The Colas c15.3

c15.3

Parāntaka I ruled for forty-eight years, as the latest inscription of his reign is dated in his forty-eighth regnal year.³ Early in his reign he resisted with success the attempt of Rāṣṭrakūṭa Kṛṣṇa II to put his own grand-son Kannaradeva on the Cōḷa throne. Thenceforth Parāntaka's rule was one of increasing success and prosperity for the best part of it; he followed up his father's victories by putting an end to Pāṇḍyan independence and extending the empire up to Kanyākumkāri in the south; he even invaded Ceylon, though the raid, as we shall see, failed of its object. Elsewhere, he subjugated the Bāṇas, and the Gaṅga king Hastimalla acknowledged his sway. The last vestiges of Pallava power disappeared and the dominion of Parāntaka extended up to Nellore in the north. Towards the end of his reign, however, Kṛṣṇa III invaded the Cōḷa empire in great force from the north-west, and in the conflict that ensued Parāntaka’s eldest son Rājāditya lost his life, and Parāntaka himself did not long survive the cataclysm. A heavy gloom settles on Cōḷa power for a period of over three decades thereafter until the accession of the celebrated Rājarāja I in A.D. 985.