Pallava Dynasty

Kings known only from land grants

formationDrafted from Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928)

The earliest Pallava kings of Kanchi survive in the historical record only through a handful of copper-plate charters written in Prakrit, undated in any known era and placed in time only by the shape of their own lettering — palaeography rather than any inscribed year. These charters record little beyond genealogy and the details of the grants themselves: land given to individuals, the names of a donor's father, grandfather and great-grandfather, nothing of politics or war. From this thin evidence a tentative order of succession can be reconstructed beginning with a king named Bappa Deva, though the source itself concedes that "the actual order of succession... is uncertain."

A dynasty glimpsed through a rival's own inscription

The clearest fixed point in this early darkness comes not from a Pallava record at all but from the Allahabad pillar inscription of the Gupta emperor Samudragupta, which names a contemporary Pallava king of Kanchi, Vishnugopa, ruling somewhere along the Krishna river around the middle of the fourth century. Taken together with the Prakrit charters' own palaeographic dating, this places the dynasty's earliest attested kings somewhere in the range of the third to fourth centuries — a period the source styles simply "the age of the kings of the Prakrit charters, circa A.D. 200-350."

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · Koba-chan · CC0

A slow shift from grant records to genealogy

Not until the seventh century did Pallava charters begin recording the exploits of a donor's royal ancestors alongside the grant itself, finally giving historians something closer to a connected political narrative rather than a bare list of names. Everything before that point remains, in the source's own assessment, more useful for constructing a family tree than for writing an actual history of what these early kings did or how they ruled.

A persuaded conversion

expansionDrafted from Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928)

The Pallava kingdom that emerges from the darkness after its Prakrit-charter era has a real founder of its own second act: Simhavishnu, called Avanisimha, whose reign around the last quarter of the sixth century opens what the dynasty's own later inscriptions treat as a fresh beginning rather than a simple continuation.

A king known only through his own son's praise

No inscription survives in Simhavishnu's own name - what is known of him comes from later charters praising his memory and from a relief carved at Mahabalipuram showing him with his queens beside a matching image of his son. The Velurpalayam grant credits him with seizing the Chola country along the Kaveri delta and defeating a coalition including the Kalabhras, Malavas, Pandyas and even the king of Ceylon

• extending Pallava authority further into the Tamil south than any predecessor had managed. His own devotion to Vishnu, embedded in his name, sat alongside a religious tolerance typical of the age, when Vishnu and Shiva were still commonly honored in the same temple rather than by separate sects.

A Jain king persuaded to change his faith

Simhavishnu's son Mahendravarman I, who took the throne around 600, was by tradition raised a Jain and given, in his early years, to persecuting other faiths - including, according to the hagiography of the Shaiva saint Appar, Appar himself, whom Mahendravarman is said to have tortured before Appar's own survival of the ordeal converted the king to Shaivism. Whatever the literal truth of the story, an inscription from Mahendravarman's own reign describes him as having "turned back from hostile conduct to the worship of the linga," and the conversion left a permanent mark: he became the dynasty's most prolific builder of rock-cut cave temples, excavating shrines across the Tamil country at Vallam, Mahendravadi, Dalavanur, Siyyamangalam and Pallavaram, and built at least one Vishnu shrine alongside his newfound Shaivism, evidence that his own conversion never hardened into sectarian exclusivity.

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · D Neethidoss · CC BY-SA 4.0

A king who wrote his own satire

Mahendravarman was, by the evidence of his own inscriptions and a surviving manuscript, a genuine polymath - credited with composing the Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana, a satire of a drunken Kapalika ascetic that survives complete and offers a rare direct window into the religious life of his own court at Kanchipuram; with authorship of a treatise on painting referenced in his own Mamandur inscription; and, on the strength of a musical inscription at Kudumiyamalai closely resembling his own style, with a serious interest in music theory as well. It was also under Mahendravarman that the long Pallava-Chalukya rivalry began in earnest: the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II seized the Vengi region from Pallava control early in the century and, in the course of his own southern campaigns, drove deep enough into Pallava territory that his own Aihole inscription boasts of having made "the splendour of the Lord of the Pallavas... vanish behind the walls of Kanchipuram" - though a separate Pallava record credits Mahendravarman with a victory over the same enemy at Pullalur, suggesting a war fought to no clean decision in his own lifetime, and left instead for his son Narasimhavarman to finish.

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · R.K.Lakshmi · CC BY-SA 4.0

A pillar carried home from a rival's capital

peakDrafted from Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928)

By the time Narasimhavarman I succeeded his father Mahendravarman I around 630, the Pallavas had already suffered a serious humiliation at Chalukya hands: Pulakeshin II of Vatapi had advanced deep into Pallava territory during Mahendravarman's own reign, forcing "the lord of the Pallavas to retreat behind the walls of Kanchipuram" itself. Early in his own reign Narasimhavarman faced a further Chalukya thrust that reached to within twenty miles of his own capital before he crushed it decisively in a string of battles fought near Kanchi.

A raid deep into enemy territory

Having repulsed the invaders, Narasimhavarman did not stop at defense. He entrusted a counter-invasion into Chalukya territory to his general Siru-Tonda, also known as Paranjoti, who marched on Vatapi itself, captured the Chalukya capital, and returned to Kanchi loaded with spoils. A Pallava inscription at Vatapi, mutilated but still legible, records the achievement directly, and later Pallava charters credit Narasimhavarman with carrying home "the pillar of victory standing in the centre of Vatapi" — a trophy taken from the enemy's own capital in answer to the humiliation his father had suffered a generation before. Contemporary and later inscriptions style him Vatapikonda — "Vatapi-taker" — in commemoration of the feat.

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · John Gantz · Public domain

A reign remembered for more than one conquest

Narasimhavarman's reign extended well beyond this single campaign: an intervention in Ceylonese affairs recorded in the Mahavamsa, the beginning of the rock-cut excavation work at Mamallapuram that still bears his own title Mahamalla in its modern name, and a visit from a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim to Kanchipuram itself, evidence of the city's standing as a destination worth a foreign traveler's own journey. Taken together, the source treats his reign as the high point of the entire Pallava line — a kingdom "considerably enlarged" under a king whose military reputation rested on avenging, rather than merely defending against, the dynasty's most dangerous rival.

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · Oleg Yunakov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Chosen by his subjects

peakDrafted from Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928)

When King Paramesvaravarman II died without an heir the main line could agree on, the Pallava throne did not pass by the usual claim of birth. It passed, according to the dynasty's own record of the event, by something closer to a vote.

A twelve-year-old chosen from a collateral branch

The choice fell on a boy from a collateral line descended from an earlier Pallava prince, still, by the Vaikuntha Perumal temple's own inscribed record, only twelve years old at his coronation. The temple itself - built at Kanchipuram under the new king's own patronage and originally named Parameshvara-Vinnagaram after him - carries a sculpted narrative of Pallava dynastic history along its inner walls, including panels the temple's own inscriptions identify with the succession crisis itself: the death of the old king, the citizens of Kanchipuram and the ministers deliberating, and the coronation of the boy under the throne-name Nandivarman. A later charter, the Kasakkudi plates issued in Nandivarman's own twenty-second regnal year, states plainly that he "was chosen by his subjects" - language distinctive enough that later historians have read it as describing something like a general election to the throne rather than a straightforward hereditary succession.

Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928) · Photo Division, Government of India · Public domain

A king besieged in his own fortress

The choice was contested from the start. Rival Tamil powers backed a different claimant, Chitramaya, who had his own descent claim through the old king, and Nandivarman spent much of his reign fighting a long war against the combined southern powers to hold what the succession had given him. At one point he was besieged in the fortress town of Nandipura, near modern Kumbhakonam, by his own enemies, and was relieved only through the campaigns of his general Udayachandra, whose exploits fill much of a separate charter, the Udayendiram plates, issued in his own honor. A Western Chalukya invasion early in the reign captured Kanchi itself at least once, adding a northern front to the southern war Nandivarman was already fighting for his own throne.

An alliance that helped overthrow an empire

Nandivarman's reign also produced one of the more consequential alliances in Deccan politics: a marriage tie with the rising Rashtrakuta chief Dantidurga, himself descended from a Chalukya princess, whom the Pallava-led southern coalition helped establish against his own Chalukya overlords after inflicting a crushing defeat on the Chalukya king Kirtivarman II at the Battle of Venbai - a defeat severe enough that the Chalukya power never recovered from it, and that let Dantidurga's Rashtrakuta line replace the Chalukyas as the dominant power of the western Deccan within a generation. A poet of the age, Tirumangai Alvar, referred to Dantidurga by his title Vairamegha and to the honor Nandivarman accorded him - a twelve- year-old's contested accession, two generations earlier, ending in a Pallava king helping to topple an empire.

The unconquered king's last battle

endDrafted from Gopalan, History of the Pallavas of Kanchi (1928)

Aparajitavarman — a name meaning "the unconquered" — came to the Pallava throne around 875, late enough in the dynasty's own history that the kingdom he inherited was already a smaller and less secure one than Narasimhavarman's had been two centuries before. He allied with the Western Ganga king Prithivipathi I against the Pandya king Varaguna II, winning a battle at Sripurambiyam around 880 so decisive that a Ganga inscription credits the victory with making Aparajita's own title finally meaningful — his ally, the record says, "entered heaven by sacrificing his own life" to secure it.

A rising neighbor tests an aging kingdom

The victory over the Pandyas did nothing to answer a more immediate threat. The Chola king Aditya I, son of Vijayalaya, had spent years making steady inroads into Pallava territory even as Aparajita celebrated his own southern triumph, pressing the Pallava kingdom from a direction its own king had little strength left to contest.

An ending recorded by the victor

Late in the ninth century — the source places it in Aditya's own final years, working backward from his son Parantaka I's securely dated 907 accession — the Chola army defeated Aparajita in battle and annexed the whole of Tondaimandalam outright. A Chola inscription, the Tiruvalangadu plates, records the moment from the winning side: Aditya "having conquered in battle the Pallava with his brilliant army, though (he was) Aparajita (the unconquered) of his queen... accomplished his object in this direction too" — a pointed irony the Chola scribes did not let pass unremarked, naming the defeated king's own title in the same breath as his defeat. The kingdom of the Pallavas, in the source's own summary, "passed into the hands of the Cholas with the death of Aparajita" — a dynasty that had once sacked a rival's capital in triumph ending, four centuries later, as the conquered territory in someone else's own inscription.