Vinayaditya defeats the Lord of the North

01The banner and the rivers

The grants of Vinayaditya’s successors say he defeated the sakalottarapathanatha, the lord of the whole north, and won the palidhvaja, a great standard, together with the emblems of the Ganga and Yamuna. Those river-goddess emblems later appear at the doors of Chalukya and Rashtrakuta temples as signs of imperial rank. The northern king is not named, and historians have suggested Yashovarman of Kanyakubja or another ruler of the Gangetic plain, without agreement.

02The captured prince

The same records add a striking detail about Vijayaditya, who led the campaign in the field. After his father’s victory, they say, he was seized by the enemy as he was withdrawing, and by his own effort escaped and came home to find his father dead, and took the throne. Vijayaditya then ruled for nearly four decades in peace and built temples at Pattadakal and Badami.

Place · Fortified 543 CE by Pulakeshin I; cave temples 6th century, Cave 3 dated 578 CEBadami (Vatapi)Vatapi, capital of the Chalukyas, set in red sandstone cliffs around the Agastya lake. Its four cave temples hold some of the earliest dated Hindu sculpture in the Deccan.Read →