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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s2: Rulers of the Dynasty

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s2

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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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How long Vātāpi remained in the occupation of the Pallavas we do not know; conquest or annexation was obviously not intended by the invader, but only punishment for the threat which Pulakēśin had twice held out against Kāñchī. The invasion, however, plunged the Chālukyan kingdom into a period of darkness and confusion from which it emerged only with the accession of Vikramāditya I (Sun of Valour) sometime in A.D. 654-5.² During this interval the feudatories of the Chālukyan empire began to declare themselves free; thus at the beginning of the period, in April, A.D. 643, Vijayarāja, who must have owed his position in Lāṭa to his connexion with the Chālukya family and Pulakēśin’s favour, is found issuing the Kaira grant which is dated in the local Kalachuri era and makes no mention whatever of the Chālukyas of Bādāmi;³ towards the close of this period in A.D. 655 we find another grant of the Sendraka prince Prithivīvallabha-Nikumbhallaśakti whose phrasing is also marked by the same apparent independence, although the Sendrakas are well known from earlier grants to have been loyal feudatories of the Chālukyas of Bādāmi at least from the time of Kirtti-varman I. This revolt, open or covert, of the feudatories was not all;

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the period was marked by succession disputes among the sons of Pulakēśin, who sought, like the feudatories, their own security by attempting to convert their charges into independent kingdoms and thus break up the unity of the empire which Pulakēśin had striven so hard to establish. From Karnūl we have a copper-plate grant dated in the 1st regnal year of Ādityavarman, who calls himself the dear son of Pulakēśin II, bears all the full regal titles of the Chālukyas, and claims to have, with the prowess of his own arms, brought the whole earth under his sway.¹ Again at Nerūr in the Sāvantvāḍi state has been found another copper-plate grant which is dated in the fifth year of the reign of Vikramāditya, and records a grant by Vijayabhaṭṭārikā, the beloved queen of his elder brother Chandrāditya Pṛithivīvallabha Mahārāja, who was obviously not living at the time of the grant.² Later Chālukya inscriptions of the Kalyāṇī period are thoroughly confused over this interval and introduce two generations between Pulakēśin II and Vikramāditya I, whom these records describe as the son of Ādityavarman.

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The actual course of events is hinted at in some of the early inscriptions of Vikramāditya’s reign,³ in which he claims to have gained for himself the regal fortune of his father which had been concealed by three kings, and thus to have made the entire burden of royalty rest upon one person—expressions which indicate sufficiently that the kingdom had suffered by division until Vikramāditya restored its unity. Ādityavarman and Chandrāditya, the brothers, or probably half-brothers, of Vikramāditya, were doubtless two of the three kings indicated here; their names do not figure in the official genealogy of the period; the third was, equally clearly, the Pallava Narasimhavarman whose sudden onslaught marked the beginning of the troubles in the kingdom.⁴ During this period of unrest Vikramāditya was aided by his maternal grandfather, the Gaṅga king Durvinita, who is said in an inscription dated Ś. 999 (A.D. 1077) to have captured the Kāḍuveṭṭi (of Kāñchī) who was disturbing the peace of the world like Rāvaṇa, to have established his own daughter’s son in the hereditary kingdom of Jayasimhavallabha, and thus to have become formidable in the world.⁵ The Gaṅgas were feudatory to the Chālukya power in Pulakēśin’s reign, and their position was not different after Vikramāditya’s restoration of the Chālukyan power.

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Interest in his widowed daughter and her son, hostility to the Pallava who had destroyed his son-in-law and his kingdom, and loyalty to the suzerain power, inspired Durvinita’s action; and though we may not accept literally everything that is claimed for Durvinita, it is clear that he was of great assistance to his grandson in ridding the country of the foreign intruder and restoring the unity and strength of the kingdom which had been rudely shattered by his intrusion. The famous charger Chitrakaṇṭha (speckled neck) on which Vikramāditya rode is said to have played a conspicuous part on many fields of battle in securing his victory.

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² EI, ix, 102.

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³ Fleet, *DKD*, pp. 359-61.

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¹ IA, xi, 67; JBBRAS, xvi, 233-5.

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² IA, vii, 163-4. Also ibid., viii, 45-46 for the Kochre grant of a similar character, issued during Chandrāditya’s reign, as the inscription on the seal shows.

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³ Karnūl plates of year 3, JBBRAS, xvi, 236. Talamanchi plates of year 6, EI, ix, 98-102.

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⁴ The meaning of Avanipati-tritaya given here has, I believe, been suggested for the first time though it seems very obvious. For other views see N. Venkataramanyya—Trairājya-Pallava—Madras Chr. Coll. Magazine, Jan. 1929, a phrase with which our phrase has little to do in my opinion. One copper plate from Karnūl has the expression sarvān dāyādān vijitya, ‘having conquered all his kinsmen’, but the genuineness of the record is not beyond reproach. JBBRAS, xvi, 240.

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⁵ Nagar 35, EC, viii and N. Venkataramanyya, Durvinita and Vikramāditya.

Vikramāditya I

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Vikramāditya’s inscriptions date the commencement of his reign in A.D. 654-5. His first care was to restore confidence in the country and to repair the damage that had befallen its civil institutions, and he is said to have gained merit and fame by re-establishing by his own orders all the charitable gifts to temples and Brāhmans which had lapsed or been abolished under ‘the three kings’. He then recovered for himself the position of Parameśvara together with the regal fortune of his family by conquering in war the hostile kings of every district.¹ Practically no details have been recorded for us as to the stages of the reconquest; the Ceded Districts and Nellore must certainly have slipped from the grasp of the Chālukyas during the interregnum; but Vikramāditya’s power was soon established in these areas; the beginning is marked by the Karnūl plates of Vikramāditya bearing a date in the 3rd year of his reign. There are other records from Karnūl also. The Talamanchi plates of Vikramāditya dated in the 6th year of the king’s reign come from the Nellore *tāluk* on the east coast; a stone inscription from Annavaram² of the reign of Vikramāditya refers to the Kāḍuveṭṭi as having disturbed an earlier donation and records the erection of a sculpture commemorating Annuvayya for some notable act of his in connexion with his charity; a gap in the record obscures the nature of the service which he had rendered. A stone inscription of the 1st regnal year of Vikramāditya Satyāśraya comes from Tippalūru, in the Kamalāpuram *tāluk* of the Cuddapah District, in which Pormukharāma figures as the feudatory ruling over that part of Bāṇarāja’s territory bounded by the Peṇṇā river.³ Pormukharāma is doubtless identical with Puṇyakumāra of the Mālēpāḍu plates, which together with a stone inscription, also from Mālēpāḍu, show that the Telugu Cholas of Reṇāṇḍu, who had begun as feudatories of the Pallavas under Mahendravarman I, went over to the side of the Chālukyas and figured among their most important feudatories; their title, Chola-Mahārāja, shows the measure of autonomy which they enjoyed, near to independence; but the *birudas* of the princes and princesses like Prthivīvallabha, Vikramāditya, Satyāditya, and Poṛi attest their connexion, political and possibly also dynastic, with the Chālukyas. Lastly, two undated inscriptions of Arkatavemula (Jammalamadugu *tāluk*, Cuddapah District), one of them mentioning Śrīvallabaha Mahārāja,⁴ may also be of the reign of Vikramāditya. There is therefore sufficient evidence to show that Vikramāditya by his exertions before and soon after his accession succeeded in a short time in restoring Chālukya power in the Ceded Districts and Nellore. Similar success in another direction is attested by the Nausārī (Baroda State) plates of Dharāśraya Jayasiṃhavarman bearing the date A.D. 671;¹ this prince owed his position and prosperity to the kindness of his elder brother, Vikramāditya; the grant recorded in these plates was made by the son of Dharāśraya, called Śryāśraya Śilāditya Yuvarāja. Here we see the branching off of the Gujerat family of the Chālukyas in the same manner as the Eastern Chālukyas had branched off under Viṣṇuvardhana in the reign of Vikramāditya’s father.

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¹ Note the distinction between the hereditary right to the father’s estate (*sva-guroḥ-śriyam*) and the dynastic right to empire (*sva-vamśajām lakṣmīm*).

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² 183 of 1933-4, *ARE*, ii (1934), 2.

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³ 284 of 1937-8, *ARE*, ii (1938), 15, where Vikramāditya is identified with Vikramāditya II; but see Venkataramanyya’s note on the date of the Mālēpāḍu plates; appendix to his paper on *Trairājya-Pallava*, Madras Chr. Coll. Magazine, Jan. 1929, pp. 7-18.

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⁴ 474 and 476, of 1906.

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¹ JBRAS, xvi, 1; EI, viii, 229.

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The Nausārī plates of Dharāśraya mention only one achievement of Vikramāditya, the subjugation of the dynasty of the Pallavas by his irresistible might,² and this in a manner which indicates that the event was either quite recent or actually in progress at the time of the grant. This impression is strengthened by the fact that Vikramāditya was in a large military camp (*mahāskandhāvāra*) in Malliyūr to the west of Kāñchīpuram during A.D. 670–1, a period corresponding to the 16th year of his reign.³ Then there are the Gadvāl plates issued in A.D. 674 from the victorious camp at Uragapura in the Cholika-viṣaya, Uṛaiyūr on the south bank of the Kāvēri,⁴ which give further details of this invasion of the Pallava kingdom, details which must be considered along with others to be gathered from various Pallava inscriptions. The Gadvāl plates devote four verses, not found in earlier records,⁵ to the Pallava war; but as usual these verses contain more rhetoric than history. The first verse states that victory was achieved by Śrīvallabha who crushed the glory of Narasimha, caused the dissolution of the valour of Mahendra, and subdued Īśvara with his eyes. Here is obviously a play upon the names of three successive Pallava monarchs, Narasimhavarman I, Mahendravarman II, and Parameśvaravarman I, by conquering whom Vikramāditya excelled the three divinities whose names they bore—Narasimha, Mahendra, and Īśvara.⁶ The second verse states that Śrīvallabha, the favourite of fortune, became even more so after having forcibly wooed the lady of the Southern Quarter and taken possession of Kāñchī, the city which was her girdle. In the third verse Rāṇarasika (war-lust) is said to have rightly borne the title Rājamalla (wrestler with kings), since he had destroyed the family of Mahāmalla (the great wrestler), i.e. Narasimhavarman. The last verse describes the defences of Kāñchī, the strength of its ramparts and the depth of its moat, adding that the city was captured by the conqueror of Īśvarapōta-rāja. The third and fourth verses thus only repeat in other words the ideas of the first two. To turn to the other side of the medal; after a long and tiresome description of a battle,⁷ the Kūram grant of Parameśvaravarman asserts that he forced Vikramāditya, whose army consisted of several lakhs of men, to take flight, alone and covered only by a rag. In later inscriptions we read that Parameśvaravarman gained victory over the forces of the Vallabha in a battle at Peruvaḷanallūr;¹ that his valour dried up the slough of the army of Raṇarasika;² and that lastly he oppressed the city of Raṇarasika,³ doubtless Bādāmi.

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² anivārita-pauruṣākrānta-Pallavānvayena.

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³ Honnūr plates, MAR, 1939, no. 30.

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⁴ Dubreuil, Pallavas, p. 43; EI, x, 100.

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⁵ But reproduced in the spurious Hyderabad and Kurtakoti plates, IA, vi, 76-7; vii, 219.

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⁶ This verse was correctly explained by Dr. N. Venkataramanyya: Did Paramelvaravarman I capture Vātāpi? MCC. Mag., Oct. 1927, p. 241.

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