The Colas c23.65

c23.65

The difficulties that Kulōttunga faced and, for the most part, overcame, did not result in the breakup of the administrative system or in the diminution of the extent of the empire, at least, up to the invasion of Sundara Pāṇḍya and the subversion of Cōḷa authority. The repeated references to officials like Kaḷappāḷarāya, Nuḷambādhirāja and Pāṇḍya-rāja,¹³⁸ and the part they take in conducting local enquiries on important affairs that came on appeal to the central government,¹³⁹ together with the careful watch they maintain over the constitution and functioning of rural assemblies,¹⁴⁰ form sufficient proof that the system of administration developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries was still functioning with tolerable efficiency at the beginning of the thirteenth. That a partial resurvey of land must have been undertaken in Tanjore becomes clear from some inscriptions of the reign of Rājēndra III from Kōvilūr¹⁴¹ which mention a survey of the thirty-eighth year of Periyadēvar Tribhuvanavīradēva. The extent of Kulōttunga's sway is attested by the presence of his records at Tinnevelly in the south,¹⁴² at Hēmāvati, Avani and Yedurūr in Mysore,¹⁴³ at Taḍāvūr, Tagaḍūr and Karuvūr in the Kongu country, ¹⁴⁴ and in the north, at Nellore and Reḍḍipāḷem in the Nellore district and at Nandalūr and Pottappi in the Cuddapah district.¹⁴⁵ It is remarkable that one of the inscriptions of Kulōttunga from Mysore states that Vallāḷadēva was ruling that earth in the twelfth year of Kulōttunga III¹⁴⁶ doubtless a reference to Ballāḷa II, the Hoysala ruler, whose queen was a Cōḷamahādēvi, clearly a Cōḷa princess.¹⁴⁷