Battle of Arisil

01The Bahur plates

The Bahur copper plates of Nripatunga, found near Puducherry, record that he crushed the Pandya army on the banks of the Arisil. The plates were issued to grant villages to a college of Vedic learning at Bahur, and they give a long account of the Pallava line before coming to the gift. Nripatunga was the son of Nandivarman III by the Rashtrakuta princess Shankha, and his long reign of some forty years saw the Pallavas hold their ground for the last time.

02The delta changes hands

Arisil, Kudamukku and Tellaru were fought over the same few districts. The real winner of this long war was neither house. The Chola chief Vijayalaya had taken Thanjavur around 850, and his son Aditya, fighting as a Pallava ally, would end the war at Thirupurambiyam around 880, then turn on the Pallavas themselves. Within a generation of Arisil, the Cholas held the whole delta. Their capital Thanjavur stood almost in sight of the old battlefields.

Dynasty · c. 4th century BCE – late 16th century CEPandya dynastyThe Pandyas ruled from Madurai for close to two thousand years, longer than almost any house in the world. Megasthenes and Ashoka knew them; they broke the Kalabhras in the 6th century, lost Madurai to the Cholas in the 10th, and under Jatavarman Sundara Pandya in the 13th century became the strongest power in the south.Read →