The Colas c17.20

c17.20

against the Noḷambas and the Gaṅgas, first mentioned in the eighth and ninth³⁸ years of the king's reign, would seem in reality to have advanced very far, if not actually ended by the sixth year (A.D. 991), as we find an inscription of Cōḷa-nārāyaṇa, obviously a name of Rājarāja I, in the Mysore country dated in this year (Śaka 913).³⁹ An official from Kōlār in the Gaṅgarasāyira with a Gaṅga name made an endowment in South Arcot in the seventh year of Rājakēsari, perhaps Rājarāja I.⁴⁰ This conquest was no doubt facilitated by the fact that the Cōḷas had never lost their hold on the Koṅgu country or, if they had done so, had very soon recovered it when they began to reassert themselves after the troubles consequent on the invasion of Kṛṣṇa III. Rājarāja does not claim to have conquered the Koṅgu area, and he was master of it early in his reign. Copper-plates⁴¹ recording a gift of land in the fifth year of Rājakēsarivarman have been found at Tiruccengōḍu, and these may with tolerable certainty be assigned to Rājarāja I, if they do not belong to an earlier Rājakēsarī like Parāntaka II. The conquest of Taḍigaipāḍi was probably undertaken from the side of Koṅgu and as part of the campaign in Kuḍamalai-nāḍu. By the time of this war the Noḷambas had long ceased to be an independent power and become subordinate to the Gaṅgas. In the tenth century the name Noḷambapāḍi still included⁴² not only the districts of Tumkūr and Citaldurg, but much of the Bangalore, Kōlār and Bellary districts and even parts of Salem and N. Arcot; this is sufficient proof of the place once held by the Noḷambas in the politics of Southern India. Though they lost much of their power at the time of Rājarāja's invasion, they did not by any means die out altogether, and in Śaka 920 Gannarasa, the son of Ayyapa, was ruling a portion of Daḷigapāḍi as a feudatory of Rājarāja.⁴³ A certain Noḷambādhirāja was the general of the Cōḷa monarch in his sixteenth year.⁴⁴ Either the same person or another, Noḷambādhirāja Cōrayya, is again mentioned as feudatory of the Cōḷa in Śaka 933.⁴⁵ These instances raise a suspicion that the Noḷamba subordi-nates of the Gangas turned against their Ganga overlords and paid off old scores by taking the side of the Cōḷas openly, or by assisting them in other ways. The Gangas then were the chief enemy against whom was directed the expedition into Mysore. This invasion, which started with an attack on Taḍigaipāḍi⁴⁶ and Taḷakāḍ after crossing the Kāvēri from the Kongu country, was a complete success, and made the Cōḷas supreme in the entire Ganga country for a period of more than one century. The easy success was partly also the re-sult of the disappearance of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa power, which had taken place about A.D. 973, when Taila II Āhavamalla restored the ancient Cāḷukya line to power. By this, political revolu-tion the Gangas and the Noḷambas lost their chief support, as there was nothing as yet to bind them to the newly risen Cāḷukya power corresponding to the dynastic alliances and common enterprises that had brought them close to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas. But the Western Cāḷukyas were by no means indifferent to the advanc-ing power of the Cōḷas under Rājarāja, and in an inscription dated A.D. 992, Tailapa II claims to have gained a victory against the Cōḷa king and captured 150 elephants from him.⁴⁷