The Colas c17.14

c17.14

Īḻam (Ceylon) is included among the conquests of Rājarāja from the first in the *tirumagaḷ* introduction,²⁵ (a.d. 993). The king is said to have taken the Īḻamaṇḍalam owned by the fierce Siṅgaḷas and famed in all the eight directions.²⁶ In his twenty-ninth year (a.d. 1014) Rājarāja made a grant of several villages in Ceylon for various purposes to the celebrated temple he had erected at Tanjore.²⁷ The Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates contain the following picturesque account of the invasion of Ceylon.²⁸