The Colas c19.23

c19.23

The Cāḷukya inscriptions of the reign of Sōmēśvara tell us nothing of the battle of Koppam, and specific references to his warfare with the Cōḷas are few. In Śaka 981 (expired) he had returned from a conquest of the southern countries and a victory over the Cōḷa, and was camping in the Sindavāḍi country,⁸² a province ruled by a Mahāmaṇḍalēśvara Ciddaṇa Cōḷa-Mahārāja. In Śaka 987 Viṣṇuvardhana Vijayāditya was encamped at Arasiyakere on his way to the conquest of the south under orders from the king.⁸³ Bilhaṇa's account has, as has been pointed out already, apparently no relation to facts and seems to be pure fabrication. Shortly after the close of Sōmēśvara's reign, however, we get two inscriptions,⁸⁴ both dated about A.D. 1071, giving an account of the Cōḷa invasion and the death of Rājādhirāja. Though the date is late and the Cōḷa king is not named, it is easy to infer from the Cōḷa inscriptions that the transactions recorded here relate to the war that led to the battle of Koppam and the death of Rājādhirāja.⁸⁵ The vigorous language employed by these records against the Cōḷa shows that the silence of the epigraphs of Sōmēśvara's reign is really due to a reluctance to record publicly in his life-time unfortunate events that caused so much misery and suffering in his country at the hands of the foreign invader. The *mahāpātaka* (great sinner) Tamilian known as Pāṇḍya-Cōḷa, we are told, took to an evil course (*nele geṭṭu*) and abandoning the ancestral observances of his family, entered the Beḷvōla country, burned several temples including Jinālayas erected by Gangaperumānaḍi, and was promptly punished for his wicked deeds by losing his life in battle and yielding his head to Sōmēśvara I. The Cōḷa account of the war, we may therefore conclude, is not by any means a greatly overdrawn picture of their achievement on this occasion.