Western Chalukya Empire

The Western Chalukya Empire ruled most of the western Deccan in South India between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. This Kannada dynasty is also called the Kalyani Chalukya after its later capital at Kalyani, today Basavakalyan in Bidar district, and the title Western serves to distinguish it from the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi and from the sixth-century Chalukyas of Badami. In 973, seeing the Rashtrakuta empire in confusion after a Paramara raid on its capital, Tailapa II, a Rashtrakuta feudatory ruling from the Bijapur region, defeated his overlords and made Manyakheta his capital. Under Someshvara I the dynasty grew into an empire and moved the capital to Kalyani. For more than a century the Western Chalukyas and the Cholas of Thanjavur fought bitterly for the fertile Vengi country, a conflict complicated by the Eastern Chalukyas, distant cousins who were allied to the Cholas by marriage. Under Vikramaditya VI, in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the empire peaked, holding the Deccan between the Narmada and the Kaveri, and campaigning as far east as Bihar and Bengal. The Hoysalas, Seunas, Kakatiyas and Kalachuris were its subordinates and won their independence as its power waned, and the kingdom finally fell apart in the late twelfth century.