The Colas c18.20

c18.20

It may be doubted if by this campaign Rājēndra added any new territory to his dominions. The Pāṇḍya and Kēraḷa countries had been conquered by Rājarāja very early in his reign, and 'the many ancient islands' towards its end. These islands were the Maldives; the obscure Śāndimattīvu of legendary fame is apparently to be sought also among the islands of the Arabian sea. The effective hold retained by Rājarāja on his southern conquests becomes clear from his numerous records in the Pāṇḍya country and from an inscription of the third year of Rājēndra³² mentioning an endowment in Tiruviśalūr by the queen of a Pāṇḍya king called Śrīvaḷḷuvar. While the Tamil *praśasti* of Rājēndra mentions some new achievements of the king in Ceylon and Kēraḷa, the most considerable among them being the seizure of the regalia of the different kingdoms of the south, it has nothing to say on Pāṇḍyan affairs. The vague statements of the Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates that the Pāṇḍyan king fled to the Agastya hills and that Rājēndra took his pearls are too conventional to be accepted literally; a stone inscription of the tenth year,³³ however, confirms the statement of the copper-plates that the king established his own son in Madura as his viceroy with the title Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya and also states that Rājēndra built a palace in Madura 'by whose weight the earth became unsteady.' The same inscription implies that Rājēndra repeated his father’s performance at Kāndaḷūr-śālai. This Pāṇḍyan viceroy, who was soon after placed in charge of the Kēraḷa country as well, was Jaṭāvarman Sundara Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya to whose time belong the largest number of the Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya inscriptions so far known.