Digital Rare Book:
History of the Pallavas of Kanchi
By R.Gopalan
Edited by S.Krishnaswamy Ayyangar
Published by The University of Madras, Madras - 1929

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Introduction:

The name Pallavas has been a problem for scholars, and has received attention from time to time from several of them, offering explanations of various kinds ; the doubt and the difficulty alike have arisen from the fact that a race of people called 'Pahlavas' were known and are referred to as such along with the Sakas and others, both in the North-west of India and nearer in the North-western coast of the Dakhan. This, in literary texts sometimes takes the alternative form 'Pallava'. And thus two forms, 'Pahlava' and 'Pallava' occurring side by side, - give colour to the assumption that the two words are
identical. They are indeed identical in form, but do not preclude the possibility of another word assuming this identical form. The word 'Pallava' as it applies to the rulers of
Kanchi is undoubtedly and invariably a later form. We do
not meet with the form ' Pahlava? in connection with the
Pallavas of Kanchi in any record of 'their time. The question
therefore would naturally arise whether we need necessarily
regard the name ' Pallavas ' as applied to the rulers of Kanchi
as at all equivalent to the other ' Pallavas ' either as a word
or in regard to what the word stands for. The word
as applied to ' Pallavas ' in the first instance seems to be a
translation of the Tamil words ' Tondaiyar' and ' Tonda-
man ', and this finds confirmation in some of the copper-plate
charters, which do bring in tender twigs of some kind in con-
nection with the eponymous name ' Pallava '. This un-
dotibtediv is a later use of the term, but gives the indication that
even at that comparatively late period, the traditional notion
was that they were not foreigners, such as the Pahlavas wovdd
have been. In all the material that has been examined, there
is nothing to indicate either the migration of a people or even
of a family that migh have ultimately raised itself into a
dynasty from the North-west, so that the assumption of a
connection between the one set of people and the other rests
upon the mere doubtful ground of a possibility, whereas the
translation or adaptation of a Southern word into Sanskrit is
very much more than a possibility, as indeed a word like
' Dravida ' or ' Dramida ' would clearly indicate. The distinc-
tion that Rajasekhara makes between the Southern Pallava and
the North-western Pahlava seems in the circumstances to be
a crucial indication that in the estimation of scholarly folk of
the ninth and tenth centuries, 'the two were to be regarded as
distinct from each other. The foreign ongin^oXthe Pallavas
therefore seems to have no ground to supportjt.

The Pallavas seem nevertheless to have been foreign to the
locality as far as our evidence takes us at present The
rulers of Kanchi had continued to be known as Tondamans"
all through historical times. The] people of the locality jwere
similarly known as Tondaiyar, the region occupied by the people
consequently Tondamandalam. These names are all traceable

/ . • '

Introduction ki

in South Indian literature in the period of prominence of the
Pallavas and even before. The name Pallava however is used
generally in the charters ever since the Pallavas issued
charters, so that historically speaking we would be justified if
we took Pallava and Tondaman to be synonymous, and this
receives support in the use of the compound expression
in one of the poems of Tirumangai Alvar, ' the Pallava, who
is the ruler of the Tondaiyar ' (Pallavan Tondaiyar K011).
Therefore it is not as if literature did not know the term;
much rather literary use regarded the two as synonymous, so
that the Pallavas, whoever they were, were Tondamlns, rulers
of Tondamandalam undoubtedly.

So far as the Pallavas of the charters are concerned, whether
the charters be issued in Prakrit or in Sanskrit, they are
termed, the Pallavas of Kanchi, though several of the charters
happened to be issued from localities comparatively far to the
north of Kanchi. Several of the places in which their inscrip-
tid'ns and copper-plate charters have been found, or from
which these were issued, are capable of location from the
Bellary District eastwards up to the River Krishna in the north,
Even so they seem to exclude the region which might
geographically be described as the region of the Nalla Malais
and the Pacha-Malais extending southwards along the
mountainous tracts of the Eastern Ghats till we come past
Tirupati into Chittoor, and the Bay of Bengal. From the
Jsangam literature so-called of Tamil, we are enabled to make
the following distribution of peoples, if not exactly of rulers
and dynasties. The Pandya country was in the extreme
south extending from coast to coast. The Chera extended
northwards from it along the coast stretching into the interior
indefinitely, the actual eastern boundary varying from time to
time almost up to the frontiers of Karur. Therefrom went
northwards, up to the borders of the great forest the territory
known to Tamil literature as Koiikanam (Konkan), over which
ruled, a particular chieftain known as Nanmin till he was
overthrown by the Cheras. The east coast region, however,
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