The Colas c17.10

c17.10

in the Cōḻa inscriptions are, in fact, an important aid to the discovery of the particular king to whose reign any given record belongs. Sometimes the same king used two or more forms of such introductions, and Rājarāja I seems himself to have employed at least three forms, of which the one beginning ‘*tirumagaḷ-pōla*’ was the most common from the eighth year onwards.¹¹ In this introduction the only reference to the first campaign of the reign seems to be the phrase employed about Kāndaḷūr Śālai already quoted. A second form of the introduction¹² also places the victory at Śālai first among the achievements of the reign. Yet another, dated in the twentieth year,¹³ mentions that Rājarāja ‘destroyed the town of Madurai, conquered the haughty kings of Kollam, Kolladēśam and Koḍungōḷūr and that the kings of the sea waited on him.’