The Colas c18.11

c18.11

Rājēndra thus succeeded in getting hold of the Pāṇḍyan regalia left behind by Rājasimha, which Parāntaka I had sought and failed to secure. The Cōḷa inscriptions are silent on the details of the conquest and draw a veil over the pillage of Laṅkā so vividly chronicled in the Ceylonese annals, though one inscription apparently mentions Mahinda's submission to the Cōḷa king after he was transported to the mainland.²⁵ Rājēndra's success was complete, and the whole of the island became a Cōḷa province. We have some inscriptions of Rājēndra at Polonnaruwa and in the Colombo museum with the *tiru manni vaḷara* introduction;²⁶ but these are in a very damaged condition, and valuable only as furnishing clear epigraphical confirmation of Rājēndra's conquest and rule in Ceylon. Several Hindu temples, Dēvāles devoted to Śiva and to Viṣṇu, have been discovered in the vicinity of Polonnaruwa; these are built of stone and in the Tamil Cōḷa style of architecture, and all of them must have been constructed in this period of Cōḷa rule in the island. The *Mahāvaṃsa* adds that twelve years after Rājēndra's invasion, possibly also after the death of Mahinda V, his son Kassapa who had been brought up in secret by the Sinhalese for fear of the Cōḷas, became the centre of a national resistance against the Tamil power, and that, after a six months' war in which a great number of Damiḷas were killed by the Sinhalese forces, he succeeded in making Rohaṇa once more independent of the Tamil province and ruled it as Vikkamabāhu I for a period of twelve years (a.d. 1029-41). The events of Vikkamabāhu's reign belong to a later stage of Rājēndra's rule and may be reserved for further consideration at the proper place.