The Colas c20.5

c20.5

The Eastern Cāḷukya copper-plates of the period fall into two sets, one of them mentioning the transactions of Vijayāditya VII and his son Śaktivarman II, omitted by others,—a feature not unknown in other passages of E. Cāḷukya history as we know. The facts as set forth in the first set of plates are the following. After twelve years had elapsed from the accession of Rājarāja-narēndra, his step-brother Vijayāditya ousted him from the throne and crowned himself king in Śaka 952, A.D. 1030;⁴ the grant which mentions this fact is dated in the second year of the reign of Vijayāditya.⁵ Then the Telugu Academy plates of Śaktivarman II, which do not mention any regnal year, state that Śaktivarman was crowned as king in the year Śaka 983, on a day corresponding to 18 October A.D. 1061, after Rājarāja had enjoyed a reign of forty-one years; they omit the coronation of Vijayāditya in A.D. 1030.⁶ Lastly, the Ryāli plates (two sets) of Vijayāditya VII omit all reference to the occurrences of A.D. 1030-2, give forty-one years to Rājarāja, state that Vijayāditya took by force the kingdom of his step-brother without his knowledge (at his death),⁷ that he handed it over to his son Śaktivarman out of the love he bore him, and that, when Śaktivarman died at the end of one year by a bad stroke of fate, Vijayāditya was only persuaded with difficulty, like Arjuna at the death of Abhimanyu, to resume the duties of state. These grants are dated in the twelfth year of Vijayāditya's rule. There is nothing in the palaeography or the dating of these records that raises any doubt as to their genuineness.