The Colas c17.27

c17.27

sor and elder brother Śaktivarman ruled for twelve years before him. This would give A.D. 999 as the date of Śaktivarman's accession and the end of the interregnum. Śaktivarman is called in his plates Cāḷukya-nārāyaṇa, a surname evidently modelled on that of Rājarāja, Cōḷa-nārāyaṇa. Thus a study of the affairs of the E. Cāḷukya dynasty before Rājarāja began to interest himself in them makes it plain that, far from their being sought out by Rājarāja as valuable political allies, they owed their position to that great monarch. By the part he played in restoring order and putting an end to the long-drawn civil strife in that kingdom, Rājarāja was well justified in claiming to have conquered Vēṅgī. This is not to say that Vēṅgī became at once an integral part of the Cōḷa Empire⁶⁹ like the other areas where, as in the Gaṅga or even the Pāṇḍya country, the separate political existence of the conquered country was deliberately put an end to, and the administrative system of the Cōḷas was imposed. If the analogy suggested by the term is not pressed too far, the political relation in which Vēṅgī stood to the Cōḷa empire under Rājarāja is best described as that of a protectorate. The alliance between the two ruling families was sealed by a dynastic marriage; Vimalāditya married Rājarāja's daughter Kundavā, the younger sister of Rājēndra.⁷⁰