Pallavas and the Pahlavas
In an article titled “India’s Parthian Colony” published in The Iranian on May 14, 2003 , Dr. Samar Abbas wrote that the Pallavas of South India descended from the Pahlavas of Iran and attributed their persistent conflicts with their neighbours the Chalukyas to an obscure, far-fetched theory that claimed that the Chalukyas descended from the Seleucids whom the Pahlavas overthrew to capture power in Iran. Though Abbas’ unscientific paper deserves little more than cursory mention, the theory itself cannot be brushed aside as a fantasy simply because it had also been suggested by the famous South Indian epigraphist and Pallava expert V. Venkayya who had worked with Hultzsch in deciphering the Mamallapuram inscriptions. But then, who were the Pahlavas! According to sources that date from the time of the Achaemenids, like the Turks and Mongols who came later, the Pahlavas or Parthians were a tribe of horsemen who inhabited...