Nolambavāḍi
The Nolambas held the arid plateau country around modern Chitradurga, Tumkur and Anantapur, a region the inscriptions call Nolambavāḍi thirty-two thousand — the numerical suffix indicating the count of villages, a standard Deccan administrative usage. They styled themselves Pallavas, and the claim to that prestigious northern Tamil lineage was probably a matter of legitimacy rather than descent.
Their capital Hemāvatī retains a group of temples in a distinctive style, with fine ceiling sculpture.
Between powers
The Nolambas were subordinate to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, then contested between the Western Gangas, the Cholas and the Chalukyas of Kalyāṇi. The Ganga king Mārasiṃha took the title Nolambakulāntaka, destroyer of the Nolamba family, in the tenth century, though the dynasty survived that claim by some decades.
Nolambavāḍi remained a named province under later powers long after the dynasty itself had gone, which is a common fate: the administrative geography of the Deccan preserved dynastic names for centuries after the dynasties.
Further reading
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
- Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta. A History of South India. Oxford University Press, 1955
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.