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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s2.t4: Pulakēśin II

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s2.t4

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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.

Cites (9)