Western Chalukya Empire

From the 970s until the 1180s a Kannada-speaking dynasty known as the Western Chalukyas dominated the western Deccan of southern India. Often called the Chalukyas of Kalyani after their later capital, today's Basavakalyan in Karnataka, they rose by overthrowing their Rashtrakuta overlords, fought a long duel with the Cholas of the Tamil south, and presided over a flowering of Kannada literature and temple building.

The family's earliest record dates from 957, when Tailapa II governed a province around Tardavadi, in today's Bijapur district, as a vassal of the Rashtrakutas. In 973, as the Rashtrakuta capital of Manyakheta reeled from an invasion by the Paramaras of Malwa, Tailapa rebelled, defeated his overlords and made Manyakheta his own capital, then extended his power between the Narmada and Tungabhadra rivers. Whether his line truly descended from the famous Chalukyas of Badami of the sixth century is still argued over; the name Western Chalukyas distinguishes them from the related Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi.

For over a century the empire fought the Chola dynasty for Vengi, the rich delta country between the Krishna and Godavari rivers in today's coastal Andhra Pradesh. The Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi, linked to the Cholas by marriage, usually sided with them. In 1007 the Chola crown prince Rajendra I invaded and fought King Satyashraya at Donur; a Chalukya inscription speaks of an invading army of 900,000, a figure that cannot be taken literally, and the Cholas took the southern districts of Gangavadi and Nolambavadi. Around 1042 Someshvara I moved the capital to Kalyani. His son raided as far as the Chola capital in 1066, but in 1068 the Cholas defeated father and son and took Vengi, and Someshvara, gravely ill, drowned himself in the Tungabhadra river.

After a civil war Someshvara's younger son deposed his elder brother in 1075 and ruled for about fifty years as Vikramaditya VI. Even as a prince he had raided Bengal, weakening the Pala Empire. As king he held down powerful vassals such as the Hoysalas and Seunas, defeated the Cholas in Vengi in 1093 and 1118, and ruled from the Kaveri to the Narmada. Historians speak of a "Chalukya Vikrama era", and the Kashmiri poet Bilhana praised him in a Sanskrit biography.

Power was highly decentralised. Feudatory families such as the Hoysalas, Kakatiyas, Seunas and Kalachuris governed their own provinces in return for tribute. Provinces bore names that counted their villages, such as Banavasi-12000, and royal women sometimes administered districts. Taxes on land, assessed by soil type, funded the state, and craft guilds organised much of the economy. The mints at Lakkundi and Sudi struck thin punch-marked gold coins.

The period saw a golden age of Kannada writing. The poet Ranna, honoured by Tailapa II, wrote the Gada Yuddha in 982, and Vijnaneshwara's legal commentary, the Mitakshara, later shaped inheritance law in British India. In the twelfth century the reformer Basavanna gave new force to the Virashaiva, or Lingayat, movement, whose poets wrote short devotional verses called vachanas and challenged caste. Temples at Lakkundi, Itagi and elsewhere near the Tungabhadra form a bridge between earlier Chalukya and later Hoysala styles.

War with the Cholas exhausted both empires. After Vikramaditya died in 1126 the vassals grew bolder: the Kakatiya king Prola captured Tailapa III in 1149, and in 1157 the Kalachuri Bijjala II seized Kalyani, holding it for about twenty years. Someshvara IV briefly recovered the capital in the early 1180s, but the Seunas drove him into exile around 1189, and the Hoysalas, Seunas and Kakatiyas divided the inheritance.

Shown as the Chalukya Empire, it appears on the 1000 map, in the early years of its struggle with the Chola dynasty to the south, and as the Western Chalukyas on the 1100 map, during the reign of Vikramaditya VI.