South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.42

c9.42

In regard to the dating of the campaign, it began apparently soon after Sundara's accession in A.D. 1251. The march from the frontiers of Travancore to the banks of the Krishna with all the campaigning might well have occupied ten years. When he came to the northern end of his progress the Kākatīya Gaṇapati had died and his daughter had just come to the throne in A.D. 1260. After a coronation at Nellore, he set forward upon his return march, and reached Kaṇṇanūr and Śrīrangam in the next two years or so. There was probably another war in which the Hoysala Somēśvara fell, and Sundara entered Śrīrangam and made his great donations to the temple. A record¹ of his fourteenth year (A.D. 1264-65) which he issued from Kaṇṇanūr gives us the limit of date for his campaigns. The Ranganātha inscription of Sundara Pāṇḍya published by Dr. Hultzsch in Vol. III of the *Epigraphia Indica* gives in minute detail all his benefactions to the temple, and hints broadly for the first time of the death of the Hoysala Somēśvara. This death is referred to as a recent event in the first verse of the inscription. ‘Having caused to long for the other world (to set or die) the moon of the Karṇāṭa (country)’.²