Studies in Cola History and Administration c7.142

c7.142

The Telugu-Cōḍa inscriptions are more definite and say that Karikāla ruled from Kāñcī; according to them Karikāla's ancestors, and more often his so-called later Telugu descendants, had Uraiyūr for their capital.* We have also the testimony of Śēkkilār in the 12th century and the much later Toṇḍaimaṇḍala-śatakam† telling us that Karikāla had a great share in the colonisation and the administrative regulation of the Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam as a whole. We can only observe that the lateness of the testimony and its conflict with what we learn of Karikāla from the earliest references to him render it extremely difficult for us to accept these statements as part of the history of the early ruler. How Karikāla came to be connected with the Toṇḍaimaṇḍalam or Kāñcī in later times is quite another matter on which something will be said presently.