The two lists in the preceding page are among the most interesting and most important of those we possess, inasmuch as they contain the backbone of all we know regarding the Chalukyas, and are, in fact, what justify us, historically, in erecting their style into a separate division, different from the other forms of architecture known in India.
What we know of these dynasties is almost wholly due to the intelligent zeal of Sir Walter Elliot, who, during his residence in India, made a collection of 595 inscriptions from various parts of the Dekhan. From these he abstracted the lists he first published in the fourth volume of the Royal Asiatic Society; but afterwards much more in detail in the ‘Madras Journal,’ in 1858, from which these lists are copied verbatim.[717] Some of the inscriptions were translated and published with those papers, and others by Major—now General—- Le Grand Jacob, in the Bombay Journal (vol. iii. p. 206, et seqq.), and other notices of them are found among Mr. Wathen’s inscriptions in various volumes of the ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.’ But we shall not know more than a fraction of what we ought to, and might know, till Sir Walter Elliot’s inscriptions are translated and published.[718] When this is done, and the architecture of the Nizam’s territory explored, the Chalukyan style will take its place worthily between the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan styles, and will, if I mistake not, be found equal to either, both in importance and in artistic merit.
Fortunately there is no mistake or doubt about the era from which the Chalukyan inscriptions are dated: the Ballabhi branch succeeding to the possessions of the Guptas in Gujerat, naturally adopted their era, but the southern branch being entirely detached from any such association, adopted the Saka era (A.D. 79), which was then, so far as is known, the only other era at that time in use in India. What is equally important is, that there seems only one doubtful date among all those quoted in the lists—that of 411 Saka (A.D. 490), attached to the name of Pulakesi I. In his first paper,[719] Sir Walter Elliot thought it so improbable, that he rejected it altogether; and Professor Eggeling tells me he has strong reasons for suspecting the copperplate on which it is found to be a forgery.
As an initial date it does not appear impossible, if my views are correct, though certainly improbable. If Bhatarka Senapati wrested Gujerat from Skanda Gupta two years before his death, or in 463 or 468, it is by no means impossible that the fourth from him may have been reigning in A.D. 490, but the difficulty is the other way. There seems no doubt, from Mr. Burgess’s Badami inscriptions,[720] that Mangalisa succeeded his brother Kirtti Varma in 567, and it does seem impossible that he should have been the son of one who was reigning in 490, especially if he continued to reign till 609. If Mangalisa was the son of Pulakesi, which there seems no reason for doubting, it is evident that the central figure of his date must be altered to a higher number; but to what extent we shall not know till it is ascertained whether Vijaya was the son or grandson of Bhatarka Senapati. In the meanwhile, however, if we, as an hypothesis, add fifty years to the date of 411, and make it 461, or A.D. 540, it will allow Pulakesi a reign of twenty-seven years before the accession of Mangalisa in 567, which will bring the whole within the limits of probability, and seems perfectly consistent with the context.
With the seventh king we tread on surer ground. He was the king who, when bearing his grandfather’s name, Pulakesi, Hiouen Thsang visited in 640,[721] and was, as his inscriptions tell us,[722] the hero of those wars with Harsha Verddhana, or Siladitya of Malwa, which Ma-twan-lin so graphically describes as occurring in 618 to 627. From that time the dynasty seems to have flourished till the death of Vicramaditya II. He ascended the throne 733, and died about 750, or twenty-five years more or less after the destruction of the Ballabhi branch. After this, as Sir Walter Elliot expresses it, “the power of the Chalukyas was alienated for a time, or had suffered a partial obscuration, till the time of Teila, who is described as restoring the monarchy in 973.”[723] After this it enjoyed two centuries of prosperity, till it was finally extinguished—their northern possessions passing to the Kalabhuryas—their southern to the Hoisala Bellalas of Dwarasamudra or Hullabîd.
The history of the younger branch of this family will be more interesting to some future historian of Indian architecture than it is to us at the present day. Their possessions lay principally below the Eastern Ghâts, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, in what are generally known as the three Circars, extending from Gangam—in their day I believe—to Mahavellipuram; but of their architecture we know nothing. No traveller educated in architectural matters has yet visited that country; and though it sounds like a paradox to say so, what we do know of it we learn from buildings not erected by them, and in a country they never seem to have possessed. It is only from the buildings of Pratapa Rudra at Worangul and elsewhere above the Ghâts that we can appreciate the perfection to which they had brought their style.
From the meagre extracts from the inscriptions of Pulakesi I., which Sir Walter Elliot gives in his first essay on this subject,[724] there seems little doubt that he was the king who, 100 years before Hiouen Thsang’s time, harried the monastery at Amravati,[725] and abolished Buddhism in those parts. It seems also more than probable, as he conquered the Chola, and burnt Conjeveram, that he also expelled the Pallavas, and commenced the works at Mahavellipur. If the rock-cut monastery mentioned by Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang, and so often referred to above, existed at all, it was in his territories, and may still exist in the Nizam’s. If it did so, nothing seems more probable than that he should seek to mark the boundary of his southern conquest by similar works. Knowing all this, we see also why there should be so much similarity between Mangalisa’s cave at Badami, and the nearly contemporary caves at Mahavellipur. We know, too, that there is a vast tract of country in Central India, extending east and west from shore to shore, and north and south from Sadras to Ellora, which is covered with buildings of great beauty and interest, but which nobody cares to explore. We know also that there exists in the Asiatic Society’s rooms a volume which contains their history, and that of the dynasties who built them, but which nobody cares to read. Knowing how easily all this could be remedied, it is tantalising to close this history with so meagre a sketch of the Chalukyan style as that contained in the preceding pages, but as the principles of the Indian Council seem fixed, its description must in all probability be relegated to a subsequent generation.
| Ujjain and Canouge Dynasties. | ||
| Reign. | Date. | |
| Vasu Deva | ||
| Vicramaditya I. of Ujjain | 25 | 470? |
| Sri Harsha | 20 | 495? |
| Vicramaditya II. the Great | 35 | 515 |
| Siladitya I. of Malwa | 30 | 550 |
| Prabhukara | 25 | 580 |
| Raja Verddhana | 5 | 605 |
| Siladitya II. of Canouge | 40 | 610 |
| Died and troubles commenced | — | 648-650 |
Although the Ballabhis wrested the province of Gujerat from the failing hands of Skanda, the last of the Great Guptas, two years before his death, in or about 470, they remained long in a subordinate position. Their earliest inscription yet found dates only in 593, and their one Emperor or Raja Adhiraja, Sri Dharasena III., only ascended the throne after the Canouge dynasty were struck down in 648-50.