________________
JAINA MEN OF ACTION
123 the allies or feudatories of the Tamil monarch, and whose existence was a menace to the growing Hoysala power. These were, among others, the rulers of the Kongudeśa and Cengiri, and a chieftain whose name is effaced in the record but who seems to have been called Jam. ... The Grāmadabasti stone inscription dated about A.D. 1135 cited above relates that after seizing Talakāų, Ganga Rāja took “possession similarly of Kongu, chasing away Jam..., pulling out Cengiri by the strength of his arm", and gave Gangavādi to his royal master, as related above. The Kongudeśa comprised modern Salem, and was ruled over by the ancient Ceras, while Cengiri, as Rice correctly said, was the famous fortress of señji or Ginjee.2
But another danger which simultaneously threatened the Hoysala arms from the north also met with prompt action on the part of the Hoysala monarch. Here in the north lay the Empire of the Western Cālukyas, the distinguished ruler of which Vikramaditya VI, Tribhuvanamalla, had successfully maintained the supremacy of his ancestors throughout the length and breadth of the Western Cālukyan dominions. Vişnuvardhana himself had acknowledged the supremacy of the Western Cālukyan monarch at the beginning of his reign. But a clash between the Western Cālukyas and the rising power of the Hoysalas was inevitable. And this was brought about perhaps by the Hoysalas themselves, who stormed a stronghold of a powerful feudatory and ally of the Western Cālukyan monarch. The fortress of Ucchangi belonged to the Pāņdyas, the rulers of which from A.D. 1106 had become the masters of Noļambavāļi under king Vikramāditya VI. Sub
1. E. C. II, 384, p. 166; E. C. IV, Ng. 76 dated A.D. 1145,
p. 31
2. Ibid., V, Intr., p. 13. (n).