The Colas c16.s2.6

c16.s2.6

Ariñjaya was succeeded by his son by the Vaidumba princess Kalyāṇi, the only queen of Ariñjaya mentioned by the Anbil plates. This son was Sundara Cōḷa Parāntaka II who, as we have seen, was also known as Maduraikoṇḍa-Rājakēsari. The attention of Sundara Cōḷa was first directed to the south. Vīra Pāṇḍya, having repulsed Gaṇḍarāditya’s attempt to restore Cōḷa supremacy in the Pāṇḍya country, was ruling as an independent potentate. The Leyden grant⁵³ tells us that in a great battle at Cēvūr, Parāntaka caused rivers of blood to flow from the deep cuts inflicted by him on the elephants of the enemy and that his son Āditya, while yet a boy, played with Vīra Pāṇḍya in the battle, like a lion's whelp sporting with a tusker. The Karandai plates (vv. 24-5) mention the battle of Cēvūr adding that Vīra Pāṇḍya was defeated and forced to climb the peaks of the Sahyādri for refuge. Āditya's heroism was probably exhibited in the field of Cēvūr to the south of the Sevali hills, the southern boundary of Pudukkottah, and that battle must have furnished the occasion for his claim that he 'took the head of Vīra Pāṇḍya.' The Leyden grant does not, like the Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates, state that Vīra Pāṇḍya was killed by Āditya, and it is possible that the composer of the Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates, struck by the forcible simile in the Leyden grant, embellished the account of Āditya's contest with Vīra Pāṇḍya; and his account of Āditya's rule adds nothing else to what we learn from the earlier grant. The chances are that, after the battle of Cēvūr in which Vīra Pāṇḍya sustained a bad defeat, the Cōḷa forces led, among others, by Parāntakan Śiriyavēḷār of Koḍumbāḷūr, continued the campaign into the Pāṇḍya country, and forced Vīra Pāṇḍya to seek refuge in the forests.⁵⁴ The Pāṇḍya sovereign was on this occasion also supported by Ceylonese troops in his endeavour to resist the Cōḷa aggression; for Śiriyavēḷār led an expedition to Ceylon, and there he fell fighting before the ninth year of Sundara Cōḷa, A.D. 965.⁵⁵ The *Mahāvaṃsa*, corroborating this account, records the following in the reign of Mahinda IV A.D. 956-72:⁵⁶