The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c12.19.1

c12.19.1

It is not known if Madhurāntaka Uttama Chola undertook any expedition against Madura as his biruda may imply, or as seems more likely, if he only inherited his title from his father Gaṇḍarāditya who has been identified with Maduraikoṇḍa Rājakēsari of the inscriptions.² At any rate, there is no reason to doubt that the Chola power was not fully restored in the Pāndya country by the success of Aditya II and that later, it became more firmly established in the time of the great Rāja Rāja I who came to the Chola throne in A.D. 985. That Rāja Rāja took great credit for his conquest of the Pāndya country is clear from his inscriptions. A record of the twenty-ninth year of Rāja Rāja says, for instance, ‘that he deprived the Śeliyas (i.e. the Pāndyas) of (their) splendour at the very moment when (they were) resplendent (to such a degree) that (they were) worthy to be worshipped everywhere.’³ But we know little of the details. ‘It is in inscriptions of the eighth year A.D. 994) of the king's reign that the usual historical introduction, beginning with the words *Tirumakaḷpōla*, which was evidently composed after the conquest of the Pāṇdyas, occurs for the first time' (Venkayya) and the conquest of the south may be taken to have far advanced by that time.