THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIAmade an important contribution to Indian history by defeating the Arabs
who had conquered Sind and parts of the Panjab after 711. In spite of its
rapidly changing fortunes, Kanauj remained the coveted ‘imperial centre’
of North India for several centuries. The mighty dynasty of the Gurjara
Pratiharas ruled most of North India from Kanauj until the late tenth
century AD.
The shift of the centre of political power from Patna to Kanauj enabled
the rulers of eastern India to rise to prominence. Shashanka had made a
beginning, others followed soon. From the late eighth to the early twelfth
century AD the Pala dynasty controlled large parts of Bihar and Bengal
and was for some time the premier power of the North. In Bengal they
were succeeded by the Sena dynasty in the twelfth century AD. Even under
Islamic rule Bengal retained a great amount of independence as a sultanate
in its own right until it became a province of the Mughal empire. When
that empire declined Bengal reasserted its independence only to succumb to
Britain in the eighteenth century and become its first territorial base.
The Western Deccan remained an important region even after the
decline of the Chalukyas of Badami. The Rashtrakutas of Malkhed
emerged as the premier power of the Deccan in the eighth century AD.
Under their rule in the ninth century, the central Deccan briefly even
became the hub of political power for the whole of India. In the tenth
century, the Chalukyas of Kalyani ruled the Deccan. In the northern region
of the Deccan where once the Shatavahanas had founded their empire the
Yadava dynasty established a regional kingdom in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries AD. When Islamic rulers penetrated the Deccan in the
early fourteenth century they established the Bahmani Sultanate whose
centres at Gulbarga and Bidar were close to those of the Rashtrakutas of
Malkhed and the Chalukyas of Kalyani. At the southern rim of the Deccan
not far from the Badami of the early Chalukyas, Vijayanagar was
established in the fourteenth century as the capital of the last great Hindu
empire which encompassed most of southern India.
On the southeast coast the three dynastic nuclear areas of the Pallavas,
Cholas and Pandyas in the major river valleys remained perennial centres
of political power in the ‘Far South’. The nuclear area of the Pallavas was
Tondaimandalam with its capital at Kanchipuram near present Madras.
They were the premier power of the South from the sixth to the ninth
centuries AD. When their power declined the ancient Cholas emerged once
more and ruled the South from Thanjavur (Tanjore) in Cholamandalam
(Coromandel), the central nuclear area at the Kaveri river, until the middle
of the thirteenth century when the Pandyas of Madurai in their southern
nuclear area became for a short time the premier power until they
succumbed to the assault of the generals of the Sultan of Delhi. In addition
to the four major regional concentrations of political power in medieval
India in North, East, Central (Deccan) and South India there were some