Studies in Cola History and Administration c14.90

c14.90

There is one circumstance which renders this surmise about Naralōkavīra’s relation to Vikrama Cōḷa’s works in Cidambaram the more probable. This chieftain had by the time of Vikrama’s accession added to his distinction in the army a considerable experience in the construction and endowment of temples and maṇḍapas. In the life-time of Kulōttuṅga, he built a stone temple of good size to Vyāghrapadēśvara at Siddhaliṅgamadam;* he also constructed a maṇḍapa and prākāra walls and set up a recumbent image of Hari in Kāñcīpuram.† And, though we cannot be quite sure of it, it is not improbable that before he turned to Cidambaram, he completed the constructions at Tiruvadi which included a maṇḍapa and a māḷigai, a hall with a hundred-pillars, a broad procession-path (tiruccuṟṟu), a dancing hall and other structures very similar to those erected at Cidambaram. In many ways then Naralōkavīra must have appeared to Vikrama Cōḷa as the person most fitted to carry ont the great enterprise at Cidambaram which was to mark his intense devotion to his tutelary deity (taṉ kuluṉāyakaṉ).