The Colas c24.21

c24.21

The inscriptions of Rājarāja III dated up to the thirtieth year if not later are found in the modern districts of Salem, Chittoor, Cuddapah and Nellore; we find also the inscriptions of his successor Rājēndra III over practically the same area; these facts imply that the hegemony of the Cōḷa power continued to be recognised over the whole of this area in this period. But this was no more than a traditional form which apparently persisted for some time after its substance had disappeared. For nothing stands out in clearer relief from the records of the time than the absence of a central co-ordinating authority, and the readiness with which treasons and conspiracies seem to have been set on foot. We have traced the growth of the practice among local chieftains of contracting alliances for offence and defence without any regard to the central government; the habit had spread to the heart of the Cōḷa country by the beginning of Rājarāja’s reign and there is an instance⁴⁰ of three chiefs in the Tanjore district itself contracting such a mutual alliance in the third year of the reign, A.D. 1219; except for the facts that the inscription recording this event is dated in a regnal year of Rājarāja III, and the treaty of alliance acknowledged a common fealty due from the allies to the Cōḷa king, which perhaps meant that the alliance would not hold against that ruler, there is no evidence that the government of Rājarāja had anything to do with it. Another instance of a rather protracted feud ending in a matrimonial alliance between the parties is furnished by a record of A.D. 1232 from Tiruveṇṇainallūr;⁴¹ the parties to the dispute and to the alliance that followed it were members of the Kāḍavarāya and Cēdirāya families.