The Colas c23.13

c23.13

The inscriptions thus show that for a period of seven or eight years the attention of Rājādhirāja was chiefly devoted to the conduct of the war in the south. And if the interpretation of the records given above is correct, towards the end of this period, Rājādhirāja had himself to order the deposition of Kulaśēkhara on whose behalf and at whose entreaty he had entered the struggle, because Kulaśēkhara had been found guilty of the basest treachery towards the Cōḷa ruler. At the stage we have reached in the war, Kulaśēkhara had lost his throne and was in exile, and Vīra Pāṇḍya, the son of Parākrama, had been set up on the throne of Madura, by the Cōḷa general, Aṇṇan Pallavarāyan. And this was the position to the end of Rājādhirāja's reign, though after the accession of Kulōttunga III there was, as we shall see, another turn in the wheel of fortune, and Kulaśēkhara's line once more possessed the Pāṇḍyan throne also with Cōḷa assistance. Rājādhirāja had on the whole good reason to be satisfied with the results of the campaigns. Parākramabāhu's designs had been totally frustrated and his candidates steadily kept out of the Madura kingdom. Repeated expeditions of his forces on the mainland had been successfully met and in spite of temporary victories, the ruler of Ceylon had lost heavily in the fighting and his military and naval resources had been greatly damaged. The Cōḷa king now assumed the surname; 'who was pleased to take Madura and Īḻam,' (*Maduraiyum Īḻamum koṇḍaruḷina*).¹⁹ While the capture of the Madura kingdom was a fact, the inclusion of *Īḻam* (Ceylon) in the title must be understood only as a claim to that kingdom like that set up by the English kings to the throne of France or as merely indicative of the military successes achieved by the Cōḷa ruler against the Ceylonese. If we follow the chronology of the *Mahāvamsa* and one set of Rājādhirāja's inscriptions, the events of the war may be placed between say A.D. 1169 and 1177.²⁰