The Colas c17.11

c17.11

One question suggests itself naturally in relation to this southern campaign of Rājarāja. Did he conquer Madura and the Pāṇḍya country first and march into Kēraḷa by the southern passes that led into it from the Tinnevelly district, or was the line of his march the other way round? The Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates and the last of the introductions cited above seem to suggest that the capture of Madura and the subjugation of the Pāṇḍya king Amarabhujanga preceded the advance on the strong fortress of Viḻiñam and on Śālai.¹⁴ But the bare mention of Kāndaḷūr Śālai in the earlier records of the reign and in the opening lines of the ‘*tirumagaḷpōla*’ introduction, and the provenance of Rājarāja’s inscriptions which appear in South Travancore about two years earlier than in the Tinnevelly and Ramnad districts point to the other alternative.¹⁵ It is possible that the Tiruvālangāḍu plates and the later inscriptions of Rājarāja mixed up facts relating to several distinct campaigns against the southern country. For it is clear that Rājarāja sent more than one expedition against the Pāṇḍya and his ally the Cēra. One seems to have been directed specially against Kollam. The campaign in which Rājarāja claims, in his Tanjore inscriptions,¹⁶ to have conquered the Cēra and the Pāṇḍyas in the Malai-nāḍu (Mountain country) was quite obviously different from and later than that in which Kāndaḷūr and Viḷiñam were attacked.