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No. 22.] TINNEVELLY INSCRIPTION OF MARAVARMAN SUNDARA-PANDYA II. 163
who, following the example of Peruñjinga, shook off their allegiance to the Chōla throne and became independent, each in his own region,1 Rajendra-Chola III formed a design to chastise all those that formerly despised the family of the Chōlas. He claims to be a very Rāma in destroying the northern part of Lanka (i.e., Ceylon), which, as we have seen, supplied in the past valiant generals who supported that party of the Pandyas that was opposed to the Chōlas and stood also on the side of Peruñjinga. Rajendra-Chōla boasts of having killed a Rajaraja after making him wear a double crown for three years, and of having subdued the Pandyas and the Kēralas, of having plundered the country of the former, of having taken the Pandyan crown, and of placing his feet on his jewelled crown. He claims to be Death to the Karnata kings and states. that on his legs, Vira Sõmeśvara, the wrestler on hill forts, placed the anklet of heroes. Whatever may be the truth of these high claims, this much may be gathered that Rajendra-Chōla made some sporadic attempts to revive the power of the Chōlas. But his effort was past remedy. The reign of Maravarman Sundara-Pandya II is important as being the one in which the Pandyan civil war ended, and as showing how in the final issues of it, the Hoysalas came to play the part which the Chōlas did earlier.
Besides the Chōlas and the Hoysalas, the kings of Kongu were also taking up the side of Kulasekhara-Pandya and were helping him and his descendants in the fight against the members of the family of Parakrama-Päṇḍya. Like the Hoysalas, the Kongu kings were also connected by marriage with the kings of the Kulasekhara line. A regular succession of Kongu kings are known to us from inscriptions for nearly ten generations which include the period of the Pandyan war of succession. To show the connection between the two families, we give hereunder five kings of the Kongu line who regularly succeeded one another and whose period of rule extended from A.D. 1135 to 1263. These are:
Viranarayana (Uttama-Chōla)-A.D. 1135 to 1149.
Kulottunga (Rajakēsari)-A.D. 1149 to 1183.
Vira-Chōla, who ruled the two Kongus --A.D. 1183 to 1206.
Virarajendra (Räjakēsari), who ruled the two Kongus '-A.D. 1206 to 1255. Vikrama-Chōla-A.D. 1255 to 1263.
One of the inscriptions of the Kongu country states that Rajakēsari Kulottunga was the grandson of Vira-Chola. This information is useful in establishing the fact that Viranārāyaṇa was the son of Vira-Chōla and the father of Kulottunga, for the three kings ruled in succession the Kongu country as their dates clearly prove. We learn from a lithic record at Neruvur that the Kongu king Rajakēsarivarman Kulottunga-Chōla, on the eve of setting out on an expedition against Madura to capture it for his sister's son (marumagan) Kulasekhara-Pandya, directed the sabha of the place to make a brahmadeya gift of some lands in Maniyamangalam, which had been the camping ground of the king, as a yātrādāna to his purohita Alvar Śrībalideva. This shows that Kulasekhara-Pandya's father had married the sister of the Kongu king Kulottunga. The Sinhalese chronicle Mahavamsa, besides confirming this, supplements the epigraphical accountby letting us know that Kulottunga had another brother who was ruling over North Kongu, for it is stated that Kulasekhara gathered together the forces of his mother's brothers who were in Ten-Kongu and Vada-Kongu. That this cordial relationship between the Kongu king and
1 Rajanarayana Sambuvaraya in A.D. 1245, and Gardagopala in A.D. 1249. Somewhere about the same time Yadava Narasimha and Magadaipperumā].
S. I. I., Vol. IV, Nos. 511, 512.
No. 336 of the Madras Epigraphical collection for 1927-28. Wijesinha's Translation, p. 245.
