The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c29.163

Language: English

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Sōmēsvara’s accession marks the beginning of a more vigorous reign both in the south and in the north. He carried on a successful war against the contemporary Yādava ruler Krishna Kandara, and extended his boundary northwards to the river Krishna as an inscription of his in Pandharpur near Sholapur of 1236 indicates. But his activities were chiefly along the Chola-Pāṇḍya frontier which called for his presence so constantly that he erected for himself a royal city there and ruled his kingdom from that distant southern capital, except for one short interval in the middle of his reign when he is said to have been in his ancestral Hoysala territory proper. As early as 1236 we find him in residence in the Pāṇḍyamaṇḍala which is said to have been acquired by his strength and valour. Probably about this time or earlier, in the reign of his father, the Hoysala entered into a marriage alliance with the Pāṇḍyas, so that, in inscriptions of Māṟavarman Sundara Pāṇḍya II of about this date, the Hoysala monarch is called ‘uncle Sōmēsvara,’ and a record of this Pāṇḍya ruler in the Tinnevelli district names a village granted at the request of Sōmēsvara, Vikrama-Sōmi-Chaturvēdimangalam in honour of this uncle. It was about this time, or a few years later, that a younger brother of Rājarāja III, afterwards Rājēndra III, became so actively hostile to his elder brother that Sōmēsvara’s intervention was called for as against this new rival.

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Rājēndra had under his rule all the northern territory of the Cholas, extending from the coast between Nellore and Kānchī across to the Hoysala frontier, and was the most important feudatory in the kingdom during the first twenty-five years of his brother’s reign. He appears to have become hostile some time about 1242 or 1243, perhaps on account of Rājarāja’s subserviency to the Hoysala, who dominated from his central position in Kannanūr both the Pāṇḍya and the Chola kingdoms. As a matter of fact, the Chola power was little more than a feudatory of Sōmēsvara. Rājēndra therefore rose as a rival claimant and had to fight against Sōmēsvara rather than the nominal ruler, his brother. Both sides claim the victory. They seem however to have ultimately come to an understanding as Rājēndra is said to have let his brother rule for yet another three years, and at last killed him. With the accession of Rājēndra to power there was a change in the political relations between the Chola and the Hoysala, and the accession of another Pāṇḍya to the throne in the person of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya I in 1251 brought the Pāṇḍyas into hostility to Sōmēsvara. How actually this change of relation came about is not recorded, but soon after his accession the Pāṇḍya set out on a campaign which lasted for more than ten years and carried the war successfully through the Chola country as far north as Nellore.

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According to a full *prasasti* which details the deeds of this great Pāṇḍya, he began by an invasion of the Travancore country and, having compelled the Chera ruler to submit, marched into the Chola country. There he defeated a number of Sōmēsvara's generals, and took Sēndamangalam. He expelled from Kānchī the Telugu Choda chieftains and was anointed there. He then invaded the territory of the Telugu Chodas themselves, defeated and killed in battle Gandagopala of Nellore, and placed one of his brothers, who submitted, on the throne instead, thus carrying the war to the frontier of the Kākātīya territory, whence he turned back towards his capital. On the return journey we find him in occupation of the Hoysala capital, Vikramapura, in 1264–65, and it was either in this year, or the end of the previous one, that he defeated and slew Sōmēsvara in battle and brought this victorious campaign to a close by magnificent gifts to the great temple of Srīrangam, which according to this record had suffered at the hands of the Hoysalas. The Hoysala Sōmēsvara is said to have built the front *gopura* of the Siva temple at Jambukēsvaram. He was probably an ardent Saiva and had neglected the Vishnu temple at Srīrangam. That is what is hinted at in the first verse of the elaborate Sundara Pāndya inscription at Srīrangam.

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He is said to have weighed himself against gold and jewels, mounting his elephant in full panoply of war, and made a grant of the money which he himself appropriated for the various works of extension and restoration to the great Vishnu temple. He was anointed again in the Vishnu temple and crowned with the crown *nagarōdaya*.