The Colas c18.28

c18.28

There Vimalāditya who had succeeded his brother Śaktivarman I died or retired in 1019; Jayasimha availed himself of the opportunity to obstruct the accession of Rājarāja (Narendra), the son of Vimalāditya by Kundavai, by supporting his stepbrother Viṣṇuvardhana Vijayāditya VII. Rājarāja could not celebrate his coronation and appealed for help to his maternal uncle Rājēndra I. A number of short but interesting inscriptions in Kannaḍa and Tamil from Koṭṭaśivaram (Anantapur district)⁴⁵ give us the clue to what happened. One of these is dated in the tenth year of Rājēndra. They mention a Cōḷa general Araiyan Rājarājan *alias* Vikrama-Cōḷa Cōḷiya-varaiyan who by his exploits in the Cāḷukya and Vēngī wars earned such high titles as Nālmaḍi Bhīma, Cōḷana-cakra, Sāmantābharaṇam, Vīrabhūṣaṇam, Edirttavarkālan (Tam. death to opponents) or Ahitaroṭṭaḷivan (Kan.), and Jayasingakula-kāla. There is a Tamil verse among these records stating that he fought with Kalingas, Oḍḍas and Teluṅgas. Another undated inscription⁴⁶ records the flight of the Vēngī king when he heard of the advance of this general ordered by the Cōḷa monarch. The king who fled must have been Vijayāditya, and this flight must have taken place roughly about the same time as the battle of Maṣki. The rulers of Kaliṅga and Oḍḍa appear also to have joined Jayasiṁha II and his protégé Vijayāditya, and the Cōḷa commander had to deal with them also. And the expedition undertaken for their chastisement naturally developed into the celebrated march to the Ganges and the fetching of the holy waters to the new capital that Rājēndra was building. This is clearly implied by a verse in the Chārăla plates of Vīrarājendra.⁴⁷