The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v2.c13.s2.t3.17

v2.c13.s2.t3.17

During his long reign of forty-one years Rājarāja rarely enjoyed peace. The sinister designs of his half-brother coupled with the conflicting ambitions of the rival imperial powers converted his fertile kingdom into a cockpit. Rājarāja was indeed the helpless victim of a capricious fate. He lost and regained his kingdom only to lose it finally; he became the dependent by turns of the Chōḷas and the Chālukyas of Kalyāṇi; and he perhaps ended his long and chequered career in exile and relative obscurity. Though subjected to the buffets of misfortune, he seems to have borne his lot with patient resignation, and to have submitted to the inevitable when it proved no longer possible for him to hold his own. Rājarāja was an enlightened and tolerant monarch. Though himself ardently devoted to the worship of Śiva, he yet extended his patronage to the followers of all sects. He was fond of learning, and encouraged poets and scholars with munificent gifts. At his instance his chief court poet Nannaya Bhaṭṭa began to compose the *Andhra Mahābhārata* based on Vyāsa’s great epic, which he, however, left incomplete owing perhaps to the sudden termination of his master’s reign and the consequent loss of his patronage.