Narasimhavarman I takes Vatapi, the Chalukya capital

The two dynasties had long competed for the eastern Deccan. In an earlier war Pulakeshin II had, according to the Aihole inscription of 634/635, driven the Pallava king — presumably Mahendravarman I — behind the walls of Kanchipuram; the Pallavas lost their northern provinces, although Pallava grants credit Mahendravarman with a victory at Pullalur. When Pulakeshin invaded again, Narasimhavarman I defeated him, as later Pallava copper plates record, in battles at Pariyala, Manimangala and Suramara near Kanchipuram, ‘writing the syllables of victory on Pulakeshin’s back’. He then marched on Vatapi. Pulakeshin met the Pallavas outside his capital and probably lost his life; the city was taken and, in the words of the Kuram plates, destroyed ‘just as the pitcher-born Agastya destroyed the demon Vatapi’. The 12th-century Tamil Periya Puranam, which many historians follow, credits the capture to the general Paranjothi, venerated as the Nayanar saint Siruttondar, and the Sinhalese prince Manavamma, then living at the Pallava court, is said to have helped Narasimhavarman against Pulakeshin.

A Pallava inscription at the Mallikarjuna temple in Badami, dated to the thirteenth year of Narasimhavarman’s reign, attests the occupation, which lasted about twelve years, until Pulakeshin’s son Vikramaditya I restored Chalukya power and recovered the capital. The fall of Vatapi came less than ten years after the Aihole inscription had described Pulakeshin as ruling the earth ‘bounded by the three oceans’; meanwhile his brother Vishnuvardhana had made himself independent in the eastern Deccan, founding the line of the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi. The wars between the Pallavas and the Chalukyas went on into the 8th century.