The Colas c15.36

c15.36

One inscription⁴⁸ from Siddhaliṅgamaḍam (South Arcot), dated in the fifth year of Kṛṣṇa's reign, already in A.D. 944-5 gives him the title Kacciyum-Tañjaiyumkoṇḍa. This has created some confusion, and led some scholars to imagine that Kṛṣṇa's invasion and occupation of Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam was earlier than the battle of Takkōlam.⁴⁹ But the difficulty of reconciling this datum with the rest of our evidence is so great as to be almost insuperable, and we can hardly help suspecting some mistake here. For if Kṛṣṇa was in Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam as early as A.D. 944-5, how can we account for Parāntaka's inscriptions being found in the Arcot districts till 948, for the presence of Rājāditya at Takkōlam in 949, and for the battle of Takkōlam itself? Again, how can we account for the fact that, barring this single record from Siddhalingamaḍam, there is no other inscription of Kṛṣṇa dated before his sixteenth regnal year A.D 956, in the North and South Arcot districts? There is no alternative, in fact, to our rejecting this record as spurious at least in its date. It should be noticed that the Vyāghrapādēśvara temple from which the inscription comes was renovated in the reign of Kulōttunga I by one of his officers,⁵⁰ and that it is quite probable that an error crept into the copy of this old inscription reproduced on the new walls more than a century after it was originally recorded, and this, I think, is the real explanation of the difficulty.⁵¹