ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the major southern kingdoms. It examines the ideology of kingship and the authority of the state in the southern context. Three powerful kingdoms, however, arose by about CE 600: those of the Chalukya, Pallava and Rashtrakuta dynasties. The Chalukyas originated from the Kadamba region of the Karnataka, which remained their main base. The Pallava kingdom was constituted from twenty-four localities of Tondaimandalam, called kottams. Each kottam was a unique zone of agrarian, pastoral and village-based economy, supported by irrigation based on reservoirs and small lakes. The word Rashtrakuta means peaks among kingdoms. It was used as an epithet for a dynasty of rulers who carried the Sanskrit title of Vallabha-Raja and who ruled from their capital at Mankir, or Manyakheta, now called Malkhed, south-east of Sholapur in Maharashtra. In terms of wealth and economic strength, the most illustrious of the Deccan kingdoms was that of the Rashtrakutas.
