The Colas c16.s2.4

c16.s2.4

The identity in meaning of the titles Arikulakēsari and Ariñjaya or Arindama has often led to the supposition that they refer to one and the same person, a younger son of Parāntaka I. This may be so. In any event, Ariñjaya Parakēsari succeeded his brother Gaṇḍarāditya and had a short reign. As yet we have no direct evidence of the transactions of his reign. Two of his queens Vīman Kundavaiyār and Kōdai-pirāṭṭiyār survived him and made gifts in his son's reign. Though it has been thought that Vīman Kundavai was a daughter of the Cāḷukya Bhīma II of Vēṅgī,⁴⁶ such an alliance between the Cōḷas and the Cāḷukyas in this period when the Cōḷas were reduced to virtual subordination to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas seems hardly likely. If, however, Kundavai was an Eastern Cāḷukya princess, her marriage with Ariñjaya must have taken place before the invasion of the Cōḷa country by Kṛṣṇa and sometime after the raid on Nellore by Māṟan Paramēśvaran, in the reign of Parāntaka I. But two inscriptions⁴⁷ from Tiruppālaṉam dated in the second year of Parakēsari, mention an Araiyan Ādittan Vīman making some gifts to the local temple, and there is nothing to preclude this noble (Araiyan) from being the father of Ariñjaya's queen.⁴⁸ If this view is correct, these Parakēsari records must be assigned to Ariñjaya, and in view of the strict limits placed on the duration of Ariñjaya's rule by the general chronology of the period we must assume, what is not unlikely, that Ariñjaya was chosen heir apparent to Gaṇḍarāditya⁴⁹ sometime soon after the death of Parāntaka I. Ariñjaya is said to have died at Āṟṟūr;⁵⁰ a place that cannot be definitely identified. An inscription of Rājarāja I states that he built at Mēlpāḍi a memorial shrine (*paḷḷipadai*)⁵¹ to the king who died at Āṟṟūr and this implies that Āṟṟūr was somewhere in that neighbourhood. Probably, Ariñjaya had entered upon the task of regaining the Cōḷa possessions in the north lost to Kṛṣṇa III. This suggestion gains force from an inscription⁵² from Tirunāgēśvaram which mentions Ariñjigap-pirāṭṭiyār, daughter of prince Arikulakēsari and his wife of a Bāṇa king.