Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi

A viceroyalty that outlasted the empire

Pulakeśin II conquered Vengi in the 620s and installed his brother Kubja Viṣṇuvardhana there. The branch became independent within a generation and outlived the parent dynasty by more than four hundred years, ruling the Krishna–Godāvarī delta country through the whole of the early medieval period.

Their position between the Rāṣṭrakūṭas to the west and the Cholas to the south made them a perpetual object of contention, and the wars over Vengi occupied both those empires for centuries.

Telugu

The Eastern Chalukya court is where Telugu literature begins. Nannaya Bhaṭṭāraka, under Rājarāja Narendra in the eleventh century, began the Telugu rendering of the Mahābhārata — the Āndhra Mahābhāratamu — and in doing so wrote the first Telugu grammar and established the literary register of the language. He completed two and a half of the eighteen books; Tikkana and Errana finished the work over the following two centuries.

The dynasty's inscriptions also mark the transition from Sanskrit and Prakrit to Telugu as a language of record in the Andhra country.

Union with the Cholas

Rājarāja Narendra married a Chola princess, and their son Rājendra Chalukya took the Chola throne in 1070 as Kulottuṅga I. From that point the two dynasties were dynastically merged, and Vengi was governed by Chola viceroys.

The line ended in 1189, and the Andhra country passed to the Kākatīyas.