Person · Pallava king and playwright
Mahendravarman I
Also known as Mahendravikramavarman, Mahendravikrama, Vichitrachitta, Mattavilasa, Gunabhara, Chitrakarapuli
Mahendravarman I ruled the Pallava kingdom from Kanchipuram from about 590 to 630 and pioneered rock-cut temples among the Pallavas, boasting at Mandagapattu of a shrine made without brick, timber, metal or mortar. He also wrote the Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana, set in the taverns of Kanchi. He lost his northern provinces to Pulakeshin II, and Tamil Shaiva tradition credits the saint Appar with turning him from Jainism to Shiva.
- Date
- 590–630
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Pallava
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His one-act farce turns on a drunken Kapalika ascetic who accuses a Buddhist monk of stealing his skull begging-bowl, which a dog had carried off; it is still performed by Chakyar actors in the Kutiyattam temple theatre of Kerala.
His reign is given as 590–630 or 600–630. A second farce, Bhagavadajjuka, is attributed to him by some and to Bodhayana by others, and the old ascription of the Sittanavasal cave to him is weakened by an inscription crediting its renovation to a Pandya king.
Connections (5)
- Succession in timeNarasimhavarman I
Narasimhavarman I succeeded his father Mahendravarman I in 630 and carried both of his father's main undertakings further. Mahendravarman had introduced rock-cut temples among the Pallavas and begun the work at Mamallapuram, which his son completed and which took his son's title as its name. Mahendravarman had saved Kanchipuram from Pulakeshin II but lost the northern provinces; Narasimhavarman reversed that defeat by taking the Chalukya capital Vatapi and killing Pulakeshin in 642.
- CampaignPulakeshin II
During Mahendravarman's reign the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II attacked the Pallava realm, and the two fought a series of wars in the northern Vengi region. Pallava grants at Kuram, Kasakudi and Tadantottam claim that Mahendravarman destroyed his chief enemies at Pullalur. He held his capital Kanchipuram, but lost his northern provinces to Pulakeshin, a defeat that shaped the next generation: his son answered it by storming the Chalukya capital Vatapi in 642.
- TransmissionKutiyattam
Mahendravarman's one-act Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana, written early in the 7th century and set in Kanchipuram, survives on stage in Kerala: it belongs to the repertoire of Kutiyattam, the Sanskrit theatre performed in temples by Chakyar actors, and the 20th-century master Mani Damodara Chakyar is pictured in the role of the drunken Kapali. N. P. Unni's study Mattavilasa on the Kutiyattam Stage documents the Kerala tradition, so a Pallava king's satire outlived his dynasty.
- PatronageTiruchirappalli/ Trichy
The oldest structure in the Tiruchirappalli Rock Fort is a Pallava cave temple cut under Mahendravarman I, the Lalitankura Pallaveshvaram or Upper Cave, which carries several inscriptions attributed to him, one of them a much-debated Sanskrit text. It belongs to the series of cave shrines he began across his kingdom, at Mandagapattu, Pallavaram, Mahendravadi and Seeyamangalam. The Nayaks later used the rock's natural strength to fortify and remodel it.
- FoundedMandagapattu cave temple
Mahendravarman had the Mandagapattu shrine cut from the rock and dedicated to Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, and its Sanskrit inscription in Grantha script names its maker by his title Vichitrachitta, 'curious-minded', who brought into being a temple without brick, timber, metal or mortar. It is the first of the cave temples of his reign and the oldest dated stone shrine in Tamil Nadu, and it fixes the beginning of Pallava rock architecture in the early 7th century.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Mahendravarman I", "Mattavilasa Prahasana", "Mandagapattu Temple" and "Appar". K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India (2008); Michael Lockwood and A. Vishnu Bhat (trans.), The Farce of Drunken Sport (1981).
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