The Colas c23.48

c23.48

There are some inscriptions of Nallasiddha which seem to throw some light on the period when he declared independence, but as often happens in Telugu-Cōḍa history, the evidence of these records raises more questions than it helps us to answer. The earliest of these inscriptions is a Kannaḍa record dated Ś. 1114 (A.D. 1192-3) and describes the ruler as Bhujabalavīra Nallasiddhanadēva Cōḷa Mahārāja ruling at Vallūrapura, already familiar to us as the capital of Mahārājapāḍi 7000 and eight miles to the N. W. of Cuddapah. This chieftain boasts that he levied tribute from Kāñcī.¹⁰² Except the fact of Kulōttunga undertaking a campaign which he closed by entering Kāñcī in force, there is no evidence in support of this claim of the Telugu-Cōḍa chieftain. And here we should not omit to notice that in the inscriptions of Tammusiddhi, the conquest of Kāñcī is ascribed, though only by a metaphor,¹⁰³ to his uncle, an earlier Nallasiddha, the brother of Erasiddha. Perhaps this claim on the part of Nallasiddha to have levied tribute from Kāñcī implies only that for some time he stopped the usual tribute to the Cōḷa monarch and was still left in undisturbed possession of Kāñcī. However that may be, Nallasiddha's career as an independent ruler was soon cut short by Kulōttunga's occupation of Kāñcī about A.D. 1196, and the success of Kulōttunga's enterprise is attested not only by his inscriptions which state that he entered Kāñcī with his anger abated, but by the series of dated inscriptions of Nallasiddha which have been cited above and are dated in the regnal years of Kulōttunga III.