Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/438

 380 THE KINGDOMS OF THE SOUTH member of the Eastern Chalukya dynasty of Vengi. That province, situated between the Krishna and Goda- vari Rivers, had been ruled, after its conquest in the time of Rajaraja, by the local kings as a fief of the Tanjore monarchy. In 1070 A. D., however, Rajendra- Choladeva II took advantage of internal dissensions to seize the throne of his lord, and thus to found a new line of Chola-Chalukya kings. His special achievement in war was his defeat of the Paramara King of Dhara in Central India. Vikrama Chola, whose exploits are the subject of a Tamil poem of some merit, is remembered for a suc- cessful raid on Kalinga in 1120 A. D. After the time of Vikrama, the Chola power gradu- ally declined, and during the thirteenth century the Pandya Kings of Madura recovered their independence, and even reduced the Chola rajas to a position of in- feriority. The Mohammedan invasion under Malik Kafur in 1310 deprived the Chola kingdom of its impor- tance, but local chiefs of the old dynasty may be traced as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. IV THE PALLAVA CONFEDERACY Although the Pallavas seem to have been the pre- mier power in the south for more than four centuries, it is strange that no mention of them is to be found either in the vernacular historical legends or in the native dynastic lists. They had been forgotten, and remained unknown to European inquirers until the acci-