A History of SOUTH INDIA from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar K. A. NILAKANTA SASTRI, M.A. Professor of Indology, University of Mysore Geoffrey Cumberlege OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS First Published 1955 esr-4 S u \6 6Sg, DEDICATED BY HIS GRACIOUS PERMISSION TO HIS HIGHNESS SRI JAYACHAMARAJA WADIYAR BAHADUR MAHARAJA OF MYSORE PATRON CONTENTS I. SURVEY OF THE SOURCES . .1 II. THE LAND IN RELATION TO HISTORY . 34 III. THE EARLIEST PEOPLFS AND CULTURES . 49 IV. THE DAWN OF HISTORY: ARYANIZATION 64 V. THE AGE OF THE MAURYAN EMPIRE . "9 VI. THE SATAVAHANAS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS . 88 VII. THE AGE OF THE SANGAM AND AFTER .110 VIII. CONFLICT OF THREE EMPIRES . • 141 IX. THE BALANCE OF TWO EMPIRES . .165 X. THE AGE OF THE FOUR KINGDOMS . 202 XI. THE BAHMANIS AND THE RISE OF VIJAYANAGAR . 217 XII. THE EMPIRE OF VIJAYANAGAR . 253 XIII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS . 301 XIV. LITERATURE . .327 XV. RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY . • 404 XVI. ART AND ARCHITECTURE . 423 APPENDIX ..... 475 ERRATA . 477 INDEX ..... 479 ILLUSTRATIONS Frescoes from Tanjore Frontispiece Plates I—XXVIII between pages 432-3 I. Karle: Chaitya main hall II. Amaravatl: The Miracle of the Infuriated Elephant III. Ajanta: Cave 19 IV. Aihole: Durga temple from the SW. V. Pattadakal: Papanatha temple Virupaksha temple VI. Elephanta: Trimurti VII. Ellora: Dumarlena VIII. Ellora: Kailasa temple IX. Mamallapuram: The Descent of the Ganges X. Mamallapuram: General view of the Rathas Shore temple XI. Kanchipuram: Kailasanatha temple Vaikunthaperumal temple XII. Narttamalai: Vijayalaya temple XIII. Kodumbajur: Muvarkoil XIV. Tanjore: Great temple (general view) XV. Dancing Siva (X Century) XVI. Sambandhamurti Sundaramurti from Tirunamanallur Sundaramurti from Polonnaruva XVII. Vishnu XVIII. Lakshml XIX. Somanathapur: KeSava temple XX. Belur: Chennakesava temple (eastern doorway) „ii A HISTORY OF SOUTH INDIA XXI. BhuvaneSvar: Lingaraja temple XXII. Vijayanagar: Vitthala temple (interior) XXIII. Srirangam (XVII Century): Mantapam XXIV. Krishnadeva Raya and Queens XXV. Daulatabad fort Bijapur: Ibrahim Rauza XXVI. Bijapur: Mihtar Mahal XXVII. Gulbarga: Jami Masjid XXVIII. BicLr: Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan MAPS South India (Physical) facing page 34 South India: 300 B.c.—A.D. 500 83 South India: A.D. 500—850 . 142 South India: A.D. 850—1200 . 193 Greater India . 194 South India: A.D. 1200—1325 . 203 South India in Vijayanagar times . 254 SURVEY OF THE SOURCES trend s-To th^i s' to'mtL fain'or lessons to draw—main approach sti/neces- sariiy from the North—political and cultural history: their relation. OUR aim in this book is to present a brief general survey of the ancient history of South India to the middle of the seventeenth century A.D. Then began a new epoch with the downfall of the empire of Vijayanagar, its partition between the sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda, and the establishment of the English East India Company at several points on the coast of peninsular India. We mean by South India all the land lying south of the Vindhyas—Dakshina (the Deccan) in the widest sense of the term. Our knowledge of the history of this region has been greatly advanced during the last fifty years by many important discoveries, archseological and literary. Much of this new source-material lies embedded in the inaccessible periodical reports of the different branches of the Archaeological Survey of India, and of the more important Indian states, such as Hydera- bad, Mysore and Travancore. Scholars, none too many, have addressed themselves to the task of interpreting the data and have written learned monographs mostly confined to particular dynasties and topics; these are very helpful as far as they go, but by their very nature cannot give a general idea of the main lines of movement in the history of politics and culture. Sir R. G. Bhandarkar’s Early History of the Deccan (189S) is the nearest approach to a general history; but that brilliant work is now outdated and does not deal with the history of the extreme South. In general histories of India, the part of the country with which we are concerned figures only in a small way Vincent Smith rightly observed: ‘Hitherto most historians of ancient India have written as if the South did not exist’, and explained this neglect of the South in two ways. ‘The historian of India,’ he said, ‘is bound by the nature of things to direct his attention primarily to the North, and is able to give only a 2 A HISTORY OF SOUTH INDIA secondary place to the story of the Deccan plateau and the far South.’ Again, ‘the northern record is far less imperfect than that of the peninsula. Very little is known definitely concerning the southern kingdoms before A.D. 600, whereas the history of Hindustan may be carried back twelve centuries earlier. The extreme deficiency of really ancient records concerning the SURVEY OF THE SOURCES 3 many interesting analogies between the results of these early culture-contacts in these different lands has not yet been attempted and lies beyond the scope of this book; but we should do well to remember that the history of India has been too long studied more or less exclusively in isolation and from the continental point of view, little regard being paid to the maritime side of the story. The Satavahanas were described as ‘lords of the three oceans’ and promoted overseas colonization and trade. Under them Buddhist art attained the superb forms of beauty and elegance preserved to this day in the cave-temples of western India and the survivals from the stupas of Amaravati, Goli, Nagarjunikonda and other places in the Krishna valley; and the tradition was continued long after the Satavahanas by their successors both in the eastern and western Deccan. The latter half of Satavahana rule in the Deccan coincides with the age of the literature of the Sangam in Tamil and of active trade between India and the Roman empire in the west, and there is good reason to believe that the plastic arts of the Deccan in this period and the succeeding one owed something to Graeco-Roman models and artists. After the close of the Sangam epoch, from about A.D. 300 to A.D. 600, there is an almost total lack of information regard- ing occurrences in the Tamil land. Some time about A.D. 300 or a little later the whole country was upset by the predatory activities of the Kalabhras who are described as evil rulers who overthrew numberless chieftains (adhirajar) of the land and got a stranglehold on the country. With the overthrow of the Kalabhras opens the new era of Pandya-Pallava achievements from the close of the sixth century A.D. This obscure period of Tamil history was marked in the Deccan proper by the rise into prominence of several dynasties of kings who divided among themselves the heritage of the Satavahana empire, kept up its administrative and political system, and carried forward its artistic and cultural traditions. The Abhiras and Trai- kutakas in the north-west, the Vakatakas in Berar, the Ikshvakus, Salankayanas and Vishnukundins in the eastern Deccan, and the Chutus, Kadambas, Gangas and Pallavas in the south Deccan are the most notable among these dynasties. Buddhism and Jainism made considerable progress in this period, the former inspiring the art of Ajanta, the Andhra SURVEY OF THE SOURCES 5 raise in the succeeding epoch one of the most splendid empires known to history, almost disappears from the political map ot the Tamil country; and it is not known what relation, if any, the Telugu-Chodas of the Renadu country in the Ceded Dis- tricts, one of the minor dynasties of this epoch, bore to their namesakes of the Tamil land, though they claimed descent from Karikala, the most celebrated of the early Chola monarchs of the Sangam Age. The Pandya-Pallava period was marked by striking developments in religion, literature and art. Sanskrit held an honoured place as the language of higher literature and culture, and the Ganga monarch Durvinita had claims to authorship both in Sanskrit and in Kannada. The Pallava king, Mahendravarman I, aptly styled vicitra-citta—' wonderful-mind’— was author, architect, musician and painter. In his time there arose a strong reaction against the growing influence of ] ainism and Buddhism, which found expression in a widespread bhakti movement among the worshippers of Siva and Vishnu; the leaders of this movement were known as Nayanars and Alvars, and their exuberant devotional songs, gathered later in the collections known as the Devaram and the Divyaprabandham, celebrate every orthodox shrine they visited many times over in the course of their propagandist peregrinations, and constitute the most priceless treasure in all Tamil literature. The great Kumarila and the still greater Sankara also lived and taught in the same age, the former restating the principles of Vedic exegesis and upholding the religion of sacrifice, the latter expounding the fundamentals of monistic vedanta with unsur- passed power and brilliance. The temples and sculptures of the period register the highest perfection of form that their arts attained in the South. Mamallapuram (Mababalipuram) and Kanchipuram (Conjeevaram) are the best museums of this art The rise of the imperial Cholas of the line of Vijayalaya may be dated from the middle of the ninth century A.D. AS they emerged from their obscurity, they soon displaced the remnants of Pallava power to the north of their capital Tanjore, and subdued the Pandya and Chera countries in the south and invaded Ceylon. The hostility of the Rashtrakutas, particularly of Krishna III, threatened to wreck the Chola empire at its birth (c. 950), but the Karnataka power was operating too far parent empire.