History of South India – Part 7: The Pallava Empire

Pallavas ruled regions of northern Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh between the 2nd and 9th centuries CE. The Pallavas gained prominence after the eclipse of the Satavahana dynasty, whom the Pallavas served as feudatories. A number of legends are associated with the origin of the Pallavas. The Pallavas find no mention as rulers of Tamil regions during the period when the Three Crowned Kings (Tamil: மூவேந்தர், Mūvēntar), namely, the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas, warred against each other and sought control of Chola Nadu, Chera Nadu and Pandya Nadu which made up the ancient Tamil country, Tamilakam. Some details of Pallava kings are found in the Sangam Period classics Ahananuru, Manimekhalai and Perumbanarruppatai. It is generally believed by many experts that the Pallavas were Kurumbar/Kurubas.

Traditionally Kanchi is considered to be the homeland of Pallavas, as though they asserted themselves on the collapse of the Satavahana power, they never had or moved the capital into the old Satavahana states, and might have annexed a part of Chola territory by 250 C.E.  Tamil literature relates the story of Chola King Killivalavan who moved his capital to Uraiyar after the destruction of the Chola capital of Puhar. Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam of Colombo claims that Killi Valavan had a liaison with the daughter of Naga king Valaivanam of Manipallavanam (in Jaffna peninsula) in Ceylon. From this union was born a child who was named Tondaiman Ilantirayan whom his father, Killi Valavan, made the ruler of a territory which was named Tondamandalam with capital at Kanchi. It is pointed out that name Pallava derives from the last syllable of Manipallavanam .

The Pallavas were in conflict with major kingdoms at various periods of time. A contest for political supremacy existed between the early Pallavas and the Kadambas. Numerous Kadamba inscriptions provide details of Pallava-Kadamba hostlities. The Pallavas also contracted matrimonial relationships with Kadambas. According to the Velurpalaiyam Plates the mother of the Pallava king Nandivarman was a Kadamba princess named Aggalanimmati. The Velurpalaiyam Plates also state that Nandivarman had to fight for his father’s throne.

During the reign of Vishnugopavarman II (approx. 500-525 CE), political convulsion engulfed the Pallavas due to the Kalabhra invasion of the Tamil country. Towards the close of the 6th century, the Pallava Simhavishnu stuck a blow against the Kalabhras. The Pandyas followed suit. Thereafter the Tamil country was divided between the Pallavas in the north with Kanchipuram as their capital, and Pandyas in the south with Madurai as their capital.

After the Kalabhra upheaval the long struggle between the Pallavas and Chalukyas of Badami for supremacy in peninsular India began. Both tried to establish control over the Krishna-Tungabhadra doab. Under Skandavarman I, the Pallavas extended their dominions north to the Krishna River and west to the Arabian Sea. Although the Chalukya ruler Pulakeshin II almost reached the Pallava capitalm his second invasion ended in failure. The Pallava ruler Narasimhavarman occupied Vatapi, defeated the Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras.  The Gupta King, Samudragupta led an expedition to the south, travelling through the forest tracts of Madhya Pradesh to Orissa, Vishakapatnam, Godavari, Krishna and Nellore district, and intruding into Kanchi the capital of the Pallavas. Retreating into their homeland of Nellore and Guntur for a while the Pallavas returned to Kanchi with renewed vigor. They then ruled with Kanchipuram as their capital uninterrupted until hostilities with Chalukyas surfaced.

The conflict between Pallavas and Chalukyas resumed in the first half of the 8th century with multiple Pallava setbacks. The Chalukyas overrun them completely in 740 CE, ending the Pallava supremacy in South India

The royal custom of using a series of descriptive honorific titles, birudas, was particularly prevalent among the Pallavas. The birudas of Mahendravarman I are in Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. The Telugu birudas show Mahendravarman’s involvement with the Andhra region continued to be strong at the time he was creating his cave-temples in the Tamil region.  The suffix “Malla” was used by the Pallava rulers. Mahendravarman I used the biruda, Satrumalla, “a warrior who overthrows his enemies”, and his grandson Paramesvara I was called Ekamalla “the sole warrior or wrestler”. Pallavas kings, persumably exalted ones, were known by their title, Mahamalla or the “great wrestler”.

All the early Pallava royal inscriptions are either in Prakrit or in Sanskrit language, considered the official languages of the dynasty while the official script was Pallava grantha. Similarly, inscriptions found in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka State are in Prakrit and not in Telugu or Kannada. The phenomenon of using Prakrit and Sanskrit as official languages in which rulers left their inscriptions and epigraphies continued till the 6th century CE. It would have been in the interest of the ruling elite to protect their privileges by perpetuating their hegemony of Prakrit in order to exclude the common people from sharing power (Mahadevan 1995a: 173-188). The Pallavas in their Tamil country also adopted the same method. They used Sanskrit language and Pallava grantha scripts in their official orders.

The earliest copper-plate muniment (legal document) so far discovered in India, is by the Pallavas at an early undated time. This document was the renewal of a previous grant of a garden made by an earlier king Bappa, to twenty Brahman families of the Atreya, Harita, Bhradvaja, Kausika, Kasyapa, and Vatsya gotras, who were settled in Southern India around the date of this grant. The grant mentions certain specified shares for the Brahmans, and free from all taxes ; to which was now added a new grant of a piece of land in a neighbouring village for a threshing-floor, and of another piece for house-sites, together also with four cultivating labourers, and two other agricultural serfs attached to the soil. This endowment was created for the increase of the merit, longevity, power, and fame of the donor’s family and race.

The grant was issued from Kanchipura, and it was dated on the fifth day of the sixth fortnight of the rainy season in the eight year of the donor’s reign. The grant was made by the Pallava king Sivaskanda-varman, who is mentioned as a member of the spiritual guild of rishi Bharadvaja, and an offerer of the Agnishtoma, Vajapeya, and Asvamedha vedic sacrifices.

Pallava power was well established at the time when Sivaskanda-varman is styled ” supreme king of great kings,“ a title which implies paramount authority over other rulers subject to him ; and the circumstance of his having offered the horse-sacrifice, which indicates his own personal appreciation of his great power. His predecessor, immediate or otherwise, King Bappa, was wealthy enough to make donations to Brahmans of a 100,000 Ox ploughs, whatever the multiple of exaggeration may be, and many millions of gold coin.

Tho Pallava king was assisted in his government by ‘ministers” of state and “privy councillors”; and his throne was surrounded by “royal princes.” As can be ascertained from the terms of Professor Buhler’s translation, they embraced “countries” governed by “prefects” distributed into “provinces” administered by their “lords,” and subdivided into “districts” under the superintendence of their “rulers”. Their fiscal arrangements included “custom houses” and “officers” of customs, and “spies” or itinerant superintendents of revenue. They had also some kind of forest department with its staff of “foresters.” They maintained a standing army, the brigades of which were commanded by “generals,” and its minor groups of rank and file had their non-commissioned officers or “naicks”.

Their village lands were occupied by ryots who paid “eighteen kinds” of contributions to the crown, partly in kind and partly in money (“taxes”). Amongst those which were paid in kind were “sweet and sour milk”, “grass and wood” and “vegetables and flowers”. They had to plough the crown (state) lands by turns with their “oxen in succession,” and it was a part of their obligation to keep the roads and irrigation works in repair by a system of “forced labour”. Salt and sugar were royal monopolies; and these not infrequently involved the ryots in “troubles”.

The crown had the power to confer grants of land for religious uses, for “the increase of the merit, longevity, power, and fame of his own family and race,” and to exempt the grantees and their grant-lands from the payment of the customary taxes. When such land-grants were made, the agricultural “labourers,” and the “kolikas” or village staff, were transferred with the land. These “labourers” received for their remuneration “half the produce,” according to the system of varam

Pallava royal lineages were established in the old kingdom of Kedah of the Malay Peninsula under Rudravarman I, Chenla under Bhavavarman I, Champa under Bhadravarman I and the Kaundinya-Gunavarman line of the Funan in Cambodia, eventually their rule growing to form the Khmer Empire. These dynasties’ unique Dravidian architectural style was introduced to build Angor Wat while Tamil cultural norms spread across the continent, their surviving epigraphic inscriptions recording domestic societal life and their pivotal role in Asian trade routes.

Direct extensive contacts with these regions were maintained from the maritime commerce city Mamallapuram, where Mahendravarman I and his son “Mahamalla” Narasimhavarman I built the Shore Temple of the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram.

Pallavas were followers of Hinduism and made gifts of land to gods and Brahmins. In line with the prevalent customs, some of the rulers performed the Aswamedha and other Vedic sacrifices.[26] They were, however, tolerant of other faiths. The Chinese monk Xuanzang who visited Kanchipuram during the reign of Narasimhavarman I reported that there were 100 Buddhist monasteries, and 80 temples in Kanchipuram.

Mahendravarman I was initially a patron of the Jain faith. He later converted to Hinduism under the influence of the Saiva saint Appar with the revival of Hinduism during the Bhakti movement in South India.

The Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram built by Narasimhavarman IIThe Pallavas were instrumental in the transition from rock-cut architecture to stone temples. The earliest examples of Pallava constructions are rock-cut temples dating from 610–690 CE and structural temples between 690–900 CE. A number of rock-cut cave temples bear the inscription of the Pallava king, Mahendravarman I and his successors.

The greatest accomplishments of the Pallava architecture are the rock-cut temples at Mahabalipuram. There are excavated pillared halls and monolithic shrines known as rathas in Mahabalipuram. Early temples were mostly dedicated to Shiva. The Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram and the Shore Temple built by Narasimhavarman II, rock cut temple in Mahendravadi by Mahendravarman are fine examples of the Pallava style temples. The temple of Nalanda Gedige in Kandy, Sri Lanka is another. The famous Tondeswaram temple of Tenavarai and the ancient Koneswaram temple of Trincomalee were patronized and structurally developed by the Pallavas in the 7th century.