INTRODUCTIONagainst the tribal republics to the north of the Ganga. It also controlled the
access to the eastern route to the south via the Sone valley and along the
slopes of the Vindhya mountains. When the rulers of Magadha moved
their capital from southern Bihar into the centre of the valley of the Ganga
they naturally selected Pataliputra as their new capital and many of their
successors did the same. The highlands and the east coast have no
perennial capital sites like that, the regional pattern remained fixed, but the
location of the capital was a matter of discretion.
The great distances which separated the regional centres of the southern
highlands and the east coast from those of the northern region meant that
in many periods of Indian history great rulers of the South and of the
North co-existed without ever clashing. Intervention across the wide
intermediate zone was always very hazardous, and even more problematic
was the attempt at governing a huge empire from two capitals, one at
Delhi and the other in the northernmost regional centre of the highlands
(Daulatabad/Aurangabad). But even the regional centres of the highlands
and of the east coast were so distant from each other that the potential of
intervention was fairly restricted. For instance, Badami (Vatapi), the capital
of the third sub-region of the highlands is about 400 miles from the centres
of the first and the second regions of the east coast. The Krishna-Godaveri
delta was subjected to frequent intervention from the highlands whenever
the foremost ruler of that region had his headquarters around present
Haiderabad which is only about 150 miles west of this fertile delta. The
only exception to this rule seems to be the establishment of Vengi by the
Chalukyas whose home base was at Vatapi at that time.
Within the three major regions the struggle for hegemony continued.
The likelihood of conflict between rulers of two major regions was
dependent on these ‘domestic’ struggles. For instance, if the ruler of a
southern centre of the highlands was in power and a ruler of the Delhi-
Agra region had attained hegemony in the North, there was hardly a
chance of their clashing. But if the foremost ruler of the southern highlands
was located in the north of this region and the North was in the hands of a
ruler of the middle Gangetic basin, a clash was much more likely (for
example, the Rashtrakuta encounter with the Gurjara Pratiharas).
The potential for long-distance intervention and conquest grew only
when the Islamic invaders of the North introduced the new method of
swift cavalry warfare. However, it did not, at first, change the pattern of
regional dominance. All rulers quickly adopted the new strategy and thus
there was once more a uniform standard of warfare throughout the
subcontinent. However, the new strategy had important internal
consequences for the political structure of the regional realms. Horse
breeding was always a problem in India and good warhorses had to be
imported from Arabia and Persia at a high price. This made the
maintenance of the military machine more expensive. At the same time the