The Colas c17.22

c17.22

An inscription of Satyāśraya from Hoṭṭūr (Dharwar), dated Śaka 9(2)9 A.D. 1007, states that the Nūrmaḍi Cōḷa Rājēndra Vidyādhara, the son of Rājarāja Nityavinōda and the ornament of the Cōḷakula, advanced as far as Dōnūr in the Bijapur district, with an army of 900,000 troops, plundered the whole country, killed women, children and Brahmans, caught hold of girls and destroyed their caste. The same record proceeds further to say that Satyāśraya, ‘the slayer of the Tamil’ (*Tiguḷa-māri*), thereupon forced the Cōḷa to turn back, captured his paraphernalia (*vastu-vāhana*) and thus conquered the southern quarter.⁵¹ Though the account of wholesale slaughter and rape must be discounted as proceeding from a hostile source, still this account given by the Cāḷukya inscription of Rājēndra’s invasion of Raṭṭapāḍi rings very true, and may be accepted as substantially correct. Though overwhelmed for a time by the strength and rapidity of the Cōḷa onslaught, Satyāśraya soon recovered himself, and by hard fighting rolled back the tide of invasion. In Raṭṭapāḍi proper there are no traces (as there are in Noḷambapāḍi and Gaṅgapāḍi) of the occupation of the country by the Cōḷas.⁵²