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JAINA MEN OF ACTION
119 bearer Vişnu, as the spear to the spear-bearer Skanda, as the bow Gāņdiva to the owner of Gāņdiva Arjuna, even so does Ganga Rāja conduct the affairs of king Vişnu." And the engraver of this eulogy Vardhamānācāri, himself “an ornament to the forehead of titled sculptors," asks the question“How can he, whose fame was brilliant like the waves of the Ganges, be described by people like us?”1
The epigraphs give not merely the above eulogy but Ganga Rāja's military work as well. We said above that the most pressing political problem of the time was the expulsion of Coļas from Talakād. King Vişņu wisely entrusted this onerous task to the greatest Jaina general of the age Ganga Rāja. The Coļa power in Talakad was annihilated in A.D. 1117.2 This crowning victory of Ganga Rāja was achieved only when he had met with and routed the three pillars of Coļa strength in the Karnāțaka territory—the Samanta Adiyama in Talakād-itself ; the Sämanta Dama or Damodara, who was stationed perhaps to the east of Talakād in the direction of Kañci ; and the Samanta Narasingavarmā stationed on the Western Ghats. The ruler whom these and other Sämantas obeyed was king Rajendra Cola II (A.D. 1070_A.D. 1117).3 Ganga Rāja's success over the Sämantas of king Rājendra Cola in Karnāțaka is thus described in the stone record found on the left of the dvărapălakas of Gommateśvara at śravana Belgoļa and dated about A.D. 1175 : “The great minister, Dandanāyaka, a mill-stone to traitors (droharagharațța), Ganga Rāja—when Coļa's Sämanta Adiyama, stationed as if a door in the camp of Talakāļu, the fron
1. E. C. II, 73, p. 39.
2. Rice placed this event in A.D. 1116, My. & Coorg, pp. 98-99 ; and I followed him in my Wild Tribes, p. 82. But this date should be given up, as will be explained presently.
3. Rice, ibid., pp. 84, 91-93.
