South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c8.s1.44

c8.s1.44

Narasimha was succeeded in the year 1233 by his son Sōmēśvara, who apparently was associated with his father in the government of the kingdom and took an active part in the Hoysala intervention in the South. There are very few records of his in the south between the years five and twenty-one of his reign. About A.D. 1244 there seems to have been some disturbance in the Chola empire, apparently a civil war between the reigning ruler Rājarāja and his brother, who afterwards become Rājēndra III. Exactly ten years after his father’s intervention, the son Sōmēśvara found it necessary to interfere. He completely defeated Rājēndra Chola on the field of battle; but seems to have restored him afterwards to his position.¹ While therefore Narasimha’s intervention was on behalf of his relative Rājarāja, the intervention of Vīra Sōmēśvara on the other hand, seems to have been first against Rājēndra, and ostensibly in favour of Rājarāja III, ending ultimately in favour of Rājēndra himself. Rājēndra’s inscriptions exhibit him as a hostile rod of death to the Kannaḍiga king, the ‘hero anklets’ of whose feet were put on by the hands of Vīra Sōmēśvara.² The explanation of these apparently contradictory statements seems to be that Sōmēśvara’s intervention was first in favour of Rājarāja, and either because of his death, or something else that happened, he entered into a treaty with his successor Rājēndra. Thereafter Somēśvara did not leave the country of the Cholas, but established himself there with a capital built by himself at Kaṇṇanūr about five miles north of Śrīrangam, where he appears to have resided till his death about A.D. 1262, except for a short period in A.D. 1252 when he was in Dvārasamudra. Both Narasimha the father and Somēśvara the son assumed the title ‘Chola-Rājya-Pratiṣṭāpanāchārya,’ meaning thereby that both of them established the Chola in his position.