The Colas c34.17

c34.17

Perhaps less worthy of credence are some other details of a personal nature. He fell in love with a dancing girl Valli whom he met in the Śaiva *maṭha* presided over by Caturā- nāna Paṇḍita at Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, and verses are preserved in the *Tamil-nāvalar-caritai* which purport to record Kamban's great love and admiration of Valli and his dissatisfaction with another claimant to his affections. The story goes that Kamban commanded the regard of all the ruling sovereigns of his time, including the Pāṇḍya and the Kākatīya Rudra, and that the Cōḷa ruler, jealous of his fame and anxious to get rid of his over-mighty subject, plotted his murder and executed it in person; there is no means yet of deciding if this puerile account of the poet's end has any foundation.²⁶