The Colas c23.4

c23.4

From the re-conquest of the Pāṇḍya country by Kulōttunga I, we hear almost nothing of its affairs or of the fortunes of the ancient line of Pāṇḍya rulers until we reach the reign of Rājādhirāja II. The inscriptions of the Pāṇḍyas, which may with more or less certainty be assigned to this period, show that even after Kulōttunga's southern wars, the Pāṇḍyas successfully maintained a part of the freedom they had gained from the initial difficulties which beset Kulōttunga I on his accession to the Cōḷa throne; they engraved inscriptions of their own with boastful *praśastis*, a thing which they did not or could not do when their country was ruled more firmly by the Cōḷa-Pāṇḍya viceroys. They waged their own wars without reference to the central power to which their allegiance tended to become more and more nominal. Parāntaka Pāṇḍya took part, as we have seen, in Vikramacōḷa's first Kalinga war and attacked Teliṅga Bhīma of Kolanu; but this real subordination to Cōḷa suzerainty apparently gave place to a more grudging recognition of it in the years that followed the death of Kulōttuṅga I, if not towards the end of his reign when the Cōḷa power underwent considerable curtailment by the loss of Mysore and Vēṅgī. Hardly any inscriptions of the Cōḷa monarchs are found in the Pāṇḍya country proper after the close of Kulōttuṅga's reign.⁵