The Colas c24.35

c24.35

In fact, after they began sometime about 1218 to take the side of the Cōḷas against the Pāṇḍyas in the struggle between these two powers, the Hoysalas appear steadily to have improved their position and influence in the Cōḷa and the Pāṇḍya kingdoms. They evidently aspired to a sort of hegemony over the whole of South India and to some extent succeeded in realising their ambition for a time, during the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Depending for their very existence on the backing of the Hoysalas, the Cōḷas were in no position to offer any resistance to their aggrandizement; even the Pāṇḍyas found themselves compelled to purchase peace with the Hoysalas by a tacit recognition of their dominant position. Attention may be drawn here to the frequent mention of Hoysala kings and generals in the Pāṇḍyan inscriptions of the period,⁵⁷ and in particular, to two records from Pudukkottah,⁵⁸ dated about A.D. 1245, which mention the capture of Kāna-nāḍu by Ravi-dēva, a general of the Hoysala Vīra-Sōmēśvara. It was not till the rise of the greatest Pāṇḍya ruler of the time, Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya, i.e., till after the middle of the century, that the expansion of the Hoysala power received a check.