One Indian royal family ruled for six centuries, split across three capitals
From the 6th to the 12th century, the Chalukyas governed huge stretches of southern and central India. They did it as three linked but separate houses, based at Badami, Vengi and Kalyani, and their reign is remembered as a golden age for Karnataka, with its own style of temple architecture.
The first branch, the Badami Chalukyas, ruled from Vatapi, today's Badami, starting in the middle of the 6th century. They broke away as the Kadamba kingdom of Banavasi weakened, and under Pulakeshin II they became a major power. After his death an eastern line set itself up independently at Vengi in the eastern Deccan and lasted until roughly the 11th century. In the west, the Rashtrakutas overshadowed Badami from the mid 8th century, until descendants known as the Western Chalukyas revived the family in the late 10th century and governed from Kalyani, now Basavakalyan, until the close of the 12th century.
Their rise marked a shift in South Indian politics from small kingdoms to large empires. A single southern state held everything between the Kaveri and Narmada rivers, and the period brought organised administration, overseas trade and a new building tradition called Chalukyan architecture. The Western Chalukyas backed Kannada writers in both Jain and Brahminical traditions, while the Eastern branch sponsored Telugu literature in the 11th century.
Where the family came from is argued over. Historians including John Keay and D.C. Sircar broadly agree the founders at Badami were natives of what is now Karnataka. One theory linked them to a 2nd-century chieftain, Kandachaliki Remmanaka, but Kamath notes the lineage names do not match: the Chalukyas called themselves Harithiputras of Manavyasagotra, the same line as their former overlords the Kadambas. A later Eastern Chalukya record told of a ruler from Ayodhya marrying a Pallava princess, yet Badami inscriptions name Jayasimha and Ranaraga as Pulakeshin I's grandfather and father, and Kamath and Moraes say tying southern dynasties to northern kingdoms was fashionable in the 11th century.
Language offers clues too. Badami inscriptions were written in Kannada and Sanskrit, some princes' names end in arasa, a Kannada word for king, and Rashtrakuta records called them Karnatakabala, the Power of Karnataka. S. C. Nandinath proposed that the dynasty's name comes from a Kannada word for a farming tool.
Source: Chalukya dynasty
