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 But his conquest of the Andhras by no means terminated the existence of that dynasty. For long after his reign they retained, and probably increased, their power in this district, Pliny mentions them as a strong people with 30 fortified cities, 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 elephants. Their conquests extended far to the north, and even to the western coast of the peninsula, for one of their earlier kings, Simuka, covered the walls of a large cave at Nanaghat (50 miles north-west of Poona) with inscriptions recording his sacrifices; and his successors have left evidence by their coins and in their inscriptions in the cave temples at Nasik, Karle and Kanheri that they extended their power to Malwa and the borders of Gujarat. Towards the south their dominions included parts of Mysore. Their capital was at first at Srikakulam on the Kistna, nineteen miles west of Masulipatam, but was afterwards removed to Dharanikota, near Amaravati. From coins, inscriptions and other material have been ascertained the names and dates of kings of the line who ruled from about 110 to 220 A.D.

The next power to appear upon the scene were the Pallavas. This race, like others of the invaders of the south, perhaps passed into central India from the north-west during the second century A.D. In an inscription, the Andhra king Gotamiputra (172-202 A.D.) boasts that he defeated them, but they shortly afterwards subdued the Andhras and extended their empire as far south as Conjeeveram and the borders of the Tanjore country, and as far to the north-east as the frontiers of Orissa- Records of them are few and far between ; but the absence of inscriptions of the Andhras after about the year 218 and the discovery at Mayidavolu and Kondamudi (in the Guntur district) of two Pallava records which on paleographical grounds may be assigned to the end of the second century, go to show that their conquest of the Andhras occurred about that period. Moreover inscriptions of two kings named Attivarman and Prithivimula, who were also apparently Pallava rulers, have been found in the Godavari district and seem to belong to a slightly later period. In the fourth century, the Allahabad inscription mentioned on p. 233 refers to a chief of Pithapuram who was apparently a Pallava. Whether these Pallavas were independent monarchs or merely local feudatories of the main Pallava empire, the capital of which was at Conjeeveram, cannot be stated with certainty.

About the beginning of the seventh century, the Chalukyas, who were also invaders from the north-west and who possessed a large empire in central and western India the capital of which was Badami in the Bombay Presidency, came into