pallavāchāri, makes it equally certain that the Bāṇa had changed his allegiance and become a vassal of the Pallavas. And Pulakēśin's reconquest of the Bāṇa territory and restoration of Chālukyan power there may well have been the first steps in the renewal of his contest with the Pallavas.¹ But the final results of the renewal of the contest we learn only from the side of the Pallavas who undoubtedly got the best of it in this round. Narasimhavarman is said to have forced Pulakēśin to turn his back upon the battlefields of Pariyaḷa, Maṇimaṅgala, Śūramāra, and so on, and to have written on them the word ‘victory’ on every occasion as on a plate. Of these battlefields, only Maṇimaṅgala can now be identified with a place of the same name about twenty miles to the east of Kāñchīpuram; but it is clear that once more the Pallava capital was threatened, and that many battles had to be waged with the powerful invader before he was beaten back. In these battles Narasimha was ably assisted by the Ceylonese prince Mānavamma who, according to the Sinhalese accounts, was duly rewarded by Narasimhavarman by being helped to the throne of Ceylon.² Pulakēśin’s second attack on the Pallavas in fact turned out more disastrous for him than the first, since the Pallava ruler now realized that he would be obliged to do something effective to prevent the recurrence of this serious threat to his capital, which had occurred twice in the course of about twenty years. And on his side Pulakēśin must have been chagrined at the disgrace that had befallen him a second time, and it must have dawned on him that he had provoked a foe of tough mettle with whom he must be prepared to face a fight to the finish on some day not far off.

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² SII, ix (i), no. 45 (343 of 1920).

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¹ If this view is correct, we have here contemporary evidence that Pulakēśin II had the name Egeya, and the doubts expressed by Fleet in *DKD* at p. 351, n. 3 and 358, n. 1 regarding (a late copy of) the Lakshmesvar inscription may be laid at rest.

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² *Cūḷavaṃsa*, ch. 47, vv. 15-61.

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While the two mighty rivals were thus engaged in preparing for the next bout, the pious Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang moved peacefully from the dominions of Narasimhavarman into those of Pulakēśin. His main interest was Buddhism, not Indian politics; he mentions Kāñchīpura, but not the name of its ruler. He travelled in the Deccan and South India during A.D. 641-2. On his way to Kāñchīpuram he passed districts that had recently come into the possession of the Chāḷukyas and the charge of Viṣṇuvardhana; there is nothing to indicate that he was aware of these important political changes. From Kāñchīpuram Hiuen Tsang went to the Pāṇḍyan country, and thence he seems to have returned to Kāñchīpuram before he started for Mahārāṣṭra, which he reached after passing Kung-Kan-na-pu-lo, a place which has not been satisfactorily identified. Of Mahārāṣṭra and its people and of the monasteries of Ajanta and the paintings there he says much that is of interest. He gives the name of the ruler Pulakēśin, ‘a kshatriya by birth’; his ‘benevolent sway reached far and wide, and his vassals served him with perfect loyalty’. He knows, as we have seen, of Pulakēśin’s successful resistance to Harsha’s might. The pilgrim says that the capital of Mahārāṣṭra ‘had a large river on its west side, and was above thirty *li* (say six miles) in circuit’, and that it lay about 200 miles (1,000 *li*) south-west of Bharoach—a description that certainly does not point to Bādāmi, but may be taken to apply to Nāsik, an important centre of Buddhism where Hiuen Tsang may well have spent some time and even met Pulakēśin, and which he perhaps consequently took to be the capital of the kingdom.¹

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¹ Cf. Fleet, *DKD*, p. 355.

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Soon after the departure of Hiuen Tsang the Pallava ruler, who had completed his preparations against the enemy, invaded the Chālukya country in great force and, rapidly advancing to the capital Vātāpi, made himself master of the city and its fortress. The blow was swift and strong, and as nothing more is heard of Pulakēśin II it is a fair assumption that he lost his life in the encounter. An inscription, now much damaged, engraved in beautiful florid Pallava characters on a rock behind the temple of Mallikārjunadeva in Bādāmi, and dated in the 13th regnal year of Narasimhavarman, attests to this day his occupation of the enemy capital and the fierce retribution that fell on Pulakēśin for his having twice threatened Kāñchīpuram with a similar fate. Other Pallava inscriptions say that Narasimha destroyed Vātāpi like the sage Agastya, and that he captured the pillar of victory set up by his enemy in the centre of this city.

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