The Colas c23.38

c23.38

The third campaign of Kulōttuṅga in the Pāṇḍya country is described, as we have seen, in the Pudukkottah records dated in the thirty-fourth year of the reign. This inscription states definitely that after celebrating a Vijayābhiṣēka in Karuvūr, Kulōttuṅga started on an expedition against the Madura country in order to wear the crown of heroism, that is, to celebrate a Vīrābhiṣēka. If account is taken also of the fact that the Vijaya- and Vīrābhiṣēkas seem to be mentioned first only about the twenty-ninth regnal year, we may not be far wrong in assigning some date about a.d. 1205 to this campaign. If this is correct, the expedition must have been directed against Jaṭāvarman Kulaśēkhara who came to the throne in a.d. 1190, and was the first great ruler of the period of Pāṇḍyan revival that followed the close of the Civil War in which Rājādhirāja II and Kulōttuṅga III had espoused the cause of one or the other of the rival claimants to the throne. It seems probable that Kulaśēkhara was the son and successor of Vikrama Pāṇḍya who had been supported by Kulōttuṅga. His inscriptions are found in the Madura, Ramnad and Tinnevelly districts.⁷⁷ They contain elaborate *praśastis*, one of which sets up the proud claim that before the Pāṇḍyan fish, the fierce tiger of the Cōḷa and the bow of the Cēra hid themselves (in fear). This claim and the desire of Kulōttuṅga for a Vīrābhiṣēka after his Vijayābhiṣēka at Karuvūr are the only indications that remain of the probable causes of the war between Kulaśēkhara and Kulōttuṅga III; the inscriptions of the former ruler do not mention the war or any of its incidents. We may not accept literally everything mentioned in the inscriptions of Kulōttuṅga; but there is no doubt that Kulaśēkhara paid a heavy penalty for his contumacy. As the war ends with the restoration of Kulaśēkhara, the success of Kulōttuṅga was certainly not so absolute, and the statement that the Pāṇḍyan ruler and his relatives⁷⁸ sought refuge in the forests is mere rhetoric. The sieges of Maṭṭiyūr and Kaḷikkōṭṭai—places not yet identified—the defeat of the army of the Maṟavas and the specific act of vandalism, the demolition of the coronation-hall of the Pāṇḍyas, may well be accepted as facts. This harshness on the part of Kulōttunga proves his consciousness of the increasing weakness of his own position in contrast to the growing strength of the Pāṇḍyas. It also accounts for the retaliation that followed some years later when Māṟavarman Sundara Pāṇḍya, who must have suffered along with his brother on the occasion of Kulōttunga's invasion, assumed the rôle of aggressor and carried fire and sword into the Cōḷa country, and performed a Vīrābhiṣēka in the coronation hall of the Cōḷas at Āyirattaḷi *alias* Muḍigoṇḍaśōḷa-puram.⁷⁹