Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/440

382 THE KINGDOMS OF THE SOUTH the peninsula of Surashtra until the closing years of the fourth century, but no Pahlava principality in Western India is mentioned, and it is quite credible that the Pahlavas may have sought their fortune in the south. When first heard of in the second century A. D. the Pallavas are already a ruling race, and their king, Siva- skanda-varman, was lord of so many subordinate chiefs that he considered himself authorized to perform the asvamedha, or horse-sacrifice, a rite permissible only to a paramount sovereign. On the whole, although positive evidence of the supposed migration is lacking, it is highly probable that the Pallavas were really identical with the Pah- lavas, and were a foreign tribe which gradually fought its way across India and formed three principalities at Kanchi, Vengi, and Palakkada, which were known as " the three Pallava dominions." This movement from the west must have occupied a considerable time, and may be assumed to have ended before 150 A. D. The three Pallava chiefs seem to have belonged to different sections of the tribe, which had become thor- oughly Hinduized, with a special leaning, occasionally to Buddhism and Vishnuism, but more often to the Saiva faith. The home territories actually colonized and directly administered by the Pallavas do not seem to have been very extensive. The Pallava power was superimposed upon the ancient territorial states, much in the same way as the Mahratta power was in later times, and presumably was confined ordinarily to the levying of