---

Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 326.

326 THE IiNDIAN EMPIRE [CHAP. in the South. In A.D. 68 a number of Jews, fleeing from Roman persecution, seem to have taken refuge amongst the friendly coast-people of South India, and to have settled in Malabar. There appear to have been two great branches of the Andhras, the sovereign ruling the eastern territories, with his capital at Dhanyakataka, while the heir apparent governed the western dominions, and resided at Paithan. The South It is not known how or why the Andhra domination came to ctefifth an end, but at the beginning of the fifth century A. D. we find a different state of things. The old southern kingdoms remained much as before; but the Pallavas had overspread large tracts of country formerly under the Andhras 1, and the names of new dynasties make their appearance in history. The Jain Kadambas of Halsi, apparently in the sixth century, defeated the Pallavas and the Ganga king of Mysore, and established themselves in what is now known as the Southern Maratha country bordering on Mysore. North of them were the R.shtraktitas, holding the other MarAtha districts, a dynasty probably at one time feudatorv to the Andhras, but now independent and in considerable power both north and south of the Vindhyas. Pressing down upon them from the north were the Guptas, and from the north-east (according to tradition) the early Chalukyas. But the Pallavas appear to have been the most powerful nation of the South at this period, holding, besides their ancestral tract about Kaichl, the territories of Vengi on the east and part at least of the Mardtha country on the west. Here they were checked by the Kadambas, as already related. We know little more of the history of this tract till about the close of the fifth century A.D., when the Pallavas under Chandadanda were decisively defeated. The Kadamba king, Ravivarman, drove them out of the Maratha country and estab- lished Halsi as his capital. A century later the ascendancy t If Dr. Hultzsch is right in h's estimate of the period of the Mayida- volu and Kondamudi plates (ĢEPg. la., vi, 84, 315, it would appear that at a date not far distant from the reigns of the Andhra kings Gotamiputra Satakarni and Vasishthiputra Puhlma!ii, the Pallavas had completely con- quered the Telugu country of the Andhras, as far north at least as the Krishna river; Sivaskandavarman. the Pallava king, holding possession of the Andhra capital at Dhanm akataka. Dr. Burgess assigns the two Andhra kings mentioned to the period A.D. II4-63 (Arnardvati andjaggayyaqpita Buddhist Stfpas, p. 3). Dr. Bhandarkar thinks that Pulumyi died A.D. 158. It is probable that the Pallavas became supreme in the Deccan and east coast in the course of the next 2oo00 years. 2 This date is very doubtful. See Fleet's 'Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts,' Bonmbay Gazeltteer, vol. i, pt. ii, pp. 289, 291, 322.