A viceroyalty
The Bādāmi Chalukyas governed their northern territories through a branch of the family seated at Navasārikā, modern Navsari, on the Gujarat coast. The arrangement gave the empire a presence on the western sea routes and a buffer against the powers of the north.
A later and separate Chalukya line held Lāṭa in the tenth and eleventh centuries as feudatories of the Chalukyas of Kalyāṇi.
The Navsari plates
The Navsari copper plates of 739 CE record that an Arab army — the charter calls them Tājikas — having overrun Sindh (ancient India, modern-day Pakistan), Kachchh, Saurashtra, the Mauryas, Gurjaras and others, advanced on the Deccan and was defeated by Avanijanāśraya Pulakeśin. The Chalukya emperor conferred on him the titles of solid pillar of the Deccan and repeller of the unrepellable.
The document is among the most valuable Indian sources for the Arab campaigns of the eighth century. Read with the Gurjara-Pratihāra and Gujarat evidence, it shows the Arab advance from Sindh being checked on three fronts within a few decades — after which the frontier stabilised for nearly three centuries, until Mahmud of Ghazni's raids from Afghanistan opened a different route.
Further reading
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
- Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta. A History of South India. Oxford University Press, 1955
- Wink, Andre. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill, 1990
- Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.