Empire · 300–590 · Middle East & South Asia

Kalabhra dynasty

The Kalabhras are known almost only from what their enemies said about them. The Velvikudi copper plates of the Pandya Nedunjadaiyan (c.

770) say that a 'Kali king' called Kalabhran drove out numberless great kings and seized brahmin land grants before the Pandya Kadungon ended his rule, and the Kasakudi plates of the Pallava Nandivarman II list the Kalabhras among the kings defeated by Simhavishnu. Nilakanta Sastri placed their incursion about 300 or a little later; Upinder Singh notes that 4th-century Pallava charters show they did not then rule near the Penner and Vellar rivers, and Schwartzberg's atlas dates their conquests to the late 4th century with a query. The only named king, Achyuta Vikranta, appears in the works of the 5th-century Buddhist monk Buddhadatta, who wrote in monasteries on the Kaveri while Achyuta ruled the Chola country. The Pallankoil plates, a mid-6th-century grant by a Pallava Simhavarman to a Jain teacher at Kanchi, show Pallava kings still ruling at Kanchipuram before the Kalabhras fell. Their origin is unknown: they have been seen as hill tribes, as Karnatas from the north-west, as the Kallar or Kalappalar of the Tamil country, or as linked to the Muttaraiyar, and they are thought to have favoured Jainism or Buddhism. The period was long called a 'dark age' of Tamil history, but critics point out that the label rests on hostile records written centuries later, and some scholars dismiss the Kalabhra interregnum as practically a myth. Their rule ended in the last quarter of the 6th century, when the Pallava Simhavishnu (c. 575–600) took the country up to the Kaveri and Kadungon (c. 590–620 in Sastri's dating, c. 560–590 in others) revived the Pandya kingdom at Madurai.

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Years

300–590

Capital

Unknown (Kaveripattinam in the Chola country is sometimes proposed)

Greatest extent

450, about 138,000 km²

Region

Middle East & South Asia

Rough: about 0.14M km² assumes rule over the whole Tamil plain from just south of Kanchipuram to Kanyakumari. No estimate by Taagepera or Turchin exists, and how much of this the Kalabhras held, and when, is unknown; the year is a mid-point near Achyuta Vikranta, the one attested king