The Colas c24.19

c24.19

While his generals were carrying out his instructions regarding Kōpperuñjinga and the Cōḷa king, Narasimha himself conducted operations against the Pāṇḍya. The *Gadyakarṇāmṛta* asserts that Narasimha levied tribute from the Pāṇḍya ruler, and it seems that the decisive encounter between the Pāṇḍya and Hoysaḷa troops took place at Mahēndramangalam on the Kāvērī river.³⁵ An inscription at Haranahalḷi³⁶ mentions that Narasimha was encamped at Ravitaḍānakoppa with the object of leading a campaign against the Pāṇḍya king and states that the sea was roaring out its advice to the latter to give up everything to the Hoysala and live in peace as his servant. Other Hoysala inscriptions state that Rāmēśvaram was reached in the course of this campaign or soon after.³⁷ We hear nothing of all this from the Pāṇḍya inscriptions. In the *praśasti* of Māṟavarman Sundara Pāṇḍya I, the account of his second campaign against the Cōḷa stops with the *vijayābhiṣēka*, and this is obviously not the whole truth; for it leaves unexplained the restoration of Rājarāja to the Cōḷa throne after he was forced to relinquish it to the Pāṇḍyan invader. There can be no doubt that for a second time the Hoysala maintained the balance of power among the southern kingdoms by preventing the abolition of the independent Cōḷa monarchy and the annexation of its territory to the Pāṇḍyan kingdom. The political settlement reached at the close of these campaigns in aid of the Cōḷa seems to have been sealed by dynastic marriages; Vīra Sōmēśvara, the son of Vīra Narasimha, is called *māmaḍi* by the successors of both Mār. Sundara Pāṇḍya I and Rājarāja III.³⁸