Cuṭu dynasty

At Banavāsi

The Cuṭus ruled from Banavāsi, called Vaijayantī in the inscriptions, in the forested country of the Karnataka Ghats. Their records are in Prakrit and their coins carry types related to Sātavāhana issues, which places them within the same political and cultural world; whether they were feudatories who became independent or a collateral branch of the imperial house is disputed.

The Banavāsi inscription of a Cuṭu princess, recording the gift of a tank, a vihāra and a nāga image, is among the earliest inscriptions in Karnataka and a fixed point for the region's history.

Succession

Cuṭu rule ended in the fourth century when Mayūraśarman founded the Kadamba dynasty at the same capital. The Kadamba account of that founding — a brahmin student humiliated at Kāñcī who took up arms — is the first indigenous political narrative from Karnataka, and it treats Banavāsi as a prize already worth seizing.

The Cuṭus are a good example of a class of dynasty that the standard narratives pass over: securely attested, locally important, and without enough surviving record to be given a history.