Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/355

 CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY. he invaded Dravida. 1 Probably about this period the Pallavas extended their rule over the Bellari district and parts of Mysore ; but in the following century we learn that Vikramaditya II., the Chalukya king, about 740, defeated Nandivarman Pallava and entered Kanchi, bestowing gifts on the shrine of Rajasirnhej-vara now the Kailasanatha temple built by Narasimhavarman II. A century later they were attacked by the Rashtrakutas, and their power seems to have been broken, and they gradually succumbed to the Cholas, who re-asserted their power in the loth century. Parantaka or Viranarayana (cir. A.D. 907-946) advanced the Chola power and boasts of taking Madura from the Pandya king and the invasion of Ceylon, 2 as also of gilding the "Golden Hall " at Chidambaram, the then famed temple of his race. His son Rajaditya was killed in battle by the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III., and a period of civil war followed till 985, when Rajaraja secured the throne and carried his conquests as far as Kalinga on the north, to Kollam or Quilon on the west, and to Ceylon in the south. 8 Though a J>aiva, we have a long copperplate grant of the 2ist year of his reign granting a village to a Buddhist temple at Negapattam built by a king of Kataha apparently in the eastern peninsula * ; but his great architectural monument was the Tanjor temple. For a century after Rajaraja I. the Cholas maintained the commanding position he had gained for his dynasty, but from the time of Vikrama Chola (1118-1135), their power gradually waned, and after this the rise of the Ballalas in Mysore, and the revival of the Pandyas in the south, seem to have checked them to such an extent that they never regained their previous position. Although, politically, these states always remained distinct, and generally antagonistic, the people belonged to the same race. Their architecture is different from any other found in India, but united in itself, and has gone through a process of gradual change from the earliest times at which we become acquainted with it, until we lose sight of it altogether in the last century. This change is invariably for the worse, the earlier specimens being in all instances the most perfect, and the degree of degradation forming, as mentioned above, a tolerably exact chronometric scale, by which we may measure the age of the buildings. Buddhism does not seem to have ever gained such a footing 1 Hultzsch, ' South Indian Inscrip- tions,' vol. iii. pp. 34offg. ; and Fleet, ' Bombay Gazetteer,' vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 2 The ' Mahawansa ' seems to place this invasion in the time of Udaya III., A.D. 964-972; but the flight of the Pandu king from MadurS to Ceylon is mentioned under Kasyapa IV., A.D. 9 2 9-939 'Mahawansa,' chh. Hi., liii. ' Mahawansa,' ch. lv. 4 Ante, p. 206.