Govinda III scatters the southern confederacy

01The league

Rashtrakuta grants of Govinda III and his son Amoghavarsha tell how the kings of Kerala, Pandya, Chola and Pallava, with the Ganga, joined together against him, and how he scattered them. Plates issued in 803–804 show the king encamped at Kanchi and record that the Pallava Dantivarman paid him tribute. The same records claim that the king of Lanka sent two statues, of himself and of his minister, to Govinda’s camp as a token of submission.

02The widest reach

Within a few years Govinda III had marched from the Himalaya to the Kaveri, something no Deccan king had done before. His campaigns did not create lasting rule over the north or the far south; he took submission and tribute and went home. But they made the Rashtrakuta court at Manyakheta, which his son Amoghavarsha would build, the centre of power in India for the next century, and the Arab writers of the ninth century called its king the greatest in Hind.

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 →