THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRESIn the beginning of the fourth century the delta region of Krishna and
Godaveri was already in the hands of a governor appointed by the Pallava
dynasty of Kanchipuram and the Ikshvakus had disappeared. Not much is
known about South Indian history in this period except what Samudragupta
reported about his southern campaign in his famous Allahabad inscription.
Vishnugopa of Kanchi (Kanchipuram) and Hastivarman of Vengi, probably
a ruler of the local Shalankayana dynasty are mentioned in this inscription
but we have no other evidence of their life and times.
Cholas, Pandyas and CherasThe early history of the ‘Far South’ is the history of the three tribal
principalities of the Cholas, Pandyas and Cheras. They are mentioned in
Ashoka’s inscriptions of the third century BC, in some brief Tamil
inscriptions of the second century BC (written in Brahmi script like the
Ashokan inscriptions) and in Kharavela’s inscription of the first century
BC. The Sangam literature of the Tamils sheds a great deal of light on this
period. Archaeological discoveries and the reports of ancient European
authors provide additional evidence, particularly with regard to maritime
trade. The chronicles of Sri Lanka contain many references to the fights
between the kings of Sri Lanka and the kings of southern India. Compared
to the sources available for other regions in early Indian history, this is a
wealth of source material. Sangam literature was named after the
‘academies’ (sangam) of Madurai and its environs where poets worked
under the patronage of the Pandya kings. Some traditionalist historians
have maintained that these works were composed from about 500 BC to
AD 500, but more recent research has shown that they were probably
composed in the first to the third centuries AD, the second century being
the most active period. The famous Tamil grammar, Tolkappiyam, is
considered to belong to the beginning of this whole period (parts of it date
back to c. 100 BC) and the great Tamil epic poem, Shilappatikaram, to its
very end, perhaps even to the fifth or sixth centuries AD.
North Indian royal titles (e.g. adhiraja) gained more and more currency
in the South in this period but the early South Indian kings seem to have
derived their legitimation from tribal loyalties and the network of their
respective clan. This sometimes implied the division of power among many
members of the clan. The Chera kingdom of the southwest coast (Kerala)
must have been such a large-scale family enterprise. Kautalya has referred
to this system of government in his Arthashastra; he called it kulasangha
and thought that it was quite efficient. Among the Pandyas and Cholas the
monarch seems to have played a more important role. This was
particularly true of the Chola king, Karikala, who ruled over a relatively
large area around AD 190 after he had vanquished a federation of the
Pandyas and Cheras. Even about 1,000 years later the Chola rulers still