The Colas c15.33

c15.33

The chronology of Kṛṣṇa's campaign against the Cōḷa has been the subject of some difference of opinion, but it is not incapable of precise determination. The Sōḷapuram inscription⁴¹ which is dated in three different ways may furnish the starting point. This record which bears the Śaka date 871 (a.d. 949) is also dated in the second year of some king not named in direct relation to this regnal year. But as Kannaradēva started his rule in or about a.d. 940,⁴² the second year cannot be his. Venkayya, however, affirms⁴³ that this is 'evidently a record of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa III' and suggests that the date is 'probably the second year after the occupation of the Toṇḍaināḍu' by him. But the suggestion is contradicted by the record itself which says that it was the year in which Kṛṣṇa entered Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam; and we have no other instance in his numerous records from that country of his using, the date of his entry into Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam as the starting point of an era; they give invariably his regnal year. The only alternative is to assume with Hultzsch that it refers to Rājāditya's rule as the inscription comes from a place within the sphere of his jurisdiction as viceroy. It is not to be supposed⁴⁴ that Rājāditya began to rule and issue inscriptions in his own name only after the death of his father; for nothing is more common in Cōḷa inscriptions than for records of successive rulers dated in different series of regnal years to overlap. Rājāditya had by A.D. 948 served his father actively in a subordinate capacity for over a dozen years, and it is not a violent assumption to make that Rājāditya was made 'co-regent'⁴⁵ in that year.